May 18, 2012

Blogging to Build a Reputation

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r-P4amnQ7U[/youtube]

Blogs provide the opportunity to market, inform, demonstrate and elicit feedback from your customers / readers. It’s a known fact  that keeping your website "fresh" encourages repeat web visits.  Having a blog on your website is a great way to add content consistently and keep your site fresh – as well as to establish yourself as an expert, thought-leader and credible resource. Other reasons to start blogging include:

  1. It helps your SEO (Google loves new content)
  2. You can engage and understand your customers better.
  3. You are seen as an expert in your field.
  4. Great content gets people a reason to keep coming back to your site.
  5. Blogs are a much more trusted source than companies press releases and official company PR.
  6. It moves customers to a conversion point of trusting and believing enough to buy.

Having a blog is just another way to increase your online branding & credibility with your clients & prospects and take your digital marketing strategy to the next level.

5 Reasons your Company Should Have a Blog

Blogging(1) Give your Company & Brand a Personality Writing a blog allows one to express the personality behind your company and brand.  Your prospects and customers ultimately need to feel comfortable with you and your company if they are going to give you their business.  Blogging allows you to showcase that you are knowledgeable in your industry and you are more than just a corporate brand; you are "real" people.

(2) Easy Distribution At its very core, a blog is a website.  As such, the content contained within them is easily distributed, easily shared and easily referenced by others.  If you provide relevant content and promote your company blog well, your blog will likely be picked up by others and mentioned on other blogs as well. This all contributes to building your company brand.

(3) More Effective than your Email Newsletter Blogs are essentially more easily edited versions of a newsletter.  You can update your company blog on the fly, any time you need to and virtually anywhere you have a connection to the Internet (computer or mobile device).  With a newsletter, on the other hand, you are limited in your updating capabilities once you have distributed that newsletter to your database.  So if you are looking to have an easy way to give your audience information in a frequent manner, blogging is the ideal solution.

(4) Great Place for Feedback & Engagement Like many other social media tools, blogs provide the opportunity for comments and feedback.  It is another great way to find out how your company is doing and connect with your audience / customers.

(5) SEO Benefits When written strategically, blogs can improve your organic (non-paid) rankings on search engines, and in today’s world, we all know how important it is to be visible online.  If you are going to use a blog platform external of your company website, be sure your posts provides links back to your site, so it can also benefit from an SEO perspective.

Position Yourself as an Expert by Blogging

Blogging may be the single-most important online strategy when it comes to enhancing your branding and credibility with your customers and prospects.  Not only do keyword-rich blog posts increase your online visibility, but they are also advantageous in positioning yourself as an expert / authority in your field.  Afterall, with whom are you more likely to do business… the person from whom you never hear… or the person who is consistently offering you tips, advice and relevant content?