SU!Over the past few years, one of the biggest trends in online marketing has been the growth of blogs. Although they started out primarily being used for personal reasons, a growing number of businesses are recognizing the potential of blogging.
Regardless of whether you run a one-person operation or a Fortune 100 company, starting a blog on your website is easily achievable and can bring huge rewards with the right approach.
Most business owners are very eager to increase the number of visitors they receive at their website and in making their website a more valuable asset to the business. If this is the case for you, blogging may be a solution that can bring some life to a website that you have struggled to market.
For the purposes of this article, all of the information that is presented will be assuming that the business’s blog is located on the same domain as the main website, rather than using a separate domain for the blog such as wordpress.com or blogspot.com. Also, there are all kinds of purposes for blogging and you will read articles and advice that are relevant for different situations. The purpose of this article is to focus on using a blog as a supplement to company’s website with the intent of benefiting the business in one way or another.
Why is Blogging an Effective Way to Promote a Website?
There are so many different ways to promote a website and if you have ever researched the topic you probably were confused and maybe even distracted by all of the various opinions. Just when you think you are settled on a way to promote your site you come across information on the latest, greatest, and easiest way to market your site, and it can be difficult to take action and see results with any specific approach.
Even though there are so many different paths you can take when marketing a site, blogging provides some powerful and unique opportunities that are rarely found through other legitimate promotional methods.
1. Connect with Visitors
One of the most significant strengths of blogging is that it will allow you to connect and build relationships and trust from your visitors. A blog will allow your visitors to see more of your personality (even if what you are writing about is not personal in nature) and they will typically feel a stronger bond to your business because of the personal characteristics of blogging. Readers will have the opportunity to interact with you by leaving comments on your posts, which helps to strengthen those connections.
2. Potential for Traffic Increases
Every business and website owner wants to draw more traffic to their site, and blogging offers great potential in this area. In addition to just attracting new visitors, blogs increase the likelihood of getting repeat visitors, who are typically more valuable to businesses. As new posts are published to your blog your subscribers will receive the post via RSS or email and some will click-through to visit your site. Blogging also provides opportunities for increased traffic through social media and searches. Logically speaking, if your website currently consists of 25 pages and after a year of blogging you have added 100 posts, your site is now exponentially bigger, with more pages that will be showing up in the SERPs (search engine results pages). Of course, there is more involved with generating traffic through a blog than simply publishing many posts, and we will look at these issues in just a minute.
3. Link Building
Acquiring links from other websites is a major goal of anyone who wants to increase exposure and traffic to their website. Links can help to draw click-through traffic, but more importantly they are a very significant factor in determining search engine rankings, which can send traffic to your site on a re-occurring basis. Bloggers tend to link to other bloggers, so your posts may wind up attracting links with little-to-no effort on your part to attain those links. Popular blog posts often go “viral”, which can result in important links from social media sites as well as from many bloggers who found the content via social media or other links.
4. Integration with Social Media
More and more companies are also starting to become active at social media and social networking sites, including Facebook, Twitter, and many more. Blogging and social media work very well together and present incredible opportunities to reach a larger audience and to maintain control over your company’s reputation online. If you have considered using social media or social networking to promote your business, blogging is a no brainer.
Keys to Promoting Your Website Through a Blog
If you weren’t already convinced of the potential that blogging has for marketing a business, hopefully those points have helped you to see that it is something worth considering or revamping if you have been trying with little success. Now, let’s take a look at what is involved with effectively using a blog to grow your business.
1. Have a Plan
If your company is blogging just for the sake of blogging, chances are that it will not produce results for you. You can use a blog in any number of different ways. For example, some bloggers write to gain influence in their industry, others want to draw traffic and sell advertisements on the site, some hope to gain the trust of readers and promote their own products or affiliate products, and others may simply be using blogging as a way to communicate openly with customers. Of course, there are even more ways that you could potentially use a blog, but you get the idea that each purpose would require its own approach and plan.
Some of the things that you need to consider when determining the plan for your blog include:
- What are your primary objectives that you need to achieve through the blog?
- How will the business benefit from the blog?
- Who will be doing the writing?
- How frequently will blog posts be published?
- What type of content will be published?
Although your plan for the blog may evolve over time, it’s critical that you always have a clear idea of what you are trying to accomplish and how it will make the business stronger. Without a plan you may wind up dedicating a lot of time to work that produces poor results.
2. Track Your Results
Now that you have some clearly defined ways that you want the blog to benefit the business, you will need to track your progress to see how well it is working. If your goals is to communicate more effectively with customers because of the blog, you could measure the amount of support email/calls or trouble tickets that are submitted by customers. If your purpose is to draw more links and search engine traffic, those things can be easily measured. Without tracking your results you will have a hard time determining how much the blog has helped.
One thing to keep in mind is that it will take a while to see results with the blog, and the amount of time that it will take will depend on your goals. Growing search engine traffic, for example, will probably take at least a few months before the results really start to show up. Have some patience and keep working on the blog long enough that the results you are looking for will have a chance to take place.
3. Don’t Blatantly Sell
Blogging is different than most other types of marketing or promotion in that it is usually most effective when it is passive in nature. Blog readers will not be interested in your blog if it is just used as another way to push your products or services. Rather, provide genuine and valuable content and you will indirectly promote yourself and your company as being a leader in the field.
It’s ok to occasionally post something on your blog with the intent of selling something, but this should not be the majority of your content and it will typically be most effective when it is something special. For example, you could provide your blog readers with a special discount code that they can use to get a better deal on one of your products. This type of promotion will show that you value your blog readers and it gives them incentive to subscribe.
4. Be Consistent
Some businesses that maintain a blog struggle to see results because their efforts are very sporadic and inconsistent. Of course, this does all go back to your goals and the fact that different purposes should lead to different approaches, but in general you will need to have some consistency in your posting in order to draw an audience. If you publish three posts in one week and then take a two-month break from the blog, developing a strong base of readers will be very difficult.
When you are developing your company’s blogging plan, be realistic about how much time you (or someone else from the business) can invest in the blog, and how much that time and effort will produce for you. You don’t have to dedicate tons of time to the blog, but be willing to give it a place in your schedule so that it doesn’t get abandoned.
5. Get Involved with Others in the Community
Maintaining a blog involves more than just posting articles and responding to reader comments. Effective bloggers are well-connected with other bloggers in their field and involved in the community. Take the time to get familiar with the other blogs that cover similar topics as yours, and get connected to those bloggers. Leave intelligent comments on their posts or catch up with them via social networking sites. Twitter is a great way to get involved in your blogging community.
6. Stick with What You Do Best
Even within a particular field or industry there are likely to be many different kinds of blogs. In order for yours to be as effective as possible you will need to realize what you and your business does best and stick to that. Avoid the temptation to imitate the blogging approaches of others in your industry if it is not a good fit for you. Doing what you do best will provide higher quality content to readers and it will allow you to make a stronger impression with your visitors/readers/customers.
I’d tried some of the ways and got nice results!
However, we need a bit of time to apply all of them.
This is the best piece of advice I have read about blogging and as our company blogger I found it encouraging & positive and has given me a real sense of purpose. Thank you!
Don’t forget stunbleupon and digg. They can attract a great number of visitors to you site.