How a Blog Gives You a Voice and Boosts Your Business
A direct line to your customers
You may have the best product in the whole world. Your service could be far superior to anything that the competition has to offer. But if you donât successfully communicate these benefits to your customers, youâre destined to fail.
The fact is â youâre only as good as your customers perceive you to be.
Corporate communications and PR are therefore crucial not only to success but also to survival. And no business, no matter how big or small, can afford not to communicate.
Look around you â from small home-grown businesses to multinational corporate giants â everyone has a blog. What it is it about the blog that makes it such a popular marketing and PR tool? Letâs find out.
It is so simple and easy to use
The thing is: anyone can create, write and operate a blog. It doesnât take any special skill or even training. Youâll need to hire experts to create ads, design your website, translate your content and even print your corporate stationery.
But you can run your blog by yourself. You may, of course, take up professional help to make it better, but thatâs not a must.
It is the most direct mode of communication
You write a post. Your customer reads it. Simple. Actually, nothing could be simpler. A blog is the most direct channel of communication between you and your customer. Thereâs no middle man, no intermediary. Itâs therefore not surprising that a blog is a far more credible mode of communication than ads, commercials and even websites. Research has shown that customers tend to believe what they read in a blog.
A blog makes you an opinion leader
Through a blog, you can continuously disseminate fresh content. Articles, opinions, tips, insights, ideas⌠itâs always a good idea to share your knowledge with your customers. If done properly, the reader or customer starts valuing your judgement. This trust easily translates into customer loyalty.
Whatâs more, youâll also be seen as an expert in a particular field â which means you get to enjoy more credibility than your competitors.
A blog can fuel SEO
With the launch of Googleâs search engine algorithm, Hummingbird, in 2013, content has become king. The more freshly updated and relevant content you have, the better your chance of getting a good SEO rank.
Many businesses link their blogs with their websites. As a result, their website also gets a good SEO rank.
It integrates your Internet presence
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, website, e-books⌠everything can be linked dynamically with your blog. It therefore becomes the heart of your online presence. It also becomes a storehouse for content that can be used in any of these media.
A blog can go viral
A properly researched and well-written blog will soon get mentioned in other websites, opinion pieces, articles and even other blogs. This way, what you write on your blog can have a multiplier PR effect. So what you write today is read not by just your own readers, but by many other people as well. As a result, your brand comes in contact with a larger audience. And more customers!
A blog tells your story
Your brand, your story, your way. A blog allows you to have a voice. And it ensures that your brand has a voice too. It doesnât talk to readers in the super-professional and impersonal tone of voice used in other media. Rather, it draws on your personality to animate your brand.
A blog can therefore, more than any other media, become the true voice of your business.
A blog can broadcast your message
The biggest sale in the city. A new collection in your favourite designerâs showroom. A new product launch. Your blog can become an amazing medium to give the customer news stories about your brand. If there are personal stories involved (say someone has a new baby), go ahead and publish them. It will help your readers relate to your company better. After all, everyone likes a business run by real people.
A blog can help you go global
It makes sense to speak the language of the customer. And thanks to the internet, even small businesses can access customers around the world. So why have a blog only in your home countryâs language? Why not speak to more than a billion Chinese readers? What about 450 million people who speak Spanish? Whatever your markets, address them in the local language, or â if your website is in a different language â use English to go truly global.
When you publish multiple language versions of your blog, you open up your business to exciting new possibilities.
So if you are looking for a highly effective but extremely inexpensive PR tool, a blog is just what the doctor ordered.
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