Unless you’ve been hiding out with the Taliban for the last 10 years, you have heard that blogging is good for business, and it is. But why? What makes blogging so successful?
Believe it or not, when it comes to offline businesses, search engine traffic is not the primary benefit. More importantly, the main benefit you gain from blogging is the trust you build with your client.
For instance, before the blogging boom, it was nearly impossible for someone unconnected to talk to the CEO of one of the largest software companies in the world. Now, all you have to do is follow a link to his blog and leave a comment. That’s it! You can now have a conversation with an extremely influential person in the tech world. Go ahead, tell him how much you like Open Office, or Java!
Maintaining a personal relationship, even if it is just a perceived one, makes the customer or client feel as if they were in the mom and pop store of yesteryear. Follow the link above and look at Jonathon’s blog. Notice how he calls it Jonathon Schwartz’s blog, not the Sun blog. All of his posts are conversational in nature and keep the reader informed. It really feels like he was sitting across the dinner table and you just asked him "How’s business?" In my opinion, you should always strive to maintain that conversational tone that Jonathon imparts, and make your blog reader feel as if they are talking to a friend.
Maintain this tone and impart knowledge on your reader at the same time and you’ll win the hearts and minds of customers everywhere. I do warn you of one word of caution, however. Do not stray too far on the personal end of the spectrum; you will start to lose readers. By imparting your personal views, habits, and beliefs, you will alienate at least a small portion of your customer base and they will be very reluctant to do business with you again.
So in all, maintain a conversational tone, stay away from the extremely personal feelings and actions, and always add value to the internet. Follow these simple rules and you’ll reap the rewards of blogging for business.
- Negative Publicity: A Five Step Guide to Destroying that P…
- 6 Steps and 3 Hours to Start a $13,000 Internet Business
- Congratulations Marcus
- Adsense Will Rape and Pillage Your Site
- How to Beat the Google Slap with 5 Simple Steps…
Tuesday, 15 Apr 2008 Filed under: Leadership by Bryan
