There’s a shop in our local town that never changes its window display. The mannequins look faded and jaded, bored of being stood there for weeks, months and years on end. Needless to say the shop is always empty because nothing is tempting customers inside.
Like a shop window, a blog has the power to entice viewers to sample the delights your company offers, and give a taste of your company philosophy and ideas. It enables you show off new products and services and share valuable content about the industry. A regular blog shows that you care about keeping your audience informed of progress and changes, and each post you publish is an asset that helps to build your brand. Your blog should be at the heart of all of your content marketing efforts.
Add credibility
A regular blogs enables you to share your expertise and position your company as a leading authority in your subject area. If you so choose it can serve as a reliable resource for information about your industry. And you can add credibility to your blog and therefore your business by inviting external specialists, clients, and industry experts to write guest posts, which will serve to support your reputation as a company at the forefront of the industry.
Impress your influencers
Each time you publish a blog post you create another opportunity for your site to be shared and circulated on social media, getting exposure to a potential new audience. Influencers are those people who like to sing the praises of companies they have connected to and respect, and are invaluable in that they’ll shout your company name from the rooftops, (I like to imagine them as the modern equivalent as the sandwich board boys of Victorian times) Give your influencers something worthy of their valuable attention and they’ll share it with others.
Encourage interaction
A comments and feedback option on your blog effectively gives you a two-way conversation with customers, prospects and industry peers, which can give you both valuable market intelligence and support for your ideas. Always respond to these comments promptly and positively, because others will read them and know you are a company that cares for its audience.
Analyse
Subscribers to your blog are a ready-made audience for your articles, newsletters and announcements on industry-relevant topics. And you can use this to your advantage to gain an insight into your audience. Through ‘analytics’ you can track readers’ activities including click-throughs, popular topics, frequency of views, shares and comments.
Schedule regular valuable content
Giving your readers relevant and timely content is key to a successful business blog and a prime way of establishing you as a leading authority in your industry. If you’re stuck for a topic then writing about the ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘how’, and ‘why’, of your business is a good place to start. Give your readers blog posts that are informative and answer any questions they might have on an industry-specific subject. Make your business the go-to guy for your industry and the solution to their problems.
Have a successful blog? Send us your comments on Twitter. Need an appraisal of your blog? We’d be happy to help. Do get in touch.