Blog Marketing

Business blogs are sweeping the business community and for good reason. Blog marketing is the powerful new marketing tool. It is a key part of the new Web 2.0 marketing that taps into the power of social media.

Blogs are the new marketing tool that we can add to our bag of traditional marketing strategies. Blogs allow us to reach our targeted marketing niche. In the past few years, blogging has moved from the early adopters to the mainstream in business.

Blogs are now the most trusted media source for useful information according to a Blogads survey of over 35,000 readers. Value was compared against newspaper, radio, television, direct mail and magazines. It is estimated that in the US 27% of the people read blogs on a regular basis.

Blog marketing increases exposure, generates buzz, and creates a global message to which individual customers can respond. Blog marketing is also a powerful search engine optimization tool which can be used to dramatically improve website rankings.

Why Blogs Are Better Than Websites

1. Blogs are active and websites are passive. Blogs broadcast their content out to the web via RSS every time there is something new. Websites on the other hand wait to be discovered by search engine spiders. It’s like the difference between fishing and hunting. You can sit and wait for fish or you can actively hunt and pursue.
2. Blogs are faster. Posting and syndication is almost instantaneous. Technorati and other blog search engines index and list your postings within minutes after you publish.
3. Blogs build a readership. It is easy for visitors to subscribe to a blog so they can view new postings as soon as they happen. Blogs encourage repeat visits with content being delivered to your favorite reader or delivery by email. Compare this to bookmarking a website which depends on the visitor to come back.
4. Blogs have newer fresher content. By their nature, blogs have regular fresh content and they are more up to date. Blogs tend to deal with breaking events and technology insights.
5. Blogs invite participation and interaction. Blog conversations are encouraged providing multiple viewpoints and discussions. Comments can be made easily from each page.
6. Blogs are powerful influencers. “More than half (52%) of Europeans polled said that they were more likely to purchase a product if they had read positive comments from private individuals on the internet.” This is according to a Hotwire Ipsos MORI survey.

Combining business blog marketing and traditional website marketing is especially effective when you start up a new business. Blogging is one of the fastest ways of announcing your business and spreading the word quickly about what you do.

New companies should look at launching a blog and a website for maximum exposure. A combined approach using a website and a blog is usually the fastest approach. You will that you will gain a much broader reach by using both a website and blog. The website and blog will have different functions.

The website is the advertising and marketing piece. The new website should be the marketing focus that touts the advantages, benefits and conveniences of using your business. The new website should bring in traffic with both pay-per-click advertising and organic SEO.

The website and blog will reach different audiences, have different focuses, have different conversational tones, but still strive to reach the same targeted customer. The blog and website reinforce each other and magnify the results.