Marketing your Small Business on the Internet (Part 3) Start a Blogging Initiative
Monday, June 29th, 2009Marketing your Small Business on the Internet (Part 3) Start a Blogging Initiative
Pittsburgh, PA – By now almost everyone has heard the term Blog. If you haven’t here’s a brief rundown to get you up to speed.
“A blog (a contraction of the term "weblog")[1] is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
In the Dark Ages (10 years ago), The Internet was finding its way and people used forums, chat rooms, bulletin boards and email based communication networks. We have evolved and continue to do so. With the advent of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and other social media commentary, personal and business publication of reader material is easy and relatively cheap.
These days’ blogs have, in some cases, replaced websites with their ability to add pages easily and to maintain current data and info. To increase your rankings in search engines (SEO – Search Engine Optimization), and more importantly, to give customers a reason to come back to your site (repeat business and bookmarking); you need to keep the content on your site fresh and relevant.
Consider integrating a blog into your website. You can spend a few minutes a day writing for your blog, and you'll continually be adding fresh content to your site that search engines can crawl and your customers can read. I like to compare Google and the others to fires that burn. What do they burn? CONTENT! To keep your fire happy you add wood. To keep the search engines happy and looking on your site with favor, you add content.
So how can starting a blog help my business? Besides the previously mentioned points, here are a few ways businesses all over this fine planet have utilized the blog for all kinds of commercial uses.
- Brand Building – Make or enhance your Business profile
- Educational and Information sharing enhances your authoritative market niche as well
- Newsletter publication is easier than ever, you can archive your Newsletters now without much problem
- Publishing trade articles and whitepapers helps get your company recognized
- Social areas for employees to converse about carpools, soccer practice for the kids, a lunch venue, their new Avon product party, or whatever
- Political areas are touchy for business unless that is your business, but blogs have a profound reach in this arena too
The list could go on and on. The sky is truly the limit. Blog posts can be submitted to RSS feeds (a fantastic video here explaining RSS in plain English) and email subscription membership as well for all to see.
In this global marketplace every area of leverage should be exploited. You may find corporate strengths you never knew you had, or expose weaknesses that must be addressed. In any case this helps your business to compete and that is the main purpose. That is the power of blogging.
Thinking of starting a blog? Contact Us at Blackball Online for an evaluation of your business needs and a strategy for resolving them.
