The Value of Blogging for Your Business, Why Your Business Should be Blogging

Why Your Business Should Be Blogging

Let me begin by asking you a question. Do you recognize the value of blogging for your business? If you do you’re one of the few. It amazes me, how, even in this day and age, with technology all around us, many small businesses still do not have a website or blog.

This stark reality was brought to my attention recently, when I ask the proprietor of my local Chinese takeaway why they didn’t have a website. The reply was kind of strange. He said he didn’t see the point as everyone either drops in on the way past or telephones their order and has it delivered. The irony to this? He was using his iPad to research the menus of other takeaways and restaurants in the area!

Clearly he didn’t recognize the value of blogging about his business. He didn’t see the value of having his menu and opening times online or the fact that he could use the blog to market his business and potentially increase profits.

Unfortunately, too many small businesses assume that blogging is just a way to post trivial news about their website or business. While this can also be done, there is so much more you can do with a blog for the purposes of marketing. Blogs can bring new life to a business and even have a way of taking on lives of their own. Beyond the business and marketing aspect of blogging, blogs can improve the interaction between the business, staff and the customer. Anyone who interacts with the blog will gain an insight they never had before.

How Blogging Can Impact Your Business

Forge New Relationships

Blogging on a regular basis attracts many different people from all walks of life, from all over the globe. If they like your offerings you will begin to attract a regular following of people. It is these people with whom you will form meaningful online relationships. They will be the blogs core community.

Many will not do business with you! In the case of a restaurant they may only be interested in the menus, how the food is prepared, cooking tricks, pictures of the food. So what do you gain? You gain a community.

Build an Online Community

With an online community people will come back and comment on the blog. They will send emails and even recommend your blog to others of similar ilk. Your blog, and your business, will gain a reputation (hopefully a good one). For this to happen your blog has to be interesting, helpful, entertaining, educational and relevant.

You might think you simply don’t have enough to “chat” about. Just think laterally. Using the Chinese takeaway as an example again. Does it have to be all about food? As it’s “Chinese” could other aspects of the culture also be used on the blog. How about a topic on Chinese chopsticks, clothes, shoes, traditional methods of cooking, art, etc. The list is endless.

Learn What Your Customer Really Wants

Most businesses want to know one simple thing! What makes the customer happy? There are millions of Yuan, Pounds, Dollars, Yen, Euros, etc. spent on market research surveys, targeting audiences around the world trying to find that answer.

With your blogging community, you already have your target demographic coming to your blog and voluntarily telling you what they want. If you ask them further questions through the blog, they will answer. It is every market researcher’s dream.

Make Extra Money

Okay, at the end of the day, the purpose of building a blog is to attract customers to your main business. Yet, just because you happen to be a local Chinese takeaway (or any local business for that matter) does not mean you cannot monetize your blog and sell to customers a thousand miles away. There are more ways to monetize your blog than you might realize.

There’s the usual monetization techniques such as selling banner space and Google AdSense but the best method would be to expand upon your current business. Can you provide an online service or product related to your current business? In the case of our takeaway, is there a market for ornamental chopsticks, bowls, noodles? Be careful not to sacrifice the quality of the core business blog, but be creative, you never know how successful these “sidelines” might become.

But I Cannot Write!

Not everyone likes writing, some would go so far as to say they hate writing, most simply do not write very well. Lets face it, once we leave school, most of us only write letters to the bank manager and the tax man (and then only if we have too). You can still have a blog. The availability of cheap, simple, accessible technology and the internet has enabled us to communicate in a plethora of new ways.

If you don’t like writing use any and all of the following methods:

• Create videos. See YouTube for examples.
• Record a podcast.
• Build infographics (a visual representation of information or data – I had to look that up).
• Use photos to tell a story.
• Use a copywriter.

No matter what method you use to create your business blog the most important thing to remember is to create helpful, valuable content your customers will love to read and comment on. Give your customers a reason to come back and keep coming back. You never know, you might even get to love your customers and they you!