Chew Valley Web

This article looks at the brass tacks of blogging for businesses. I am regularly asked about blogging as a promotional tool for business clients, so let’s see what it’s all about and if blogging is worth your consideration as a business owner. To help you decide if business blogging is for you, we’ll look at the tactics, pros and cons and finish up by running through other parts of your online promotion activities that may be a better use of your time.

What is business blogging, anyway?

In this article, the words “blog” and “blogging” could refer to anything in a wide range of online publishing activities including article publishing, diary content and news and any web content that is often released over time.

“Blogging” could also refer to the use of blogging tools and software, either free or paid for, to enable a business owner to publish and control content themselves without understanding all the details of websites, HTML code and servers. Using platforms designed for blogging as a flexible Content Managment System (CMS) is becoming common practice among web developers and business owners alike (this site is based on the popular blog platform Wordpress, for example.)

One of the first questions that a business owner faces when looking at committing resources to a business blog is: Is it worth it? Well, by the end of this page you should have a clearer idea.

Which of your goals do think is best served by a business blog?

If it is worthwhile, which blogging or web content model that would fit best with your goals and, even more importantly, the goals of your customers?

Many business owners come to me to ask about blogging as a method of getting more of something: customers, revenues, brand capital etc. They have heard of this brave new world of free-for-all DIY online publishing and wonder how it can help them. What actually are your business goals for this project? Here are a few common ones:

• To gain more brand exposure
• To reach new markets
• To build a following of enthusiastic repeat customers
• To help new clients find you
• To help your existing customers and encourage them to buy more from you
• To make your aftersales more efficient

You probably wouldn’t mind all of these things and they are not mutually exclusive, but let’s start small and consider your top priority and how it fits with your business. The possibilities of the internet mean that you could get your brand seen by millions of people all over the world. Great, thousands of new prospects from the four corners of the earth.

However, if you are a local operator and not an ecommerce venture that can serve your customers in a virtual world, chances are your resources are better spent focussing on your local markets if this an area that converts well. After all, you probably don’t spend money on a listing in the Siberian Yellow Pages for the same reason.

Examples

Using business blogging to gain great brand exposure:

• Aim to become one of the top online blogs in your business area
• Create content regularly with the goal of building a following
• Use search engine statistics to research popular searches that will bring brand new visitors to your site

Notes: This strategy can be highly powerful but is best executed by professional bloggers unless you have a natural talent to draw on and the blog market in your business area is untouched or very obscure. If you are keen to follow this path, be prepared for a lot of work and/or the expense of getting experts involved. Many top blogs are either a) run be professionals who know how to play the game, or b) have a business that already has a large brand to draw on. I’m not saying it’s impossible for you, just that it could be a lot of effort and there is a significant risk of failure.

To reach new markets and help new clients find you

• Use blog content to leverage free search engine promotion
• Research keyphrase usage and match up searchers with your product or service

Notes: A lot of search engine traffic to a business blog is next to worthless because in many cases it converts customers poorly. There are two ways to deal with this: The first is to build a blog that receives thousands of visitors a day knowing that you will convert a small percentage of them. The second method to improve conversion is to focus tightly on high converting areas, may be be a localised market or a particular niche, and forget about chasing visitor volume. I have blogs that depend on large visitor volumes and building a worldwide brand and more focussed ones including this site. Chew Valley Web has a relatively small visitor base compared to some of my web properties but many of those visitors get in contact and often become clients.

To build a following of enthusiastic repeat customers

• Use a blog style of content with reader interaction to develop testimonials
• Create a community feel among loyal clients who may go out and advocate for your brand

Notes: The ability of a website to create a community of your customers could be a powerful tool for generating momentum and buying/upgrading your services. A blog is one of a number of ways to build a community via its user generated comments section.

To help your existing customers and encourage them to buy more from you

• Use previous contact with customers to gain a readership of your business blog
• Continue the relationship with a customer while they are not actively buying from you
• Use your blog content to occasionally upsell or cross sell to your previously won customers
• Create content that is of genuine benefit to them and not just hope they keep returning to read your latest pitch

Notes: This is a great plan for a business blog as you have already found the clients who trust you and you can keep the lines of communication open on their terms. This may not directly find brand new customers initially but if the blog became successful among your followers, reach could spread wider. The difficulty with managing content released over a global time frame is that the reader/customer picks you up in different parts of your blog content schedule while their own needs may be on a different timetable. The “old fashioned” way to get better content alignment is personalised email content delivery that matches their timeline more closely.

