Now that Facebook and Twitter have firmly taken over the reins of social media, does it signal the end of lesser glamorous social networking technologies like blogging? I don’t think so. I’ve been blogging for a while now and I believe no other social network be it Facebook or Twitter can substitute for a business blog.
While social networks are about people interaction, a blog is a more comprehensive medium to provide detailed information about your business, services and products. The blogging movement may no longer match the aura of Facebook, but if utilized effectively, it can be a valuable asset for your business.
What is a Business Blog?
Not all businesses have a blog. In fact, the awareness about blogs is rather low especially in the small business world. To put it in simple words, a business blog can be described as an online means to communicate with employees and customers in order to share information, knowledge and expertise.
How a Blog Can Help Grow Your Business?
Being a blogoholic myself, I know the true advantages of having a business blog as well as anyone else. A blog helps grow your business in more than one ways and not limited to
- Increased Web Traffic – An informational business blog coupled with an effective SEO strategy can help your business appear amongst the top search results on leading search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.
- Channel for Information – A business blog provides a great platform to provide detailed information about your business, products and services. Facebook and Twitter are essentially people-oriented social networks while a blog is an information oriented social media tool.
- Customer Interaction – A business blog provides a fantastic opportunity to inform, interact and learn from your customers. It’s a great way of soliciting feedback from customers and learning from their experiences. Contrary to popular belief, I strongly believe that blogging is a 2-way channel – you provide the info and users ask the questions as well as the other way around – you pose questions to users and they come back with the feedback.
- Feedback – A blog provides a business with opportunities to launch surveys and polls for products/ services. It allows users and customers to leave feedback using comments.
- Customer Loyalty – A business blog can hold prospects’ interest for longer, winning customers over a period of time, and bringing them back to hear from you every once in a while. No spam emails, no irritating voicemail messages – yet mighty effective.
- Community Building – A business blog works wonder to build an online community. While it’s no match for Facebook groups or Fan Pages, regular readers of your blog develop a strong bond with your business. A blog therefore helps forge a sense of community that can be strengthened both online and off.
How a Blog Won’t Help Grow Your Business?
It is equally important to understand and clear the following misconceptions about business blogs.
- A blog is a low-cost alternative for a business website – It’s not! A business gains maximum benefits by linking its blog and website, any attempts to replace one with the other is a sure shot recipe for disaster.
- A blog should be my business’ only social media presence – Many businesses are content with having a website and a blog. They never think about expanding their social media presence believing their current social media efforts are enough. Active presence on leading social networks like Facebook and Twitter not only helps you reach to new audiences; it also helps bring additional traffic to your business blog and website.
- Creating and maintaining a business blog is a costly proposition – This is just not true! There are several free/ low-cost blogging platforms to choose from. Maintaining a blog isn’t costly either – you need to commit a resource to do it regularly. The dedicated resource/ time shouldn’t be looked at as an overhead but rather as a strategic investment which recovers itself quickly in due course of time.
Does your business maintain a blog? If so, how has it helped your business? Please share your experience by leaving a comment below this post.
Thanks for this really helpful post! We are considering starting a blog for our business, would you be able to answer a few questions?
– Are there any types of businesses you’d say a blog wouldn’t work for? We specialise in flood risk management – do you think this would work?
– What is the best blogging platform to use? And is it best to keep your blog separate from your main website?
Thank You.
Agreed with all of the above. Blogging is essential!
I certainly think a blog can work any type of business but there are some that come to mind that have it more ‘difficult’ than others:
– doctors (medicine in general)
– financial services
– manufacturing (b2b)
I think it’s more of a matter of being creative with your blog and standing out.
As far as the best platform for blogging I go with WordPress, but the best option is to have it self-hosted. Though there are other up and coming platforms such as Posterous and Tumblr, there are focused on simplicity and focus on non-tech savvy users.
The best thing is to have your blog integrated to your website or better yet develop your website based on a blogging platform such as WordPress.
Cheers,
Jorge
Thanks Jorge for your concise and very insightful response to Ambiental’s questions.
You are most welcome Douglas 🙂
Best,
Jorge
Well said, I also think a corporate blog works best when it’s a business-wide commitment rather than a solo-mission like you can see in lots of occasions.
Putting more people on this kind of effort is a sure way to provide more valuable content for your readers.
And I too personally believe a blog should be the hub of your social media efforts, with other channels starting from and pointing to it.
Well said Gabriele. Great to see you back.
Solid advice for small business growth. I think a great follow up to this should be how to get exposure for your blog.
You know what Bill? I’m going to take your suggestion and follow through with that follow up suggestion 🙂 It’d be a great addition to this post.
Thanks for being part of the Smedio community.
Spot on. Just had a meeting with a guy about this two days ago. You hit on a few of the points/objections he came up with and a few other good one’s I’ll remember for the next time. Small Business owners are missing out on a massive potential pile of leads and clients. Thanks for the post!
You’re welcome Bill. Welcome to the Smedio community.
Awesome post Douglas!
Yes, my business maintains a blog.
My blog helps my business in that it provides a means to contribute to others’ success by sharing timely and relevant information.
I have indeed seen:
1. Increased Web Traffic to the web site.
2. Increased Interaction with customers and potential customers.
3. Increased Feedback on subjects posted and desired subjects of interest.
What is the greatest unforeseen benefit of your blog?
…and the greatest “unforeseen” benefit of your blog is branding and positioning you as an expert in your market segment. It’s called the “sage from the stage”. Your blog is your stage; you’re regarded as an authority if you consistently deliver relevant, quality and useful info to your audience.
Great to have you back Dan. You always leave thought provoking comments. Thanks!
Excellent info here – blog on! Gerry Gramek 604-551-2747 http://www.century21.ca/gerry.gramek/Blog
good information about blogging… but how do i increase the traffic on my blog.. my ranking on alexa.com is low…. here is my blog link : http://olorisupergal.blogspot.com/
Good post, A clear information how to grow the business with blog. Keep on posting
First off I am very green (hunter green) to the big vast world of Technology. With that said, my business does currently have a newsletter in which I post articles monthly. I have had a problem with understanding the difference between a newsletter and blog. Since doing my research I seem to be getting a much more clearer understanding of the rolls of each entity. I am definitely going to be starting my blog soon. Thank you for all of your insight it is very much appreciated and needed by eager newbies like me.
The big corporations have bought into it. Smaller companies, too. Even independent consultants use Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook to do business. It is a great way to get the word out about your product or service. It boosts brand awareness, it builds loyalty, and it attracts and retains customers.
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Wanted to drop a remark and let you know your Feed isnt working today. I tried including it to my Bing reader account but got absolutely nothing.
Just to let you know your web page appears a little bit different in Safari on my notebook using Linux .
I have got one suggestion for your web page. It looks like right now there are a handful of cascading stylesheet troubles when opening a number of web pages in google chrome and internet explorer. It is running okay in internet explorer. Probably you can double check this.
Wanted to drop a comment and let you know your Feed isnt functioning today. I tried including it to my Bing reader account and got nothing.
Have you considered including a few social bookmarking links to these sites. At the very least for flickr.
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Have you given any kind of thought at all with translating your current webpage in to German? I know a few of translaters here which would help you do it for no cost if you wanna contact me.
Odd , your site shows up with a dark hue to it, what shade is the primary color on your webpage?