Interacting with customers is increasingly becoming a priority with smart businesses these days. Product experts to top management in the business everybody wants their customers to be loyal and apart from releasing regular press releases, dealing with customers on social media and other platforms is getting indispensable. Blogging is one such platform, which businesses can no longer ignore besides having a strong and vibrant presence on sites like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube etc. Here are 7 compelling reasons why business blogging has become essential.
1. Build a brand even before launching big: There have been instances where businesses have set up a blog, interacted with top bloggers in their niche by giving them freebies and got them to spread a word among the loyal readers in the niche. Thus by making small investments they were successfully able to launch a product or create a buzz around existing product and make huge profits. The investments in this media were small as compared to advertising on mainstream media but the returns on investment were far greater.
2. Provide value to your niche customers: Every business niche has its own star performers and laggards. Customers who buy products from that niche have suggestions, feedbacks, complaints, queries and lot more to tell the businesses. Listening carefully to these signals and providing valuable information to your niche can help you get closer to customers and monetize this goodwill at appropriate time.
3. Establish yourself as product expert: Customers have problems and want more and more information before buying or deciding on a product or service. Leveraging your product expertise to spread more and more awareness, setting up surveys, asking quizzes and helping out buyers with vital information will help the business build trust and eventually a solid presence in that particular business niche.
4. Increasing search engine visibility: More and more people are finding about businesses by using search queries on various search engines. The more keyword researched content you provide around your business the better are your chances of getting top ranked for a particular query. Search engines believe that if a website has regularly updated content, which has good user engagement also- that site is good for users and gets ranked higher. This can be easily achieved with a regularly updating blog. It can be a standalone blog to build brand, or a blog attached to main business website to provide more information. If a customer reaches your business blog by searching and finds it useful, there are good chances of your blog post getting viral on social networks and getting you more eyeballs and trust.
5. One more way of reaching out to your customers: There should be no doubt about the importance of advertising for the success of a business. Be it print media, television, mobile channels etc. advertising dollars have to be spent and spent wisely so that the return on investment (ROI) is maximum. Blogging is a platform, which if leveraged carefully gets you the maximum ROI. Bringing in a policy of regular blogging by product experts and top management can create a culture of customer interaction, which can bring in business from a new and increasingly popular channel.
6. Driving traffic to your online business: If you have an e-commerce store or are an online service provider, the importance of having a business blog can’t be understated. Given the huge competition in the online domain the traffic your blog drives can be channeled to your business website or domain (if it is different than the blog) and can improve your profitability. Creating useful content which drives user engagement will also give you user generated content like comments, reviews and suggestions which will increase search engine visibility, give you pointers to improve and send your business in a success spiral.
7. Create networking opportunities: The benefits of business blogging are not just limited to getting more customers. It also means getting new business partners, increased reputation among competition and a good chance of getting recognized as a thought leader in that business niche. Everybody likes to ride a wave of success. If your business blog is clicking with the customers, it will open up new opportunities in terms of business alliances, profit sharing instances and greater recognition among other business in the same niche.
Success in business is all about taking advantages of the opportunities time provides and keeping in touch with the pulse of customer. A loyal customer is a brand ambassador for any business and blogging as a tool can help any business make them in plenty. This is especially true for small businesses because of their bootstrapped nature and limited marketing budget. Technology is providing new avenues for business to interact with customers and any business can only overlook them at their own risk of losing out to smart and trendy people.
Article by Anil Agarwal
Anil has written 347 articles .
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BloggersPassion was started on Jan 01, 2010 on the world’s most awesome blogging platform- WordPress. This blog was started to share blogging tips and for helping you become a successful full time blogger. Blogging is an art and the more you do it, the more you perfect you become.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Yes if we regularly update blog then it can be easy to get high rank in search engine and Thanks for great info post…!
Hi Anil,
Blogging for business definitely works. I love your tip about creating a buzz and interacting with other professional in the same niche before product launches. This is a great thing to do if you can find the right people.
Thanks for sharing,
Beth