I just got a Google Alert about a great article published Aug. 24 in USA Today about the fact that blogs may well be a big fad, but you shouldn’t ignore that they are still a great tool for building your business and getting clients.
(Does anyone else get these Alerts a week later, or is it just me?) I see Denise Wakeman has already written about this on Aug. 24 over at the Build a Better Blog site, but this article makes some very good points, as follows:
Steve Strauss in his Ask The Expert column expounds on the benefits of blogs for small business. There are 7 reasons a blog can be good from your business.:
• Build your brand: Your blog is your voice and your words. It allows you to directly convey the image you want people to have of your business without having to go through the cost and diffusion that advertising and marketing require. The values that define your business and brand can, and should, be incorporated into your business blog.
• Improve customer service: You can use your blog to keep customers informed of important events, sales, deadlines, and so forth. You can answer customers’ questions or provide valuable links to related products and services.
• Increase employee awareness: An internal blog can be used to post schedules, make announcements, crack a joke, etc.
• Build your reputation: Blogging is an inexpensive marketing tool that permits you to position yourself as an expert in your field. If your blog provides cutting-edge analysis or information for people in your industry, your reputation grows in direct proportion to that.
• Bump your search engine rankings: Blogs that allow reader responses (and many do) create Web pages with valuable key words. This in turn can increase your search engine rankings.
Let’s see. Is that it? No? Oh, right. There is one more benefit to blogging:
• Make money: You could sell ad space next to your blog. You could tap into affiliate programs and get paid for that.
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If you’re still wondering if blogging is for you, give me a call or an email and we can weigh the pros and cons. About the only reason I see to NOT do a blog is if you don’t want any more business.
And, yes, it does require some writing, about 10-20 minutes each time you post once you get the hang of it. But you probably spend that much time writing individual emails that contain good information you should be sharing to a larger audience (like, the World Wide Web, for example!)
Stay tuned for a blogging intensive 6-week teletraining coming up in September. Our ebook The Build a Better Blog System Revised Edition will be included in the tuition and you will be walked hand in hand through Blogdom by the Blog Squad gals, yours truly and Denise Wakeman, along with Adam Urbanski, the Marketing Mentor guy.
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