Blogs are all about engaging with your customers.
This paragraph by Dave Taylor from Intuitive written in 2007 nicely states what a blog should be:
“In terms of why people blog, well, my belief is that it’s to have a voice, however small. To think that just like the people who write those fancy opinion columns for The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, you too can share your thoughts, vent, and complain to the public at large. Having said that, there are lots of really smart bloggers who have interesting perspectives on the news, politics, sports, business, etc., people who wouldn’t otherwise be heard in mainstream media.”
This is my favourite description of blogging and I strongly believe it. It is simple and it is exactly as a blog should be.
When blogging first became popular it was brilliant. Different opinions, small voices coming through, people got famous, people brought down the famous. All good fun. Blogging has become political bait and a necessity to some countries and unfortunately illegal in others. It definitely has its place in society.
However, since blogging became important for SEO a lot more people jumped on the band wagon and it has become a useless tool for marketing unless certain ethics are used. Aside from finding your own style, tone and subject matter there are few considerations to take in before you begin blogging.
1. Relevant fresh content
Blogging is useful as it is fresh content being added to your website, helpful for SEO. So keep it fresh and informative to your customer. Offer advice, tutorials, company news and thoughts and opinions of your trade. But stick to the point. We’ve all read the tedious Facebook updates and asked ourselves, why? Don’t let your blog become a long winded Facebook update.
2. Back links from other blogs
Commenting on other people’s blogs, in particular popular ones; can help you rise up Google if you manage to add link to your site. In this case bloggers, who purely blog for SEO, make useless comments in order to add their website. It ruins the flow of valid conversation and interesting comment. Professional bloggers do not like it and are aufait with these tactics.
If you do want to blog it won’t do any harm – but leave other people’s blogs alone. Good bloggers get annoyed and can see right through the tricks of these dubious bloggers.
Don’t let SEO take over your blog and make it meaningless. Blogs with thousands of search terms may assist you a little in climb up search engines but they can easily ruin your message.
3. Blogging is not for everyone
Blogging can be time consuming and expensive so choose your options carefully. Just because everyone is doing it, it doesn’t mean to say you have to.
This article comes after work with a client. After extensive customer research we wrote a report about why customers weren’t returning. Without going into too much detail, the customers were not satisfied with their service or organisation. The client said they couldn’t afford to fix that problem but would like to spend some money on a blog and SEO campaign to potentially bring in more customers. Strange. Surely the answer here would be use their budget to fix problems and get repeat custom – arguably the best custom you can get.
Your marketing campaign can be complete without a blog. Especially small businesses need to consider how their budgets are spent rather than jumping on a band wagon.
4. Follow the code of conduct
http://www.ogilvypr.com/en/expert-view/executive-bloggers-guide-building-nest-blogs-wikis-rss
Read the real expert guide to blogging to dos and the don’ts. Ogilvy on their blog write about the code of conduct for blogging.