Blogging
Your Kids Do It, and Your Business Should Too
Doubtless, you have heard the term, ‘blog’. Bloggers, as they are called, have been credited with bringing down key political and media figures like former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and CBS news anchor Dan Rather.
Your teenager might use a blog as a way to chronicle his or her daily activities. You might have even heard about high-profile celebrities who blog about their career and personal lives. Nevertheless, can these “personal online journals and diaries” really be used as a marketing tool for your ecommerce business?
You bet they can, if you know how to use them.
What is a blog?
From a technical standpoint, a blog is really just an easy-to-use web-based content management system (CMS). It is software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain content. The activity of updating a blog is known as ‘blogging,’ while someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.” Entries written to the blog, called posts, are arranged in reverse chronological order with the most recent additions featured at the top of the page.
But what makes a blog such a unique publishing format, different from a typical website, message board, or email application, is its balanced combination of technology and personality.
Technically speaking, a blog could be used for any kind of information update, whether it is a press release, product update, news or more personal commentary. Let’s face it – the application doesn’t care what kind of content is put into its form fields.
What differentiates a blog from other forms of content publishing is the style in which a blog post is written. Blogs beg to be written in an informal, punchy and – shall we say – ‘authentic’ voice, something Internet pioneer Doc Searls called an “email to everyone.” A well-written blog reflects the passions, bias, thoughts and judgments of the writer. It has heart as well as substance.
However, personality and style alone are not enough to fully convey the power of blogs. We have to go back to the technology side to complete the picture.
Blog technology provides an ability to do something no other content management medium does, at least not as well: stimulate conversation. Blog readers have the ability to comment on what you have written and have those comments appear on the site. They can ask questions, state opinions, tell stories or relate their particular point-of-view. You can respond, either on the blog through a comment of your own or via an email. Blogs enable dialogue between you and a customer or prospect, making the cultivation of a long-term relationship more plausible.
How can a blog benefit my business?
Let’s outline nine tangible benefits that blogs offer an ecommerce business:
Search Engine Marketing
Blogs give you an increased presence on major search engines. The technology is a magnet for search engines like Yahoo! and Google. A well written, routinely updated, keyword-oriented blog can enhance your chances of garnering high rankings on search engine return pages.
Why? Google, in particular, indexes sites based on content – text on your site. The words comprising the content on your site, whether it is on the home page or in the blog, are like currency to search engines. The more times a certain word or phrase, or a combination of words and phrases, is used on your website, the more likely Google, for example, will index your site highly based on that word or phrase. The reasoning is simple; Google ranks pages based on keywords by relevance.
Direct Communications
Blogs provide a way for business owners to speak directly, openly and honestly with your customer.
Brand Building
Blogs serve as another channel on which to promote your brand and your products.
Competitive Differentiation
Because blogs give you the opportunity to tell your story over and over again in a manner considered hip within the interactive community, they help set you apart from the competition.
Relational Marketing
Blogs allow you to build personal, long-lasting relationships with your customers that foster trust. One person put it this way: “A blog is a continual tour with a guide you get to know.” Blogs enable you to articulate your viewpoints, knowledge and expertise on matters pertaining to your industry.
Low Cost
Blogs are inexpensive to set up, operate and maintain. Ongoing marketing costs are minimal. They do require an investment of time in terms of blog posting, but it can pay big returns for the time spent.
For the small business owner looking for immediate and measurable ROI, blogs have yet to become sophisticated enough to measure in such a way that sales could generally but directly be tied to them. However, savvy blog entrepreneurs use them to manage specific campaigns.
Let’s say your small business is adding perfume to your lineup of cosmetics products. Starting a blog on women’s health and beauty, where your perfume is featured and discussed, could be tied to sales by adding “tokens – or “variables – to links from these blogs to your online store. When a transaction is completed, this token or variable can be written to a database and associated with that sale.
Voila. You can measure specific sales campaigns and a blog’s effectiveness in promoting them. Of course, it requires a bit of technical setup; however, it’s a common technical process. A programmer with even moderate skills should be able to complete something like this within a day.