The building blogs of business success
It’s safe to say that blogging has made the successful transition from the classroom to the boardroom when Fortune 500 companies such as Coca Cola, Marriott International Inc. and Southwest Airline have their own online blogs.
Using blogs for business is not new in the online landscape. We’ve previously explored why small businesses should blog and how they up your web ranking on search engines due to the fact that they are full of relevant keywords, key phrases and are updated frequently. In addition, they add to the online activity surrounding the business website by serving as a lively communication channel for employees to post comments about their organisation and their products, and also invite customers to participate as well.
Regardless of where your business is at in terms of getting a business blog, let’s revisit the reasons why there’s no blocking this phenomenon for business.
Makes for engaging material
By all means, include blogs about online products in your business website and advertise them on every directory and social book marking site you can get hold of to raise their popularity. But the blogs themselves should be catchy so that they attract and retain the attention of target consumers. So this is the right occasion to get cheeky with puns, metaphors and analogies to make the blog pages come alive.
Notice how the following companies haven’t forgotten the street appeal of blogs when naming their business blog. And if you visit their blogs, they’re filled with attractive images and catchy copy that don’t usually make it in their corporate pages.
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And also make them maximally informative, full of content about product functionality and their benefits, accompanied with proven evidence of their edge over rival products. In this way, your business blog wouldn’t be just a transit between the pages of your business website, but a destination on its own.
Opens the floodgates of communication
Broaden the blog discussions to include as many different perspectives as possible from potential bloggers. It is important to generate discussion about the benefits, not just the features of your products. It is also as important to tune in to the problems bloggers want resolved and areas of dissatisfaction with your brands, even those of the competition. What bloggers do best when they post their feedback is pour their hearts out, so read between the lines and recognise all these as market research that can be used to drive marketing strategies.
Enhances the online shopping experience
Make up for the fact that online shoppers cannot touch, feel or otherwise “sample” products by falling back on dazzling photo blogs and giving prominence to favourable feedback from highly satisfied users. It is amazing how credible unpaid and unsolicited endorsements can be in driving new customers and sales.
The impact of blogs is more significant if your website also functions as an online retail store. The blogs then become the unofficial FAQ page for time-poor online shoppers that prefer to shop in the convenience of their home or office. The blogs serve to address any queries that they may have through reading the comments left by others. If they are convinced by the positive comments, they are just one click away from leaving the check-out of your online shop as a satisfied customer.
But for most businesses with no retail component on their website, a blog is a helpful adjunct to selling pages on the main website.
Rethink blogs
If you are considering a business blog or already have one established, check to see if your end result has any resemblance to the features described above, for a good blog can be a valuable tool for business. Having a blog can help segment your market better, provide vital market intelligence that enable your business to improve products, serve customers better and ultimately carve out more market share. So before you dismiss blogs as child’s play, think how they can be constructive as the building blocks for your online business.
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April 10th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
This is the sort of information that every body with a domain name should have and understand, but there’s so much for them to learn that we need to ‘feed’ them slowly.
I’ll be passing on this link to everyone I come across who might benefit.