Why Blog for Business?
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Blogging for business can be a powerful marketing tool. Learn how blogging can help you grow your business.
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Why Blog for Business?
- 1. Life Simplified Mini Webinar Series Why Blog for Business? 2012 Life Simplified 1
- 2. Did You Know… Nearly 40% of US companies use Blogs for marketing? (Hubspot: Introduction to Business Blogging) Does that mean it’s right for your business?
- 3. Would You Like… Earn trust?
- 4. Blogging does that for your business. The Results…More stats… (Hubspot: Introduction to Business Blogging) •More website visits (55% more) •More leads (67-88% more) •More online presence •Library of resources
- 5. Here’s How It Works Each blog is a web page. Publish 1 blog a month, you get 12 new pages on the internet in a year. Publish 1 blog a week you get 52 new web pages on the internet in a year.
- 6. Where to Start? 1. Target your audience. 2. Choose a platform. 3. Create topics that interest your audience. 4. Start writing.
- 7. Do You Have a Blog? Let us know at the Life Simplified Café if you have a blog. We’d love to see what you’re up to and feature some of your posts. Email us with your blog address and we’ll check it out.
- 8. To download this presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/lifesimplified/why-blog-for-business For more information on Life Simplified Life Simplified Website Life Simplified Blog Life Simplified LinkedIn Page Life Simplified Facebook Page You can reach Jen at: Email Twitter: JVsimplified Coming in April – 6 part Blogging for Business Workshops. If you’re interested in Receiving information, please contact us. 2012 Life Simplified 8
Editor's Notes
- Welcome to the Life Simplified Mini Webinar series. This month we’ll be focusing on blogging for business. Today we’ll start with Why Blog for your Business and where you should start.
- Did you know…Nearly 40% of US companies use Blogs for marketing? That means 4 out of every 10 businesses you come in contact with are blogging for their business. The key is understanding if blogging is right for your business (and you).
- If you’d like to attract new customers rather than hunt them down, be seen as an industry leader without being boastful, and earn the trust of potential customers way before the sale, blogging might be a tool you consider for your business.79-98% of purchases (services, products, medical, and even B2B sales) begin as an internet search. Someone is looking to solve a problem for themselves or their business. They turn to the internet to find resources to help. According to HubSpot’s research, 71% of respondents said that blogs affected their purchasing decision. Why?Because people with a problem want it solved. Whether they do it themselves or not, they want to move one. Therefore if you can offer solutions to their problems, information they can use, advice on how to do something, they are much more likely to trust you the next time a similar problem arises.Take HubSpot (http://www.hubspot.com/) for example. When I first started following them, they only had HubSpot Website Grader http://marketing.grader.com/). A fantastic tool (that has only gotten more fantastic). It was a valuable resource in being able to judge not only my website but also clients and what they could do to enhance them.Now Hubspot has tons of e-books, guides, webinars, blog articles and more tools like HubSpot Grader that all help solve problems. They are free to use. Through their online posts, they have developed a loyal fan base that not only trusts them but recommends them to friends. (note this post).
- The results of these efforts are that your website can attract more people. When written with Calls-To-Actions (a future webinar) they can generate leads. They allow you to have more of an online presence beyond your website. If this isn’t exciting enough, blogs can become an online library of resources not only for your visitors as in the HubSpot example, but for you to use as print articles, combined together for an article series, training materials, video material, podcast material. One blog post can live in so many different ways beyond just a written article.
- Here’s how it works…When you enter a blog, you create a webpage. Publish one blog per month and at the end of the year you have 12 new pages on the internet.Publish 1 blog per week and now you have 52 new searchable pages on the internet for people to find, share, learn from, solve their problems from and most importantly link back to you and your website.When you start to share those blogs, re-purpose those blogs, etc., the growth can be exponential.
- Where should you start?The first key is understanding who you’re writing to. Know your audience. Just because you sell jeans, houses, or online services doesn’t mean you’re the perfect match for every person who needs jeans, houses or online services. You know who you like to work with, who benefits most from what you do and how you specifically solve your customers’ problems better than your competitors. Focus on those people.Next choose a platform. Here are some suggestions:Blogger (http://www.blogger.com) – this is a very easy platform to use. All you need is a Google account to get started.Typepad (http://www.typepad.com/) – again another easy platform to use. There is a free trial for this service and then a nominal monthly charge. The benefit over Blogger is you can customize your themes, add more plugins and there is some great reporting features.Tumblr (https://www.tumblr.com/) – easy to use, especially for video. There are many free themes and some premium themes. It’s very easy to upload video, photos, audio as well as add text posts.Wordpress (http://wordpress.com/ or http://wordpress.org) – a bit more complicated. Wordpress.com offers free themes and hosting. Wordpress.com offers self hosted sites great for integration into your existing website. There are literally thousands of free themes and plug-ins for both along with paid themes and plug-ins.Create topics that interest your audience. It’s not what you want to write about, it’s what your audience wants to read about. Do your research about their problems. What keeps them up at night? Then start to develop your content around those topics. Start writing (or collecting). You don’t have to write to blog. You can shoot short videos, do podcasts or even feature other bloggers on your blog. Write or collect more than you need. Create a content library. Then create a publishing calendar (editorial calendar). This way you can provide relevant information on a consistent basis to your readers.