To make your presales or aftersales more efficient

• Create blog content that answers common customer aftersales questions
• Extend the usefulness of your product or service by giving your customers additional information via the blog
• Deal with regular pre sales questions thoroughly via helpful blog posts

Notes: Releasing blog content related to answering pre sales questions and after sales service queries can increase customer satisfaction while making the business of dealing with clients more efficient. While I’m not suggesting you hide your phone number and replace it with a Frequently Asked Questions page, repeatedly dealing with the same questions can be a drain on your resources that might be mitigated using a blog format. A business blog rich in informative content can also help potential customers to choose to contact you or not, a filter that weeds out the tyre-kickers from genuine prospects. As you know, not all enquiries are born equal.

How much will it cost to start a business blog?

So far we have goals and know that running a business blog is going to incur a resource cost. How are we going to ensure that blogging is going to be profitable? We could start making sure that we use resources and content wisely to achieve those goals and avoid wasting efforts on unproductive blogging. Business blogging has a cost attached to it. It might be technical assistance in setting up your blog, a consultation from me or just the time that you and your staff spend on the project. And like other business activities, return on your investment is important.

The financial cost of setting up and running a business blog depends on the level of service you will require. Given all the skills to set up, manage, write and track the results you can run a blog with no money at all. What is certain is the level of commitment required in terms of time and that, if you want to use a blog to succesfully promote your business, you are going to have to do more that just write a cheque.

If you are looking to buy a “solve my problems with a business blog” service, then you’re out of luck. Any business blogging consultant worth their salt should not try to sell you such a package, as results are impossible to deliver if all you are able to offer is cash. When I talk to clients about using blogging and social media in their business lives, I always put great emphasis on the level of commitment required on behalf of the business. While it is financially possible to buy the greatest blogging talent, developers and marketeers, without genuine commitment from you and your business, the project will fail and won’t coverit’s costs let alone create value for you.

Is business blogging worth it?

The internet is a powerful tool and good business blogging can punch above it’s weight with the right approach. As a professional blogger, I have generated real value and income from my own projects as well as for clients, so I know that the potential is there. However for every blog that has launched an unknown business into the online stratosphere, there must be at least a hundred that were started with good intentions but little knowledge of the best path to follow or how to gaugeit’s success.

The elephant in the room - measuring success

Unlike social media, a business blog gives can give you to the actual statistics of visitors, goals and chosen conversion actions measuring success on any project. Choosing the actual metrics of success or failure depends very much on the orginal goals but while anything that happens on a website is measurable, less trackable actions such as the building of awareness or future offline enquiries are harder to pin down.

A vital part of a good business blogging project is the choosing and implementing of the measures of success or otherwise and being able to prove a Return On Investment. If you don’t have such a system or you are not offered one by your consultant, beware.

Is blogging a priority for a business?

To most businesses and their online promotion activities, blogging probably shouldn’t not at the top of a list of priorities. There are avenues of investment in online marketing that have a higher ROI, are easier to quantify and don’t take such a heavy commitment from you. Here are three to consider before blogging for business:

Tracking and Analytics

Quite a number of clients that come to me have no form of of tracking on their websites. They have had a site for years but have no idea where their customers are coming from, what they are looking at or clicking on or where they are leaving. Without basic visitor statistics, all other web projects are a stab in the dark.

Conversion Rate Optimisation

Every website and webpage should have a goal, a Most Desired Action. An e-commerce site is to get the visitor to choose items and complete a transaction, a services company website might be to get an enquiry, for the visitor to take the next step. Conversion Rate Optimisation is all about tracking, measuring and implementing changes that turn more of your visitors into customers using the website. It takes what you have and maximises value from it.  I’m going to be writing more about Conversion Rate Optimisation so Subscribe to the Feed and you don’t miss it.

Search Engine Optimisation

If your goal is to use a business website to be found by prospects looking for your goods or services, Search Engine Optimisation is a vital piece of the puzzle. Making sure that your website is appearing in search results at Google and other engines and working to increase your visitor numbers using Search. SEO is all about driving traffic, which is why it is often desirable to work on your Conversion Rate first as pumping traffic through a site that doesn’t convert is a waste of resources.

So blogging probably isn’t worth it for my business, then

The most attractive thing about blogging for many people that hear stories of great success, is the low cost of entry. What is unclear at the outset is the skills and commitment required to make such a project actually more than a distraction.

If you are read through the above and still feel a blog can help promote your business and that you are willing to commit resources to it, chances are that business blogging may be for you. Get in touch and tell me your plans and I will use my experience to make sure your business blogging project is a success. If you think your business would be better served by advice on Analytics, Conversion Rate or SEO, let me know.

Rob, the author,  is a professional blogger and search engine marketing consultant who provides businesses with advice on their online promotional activities.