When I speak with small business owners and marketers, one
of the persistent obstacles to creating a blog presence often are expressed as
two key points:
1) We
don't have time to write regularly.
2) We
don't have the ability to write regularly.
That seems like a non-starter, right? If you find this
is your situation, please think again, as you are missing a key opportunity -
since, as mentioned in an earlier business
blogging article, YOU are the expert in your field.
Vehicles, Blog sites and Web sites
Think about what you do every day. And bare with the
drama but... you likely get into a multi-thousand-point vehicle powered with
explosive gasses, you head down the road with other similar vehicles, risking
life and limb to get to and from work, the store, home, and road trips.
Driving a car is a pretty risky thing with special attention and skills
required to avoid disaster. But we all do this regularly, and one reason
why is because we HAVE TO. Another reason is we get real advantages from being
able to transport ourselves here and there. In short, it is worth it and
necessary. The same thing can be said about creating a blog-based
presence for your business. In fact, to stretch a metaphor even
further - let's think of your standard minivan as somewhat akin to your main
web site. So if your www.company.com
is a minivan, what of your blog? Ahh, truly it is a turbo-powered sports
car!
You need your regular web site to represent your business,
your products, who stands behind the business, investors, contact information
and the like. You don't always change content on it super-quickly, you
just need it, above all, to be accurate, current, reliable, somewhat attractive
and optimized
for getting found online. Okay, so we might question whether a minivan
is attractive, but you get the idea! You need your primary web site to
take you places and live up to the expectations and needs of a broad
audience. But is that enough? In order to be
competitive, and get found online, a blog site can provide you with the more
nimble capability to present your products and related knowledge, maneuvering
in ways that your minivan web site can't.
-
Drive traffic and
generate leads: blog sites are built with search optimization in
mind. You can use your knowledge (and hyperlinks!) to create a
high-octane traffic-driving machine. That's one major way your blog is
supposed to function! Increasing conversions
is key to building your business, and your blog can play a crucial role of
increasing interested and qualified traffic.
-
Engaging and Building Connections: blog
sites are created to be interactive. Each article is an opportunity to share
information, get feedback and engage in dialog with those customers, prospects and
industry experts who care about what you care about.
-
Test Drive Ideas: A blog site can also be
an opportunity to share ideas about new or possible initiatives. This can
be invaluable interaction about future directions.
Here's an experiment to
try: take the name of your own industry, for example, "draperies."
Google it: "Draperies
and blogs." Results: what your
competition is doing. So it could be that while you've been functioning
using the ol' minivan, your competition has been zipping-by using their own
speedier on-line vehicles. Yikes!
Again the good news is that the
technology part can be quite easy. Low technology barriers
to entry for the blog sphere are a fact.
And we know your blog site can be well positioned to contribute to your
business growth. Given this, it seems that the old excuses will fix
themselves!
Of course it is now a prerequisite to have a professional web
presence for your business. More than likely, you spend time and treasure on this critical resource. But what about a blog? Blogging may just seem like a fad for techies (
www.Gizmodo.com) or people that seem to have plenty of time on their hands, or people who have plenty to say, like researchers (
www.researchbuzz.org). By now, having a companion blog site has become part of a comprehensive marketing program for many. Blogging, and other forms of social media, has become a de facto means of engagement for B2B companies. It's simply essential. Just as you would view in-person networking events as necessary to engaging with customers and partners, your blog site should be this as well. And while it may seem that a blog will cost you additional time (and that treasure), there are resources available to streamline blog publishing. More than this, your blog site can be well-positioned to feed visitors to your existing company web presence.
You are the expert
Want to create a buzz about your latest offerings or upcoming initiative? No one is better positioned to do this than you. Of course you have the latest vetted marketing copy on your official "www" site. You might be surprised to find that you've got plenty more to say. One of my colleagues who regularly writes on his own blog, finds it much easier to write in the more conversational style that is typical of blogging. It's less formal, less restrictive, approachable and believe it or not, it can be fun. Unlike traditional web copy, with blogging you have the option of getting reader feedback via comments. This feedback can give you the additional sense of satisfaction that someone is actually paying attention. More about that in a sec!
SEO Opportunity
Hyperlinking is the basic building block of the web. That's how it was conceived as a "web" of linked documents. Google ranks sites using various metrics, not the least among them are these inbound links. So why make this point? Because blogging is a great way to build a network of contextual links pointing back to your primary web. So that's key: don't forget to hyperlink as you write. If you are writing about your latest product -but not being pitchy-, be sure and hyperlink back to the relevant section of your main site. The idea is to take advantage of SEO goodness as Google will weigh those keywords in relation to that landing page. Also don't be shy about linking to other relevant B2B or industry resources. If you happen to link to another blog, for example, often the owner of that blog will get a "trackback" acknowledgement. This is an electronic "kudos" and you may just find that others are linking to your content, further upping your SEO worthiness.
Social Networking and RSS
As mentioned, unlike traditional web copy, blog sites tend to be more interactive. If you have enabled commenting, whether moderated or not, you now have the possibility of getting direct feedback from readers and creating a real "buzz" around your postings. Speaking of Buzz, if your blog software has the ability to add a social bookmarking widget to the footer of your articles, you have a great way of building inbound links from sites like Digg and Reddit. RSS has become a universal way of "syndicating" your content, offering the ability to have your content literally distributed anywhere online. Check out feedburner (recently acquired by Google), which offers some additional ways to get your blog content "out there," and has some great analytics tools to boot!
Low Barriers to Entry and ROI
Where you might pay thousands of dollars to get your traditional web site designed, configured and hosted, the barriers to entry for a blog site are relatively few. Free and/or inexpensive hosted options are plentiful (wordpress.com, blogger.com, typepad.com). Likewise, you may want to see the many success stories from Hubspot. For example, check out how this B2B supplier, Palomar Technologies leveraged their blog site to build authority for itself, increasing traffic some twenty-fold, nearly tripling their monthly lead program.
Photo Courtesy of Proniit.