Blogging for Business

Starting a blog is easy and painless. Blogs are the next best thing to going door-to-door to each of your customers’ homes or offices; they give you and your company a way to create and sustain real relationships with real people.

• Information: Telling your customers what you’re doing
and finding out what they are thinking.
• Relationship Building: A solid base of positive experiences with your customers that changes them from plain old consumers to evangelists for your company and products.
• Knowledge management: Having the vast stores of knowledge within your company available to the right people at the right time.

Blogs are easy to track, provide a means to generate
and measure buzz, and allow you to create positive experiences, and ultimately customer evangelists, simply by being real.

Paul Chaney, a prominent blog consultant from Radiant Marketing Group, compiled this list of reasons why a business should blog:

• Search Engine Marketing: Blogs give you an increased presence on major search engines like Google and Yahoo!.
• Direct Communications Blogs: Blogs provide a way for you to speak directly and honestly with your customer.
• Brand Building Blogs: Blogs serve as another channel to put your brand in front of the customer.
• Competitive Differentiation: Because blogs give you the
opportunity to tell your story over and over, they help set
you apart from the competition.
• Relational Marketing: Blogs allow you to build personal,
long-lasting relationships with your customer that foster
trust.
• Exploit the Niches: Blogs help you fill your particular industry
niche.
• Media & Public Relations: Blogs are excellent PR tools. The
media calls you, not your competition.
• Reputation Management: Blogs enable you to manage
your online reputation.
• Position You as Expert: Blogs enable you to articulate your
viewpoints, knowledge, and expertise on matters pertaining
to your industry.
• Intranet & Project Management Blogs: Blogs make great, easyto- use applications for internal communications within an
organization. This may be one of the least well-known and
underutilized areas of blogs.