1. BLOGGINGBUSINESS
HOW A BLOG CAN GROW YOUR BUSINESS
Chris Garrett
http://twitter.com/chrisgarrett
Friday, 27 February 2009 1

2. Business Blogging
WHY BLOG?
Attract an audience
•
Inform and Interact, learn from your audience
•
Retain your audience
•
Energize your audience and motivate action
•
Recruit help, contacts, employees
•
Respond to stories and customers
•
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3. Business Blogging
BLOG SIDE-EFFECTS
Grow Links for traffic and to improve search rankings
•
Build familiarity and trust
•
Communicate and establish your brand
•
Grow a sense of community
•
Offer better service
•
Initiate more sales
•
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4. Business Blogging
BLOG VERSUS ...
• Website - Static pages of information or sales letters
• Newsletter - Information sent to inbox, drive action
• Forum - Conversation and interaction
• Blogs combine elements of all of the above
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5. Business Blogging
ATTRACT, RETAIN, RECRUIT
SEO
Social
Links
PR
Email
RSS
Twitter
BLOG
Referral
Forwards
Re-tweets
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6. Business Blogging
RETAIN WITH STICKY FACTOR
• Provide value with empathy, keep engaging, be inclusive
• Video/Audio - keep on site longer, more emotive, entertain
• Comments/Polls/Surveys - show interested in opinion, interaction
• Series/Related Posts/Categories/Tags - serialize content
• Events/Competitions/Call-in - fun, rewards, excitement
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7. Business Blogging
PUBLICITY+-
2004 2009
The conversation is happening with or without you
Back in 2004 Kryptonite had a famous PR problem with blogs - today companies learning same lessons
You have to have a place where you can put your story, state the facts and establish your position.
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8. Business Blogging
SUCCESS STORIES
• Gary Vaynerchuk
• Family wine store
• Wine Library TV
• $50m business
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9. Business Blogging
SUCCESS STORIES
• Woot.com/blog/
• Launched July 12, 2004
• Sold its 1,000,000th item, a
4GB micro hard drive, on
February 5, 2007
• Little to no advertising.
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10. Business Blogging
SUCCESS STORIES
• Thomas Mahon
• Bespoke Tailor
• Using only blog as marketing
• Full order book, including
celebrities inc. Prince Charles
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11. Business Blogging
WHO SHOULD NOT BLOG?
Be Present, Be Interested, Be Authentic
•
Listen, Serve, Delight
•
Starting a blog raises expectation of openness and interactivity
•
If you don’t want a conversation,
•
don’t start one.
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12. Business Blogging
PLAN
• Must start with a plan, or at least know where you want to go
• Why are you building a blog?
• Who do you want to attract?
• What story do you have to tell?
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13. Business Blogging
RESEARCH
• Find out what your audience is interested in, needs, wants
• Surveys, Polls
• Forums, Comments, Q&A sites
• Social Bookmarking sites
• Search.Twitter
• WordTracker, Adwords Tool
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14. Business Blogging
YOUR COMPETITIVE EDGE
Audience Your
Needs Positioning
Brand
Experience
• Serveyour audience needs, wants, motivations
in a way that is uniquely yours
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15. Business Blogging
WHAT TO TALK ABOUT
What
What
they
you
want
know
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16. Business Blogging
DRIVE THEM HOME
Don’t leave your content scattered. As
•
well as post on Flickr, YouTube, etc, also
post in on one easy to find place - your
blog.
Find people where they are and bring
•
them to you.
Drive people from their inbox or feed
•
reader to interact with you rather than
passively read.
Your Brand Here
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17. Business Blogging
GROW YOUR AUDIENCE
• Think long term
• Offer overwhelming value
• Be genuine, approachable, helpful and friendly
• Raving fans are created by going extra mile
• Make strong and lasting connections based on mutual respect
• Ask questions, get feedback, learn as they learn
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18. Business Blogging
TRAFFIC PROBLEMS
• Attract targeted, engaged
traffic
• Attention for own sake =
bad
your brand
• Remember
photo by chadmiller
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19. Business Blogging
STICKINESS
Stop the “revolving door”
•
Harder and more expensive to attract
•
new visitors and customers than to
retain existing.
Happy, loyal visitors also much more
•
valuable than constant stream of
strangers.
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20. Business Blogging
SOCIAL MEDIA JOURNEY
• Take your audience
on a journey
Advocate
“Converted”
Subscriber
Return Visitor
Visitor
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21. Business Blogging
PERSUASION+CONVERSION
Education, Articles - Inform, solve problems, demonstrate your solution works
•
Community - Encourage conversation, involvement and sense of belonging
•
Call to action - Remember to make offers that match audience wants/needs
•
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22. Business Blogging
TWEAK YOUR SALES ENGINE
• Audience Targeting
• Attraction Tactics
• Persuasion Content
• Conversion
• Consumption + Results = Proof
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23. Business Blogging
CONSUMPTION
• Encourage sampling
• Follow-up, encourage, enquire
• Get to consume then consume more
• Consumption leads to best positive
“Word of Mouth”
• Positive experience shared leads to
powerful trust in your brand
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24. Business Blogging
PEOPLE NOT HERD
• Keep interested with engaging content
• Personalization
• Empathy ➙ Loyalty
• Learn from actions
• Customer Service
• Segmentation We are all unique individuals!
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25. Business Blogging
SEGMENTATION
Create an email list just for customers, if possible split along product lines
•
Use highly specific topical lists to Sell / Cross-Sell / Up-sell without annoying
•
uninterested
Discover your best customers and give them extra special treatment
•
Work out via email unsubscribes which content causes defection, loss of interest
•
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26. Business Blogging
SOME DON’TS
• Don’t Me-Me-Me - It’s not all about you!
• Don’t force it if it isn’t working
• Don’t over-sell - Give first
• Don’t use business-talk - and don’t assume
• Don’t try to “control the conversation”
• Don’t ignore your audience
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27. Business Blogging
SUMMARY
• Attract targeted visitors who have a problem you can solve.
• Inform, advise, discuss, help.
• Build trust with positive experience over time.
• Demonstrate positive results.
• Make offers that match audience wants/needs.
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28. Business Blogging
ACTIONS
• Decide agreed metrics (eg. Links? Sales? Traffic? PR mentions?)
• Gather keywords and content research
• Create valuable content that meets audience wants/needs
• Promote content with social bookmarking
• Retain with email, feed, and social media engagement
• Learn from feedback and metrics, repeat
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29. Business Blogging
THANKS FOR READING ;)
• http://chrisg.com
• http://twitter.com/chrisgarrett
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