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The use of blogs as a personal tool to communicate is not new, there are over 100 million blogs in the so called “blogosphere” covering more topics than most of us even know exist. However it is only recently that small, medium and large enterprise customers have began to launch their own blogs. This is because they are starting to realise the value of having a blog. Not all companies have bought into this yet, so we thought it would be useful to explore what we think are the business benefits for owning a blog.

We’d like to continue to add to this list below, if you think we have missed something; please add to the debate by using our comments section.

Business Benefits of Blogging

Search Marketing purposes

By nature a blog is usually about a specific topic and is regularly updated. This in turn encourages the search engine spiders to visit your site more frequently, once this happens you are more likely to appear the organic search results, which means free and targeted traffic. The more experienced bloggers will target certain keywords and phrases in order to rank well and manipulate the search engines. Because of the flexibility of a blog, it is very quickly to launch a new post and therefore start to rank for different keywords relating to your business.

Direct Contact with people who are interested in you

Most blogs provide an option for its readers to be able to subscribe to them, meaning that every post you go live with will be sent to your subscriber base. These are people who have proactively giving you and your content the virtual equivalent of the thumbs up. You should value your subscribers very highly and ensure that you continue to provide them with content and information they are interested in. Conversely, these are the people you can test new products, seek feedback and leverage to help your provide a better service or product.

Brand Building

There are many ways to use a blog to build your brand or even to support an existing brand. In fact a blog is the perfect vehicle to use to interact with your potential customers, advanced bloggers may also use video or viral campaigns to tease their audience into coming back.

Dare to be different and differentiate yourselves from your competitors

There’s two questions to ask here; do your competitors have a blog and do they use it? And secondly, can we use our blog to add credibility to our services and solutions? For example, if you’re an IT company would it be good to have an interview with one of your customers on your blog?The answer is yes, as it adds to the credibility of your service. Likewise, you could include your views on new product launches or industry trends, all the time differentiating yourselves with other players in your market.

Build Relationships

There’s an old adage in sales and marketing, “people buy from people”. This has not changed and is probably even more apparent in tough economic times. A blog provides you with an opportunity to create relationships with your clients and prospects. There is a current trend for large companies to have a “CEO Blog”, this is where the head of the company writes a blog article once a week, which is designed to bring them closer to their target audience. It provides the reader with a feeling of involvement and interaction, especially if they are able to leave comments and respond directly to the company head.

Social Media Marketing

Most of the leading blog sites will have a social media aspect to them. They are normally visible via small graphical logos, which can be used by your readers to submit your blog post to other social media networks. The more well known social media sites are called Facebook, MySpace, Stumbleupon, Sphinn and Digg, however the list grows by the day and each will be focused on niche or have its own rules. From a blogging perspective, the reason to be aware of the social networks is because if your content is good then it is likely to be picked up by them. If this happens, it can mean a huge increase in targeted traffic.

PR & Media will find you

Depending on your niche and your content, there is every chance that you may be contacted by either local or national press. This is a great position to be in and will help you with brand building and of course provide you with some free advertising. Usually this type of contact is born from the understanding that you are an expert in your field or the topic you are discussing is of interest to their publications.

Thought Leadership and becoming an authority

The Internet has created some amazing opportunities for companies to market their products and services to a wider audience, however you could also argue that it has meant an increase in competition in almost all markets. This is why it is important to differentiate yourself from your competitors, one way to do this is to establish yourself as the de facto expert in your area. If you are an expert, tell the world. Use your blog to communicate and showcase your expertise, in a competitive market this will do wonders for your sales.

Online Reputation Management

Online reputation management is becoming big news, we have posted about this before and we advise our clients to be aware of it and proactively manage it. One of the ways to do this is by managing the content and using your blog to control what is being said. It is a little more complicated than just that, however it is better to be in control of the blog then letting someone else do it for you.

It’s really Simple

Creating and maintaining a blog is very simple. Once it is set up and designed, then your only challenge is creating the content and keeping it updated regularly. There are sites out there that post every day, whilst others do it once a week. We recommend that you find a happy medium that results in a good flow of content to keep your readers happy, without it becoming a chore.

Link Baiting

People have different views and ideas about link baiting. Often it is described as a black hat technique, whilst there are examples of blackhat link baiting, in general it is fine. The idea is that a blog post is so controversial or significant that it solicits a response from other members of the blogosphere. In turn they include a link back to your site, and you receive a boost in traffic and a short term buzz on your blog. If you’re lucky, you will keep hold of a number of your readers as well.

We want to keep growing this list, if you have any other business benefits for having a company blog please post in the comments.

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One of the major contributors to the growth of online marketing is the fact that it is very measurable. It is quickly possible to check your results, tweak, rinse and repeat. We’re used to analysing the data that is available to us, it’s a good habit to be in and it is great to be able to measure the total cost of ownership.

Unfortunately, this thirst for figures and information does not always transfer to the web site. We’re constantly amazed at how few businesses check their web logs, traffic status and information. Your web site log is a real time snapshot of the browsing habits of your prospects and customers. You can find out who they are, what they do and do not look at, how long they look at things and where they enter and leave your site. All of this information should be treated like gold dust. If you find out that a high percentage of your visitors leave on a certain page, that’s a pretty strong message that you need to work on the stickiness of that page.

If you’re used to applying key performance metrics to your marketing activity, it is easy to extend this to your web site. Access to the core data will explain where you are today in terms of targeted traffic, users, search terms etc and will enable you to set goals and success factors for the future. If you’re in the fortunate position of receiving all of your traffic via natural search engines, then you might want to consider alternative sources to drive additional traffic, such as pay per click or an email campaign.

If you have not got an email list, you might want to use your web site to capture your visitors details. This is a great objective for a web site and is a perfectly sensible way to increase your sales and opportunities. If the majority of your traffic is delivered via pay per click, then it is a very good time to look into ways that will increase your free natural search engine traffic.

The point is, even the very best web sites can be improved, there is always a little gem of information available to you that you can use to increase the effectiveness of your site. We would all love to double or treble our traffic, yet we know immediately that this is only beneficial to us if that traffic is targeted, if it stands a chance of being converted. Web site analytics provides us with that insight, it helps us to understand what types of phrases these people use to find us, it helps us to understand what pages they buy from or contact us. It provides us with the raw data to enable us to act, to do something that will improve the performance of our web site.

Our favourite story involving web analytics is about one of our customers who asked us to help them with their Internet Marketing Strategy; in particular increasing the effectiveness of their web site as they felt that they were not getting much value from it. Interestingly, this customer had never looked at their web logs or statistics, it never occurred to them that there was a wealth of information to look at.

We had a look at the logs and they were receiving a decent amount of traffic from a forum. Our customer is in the garden centre business and the forum was about gardening. The referring site in this case was a post from a user in answer to another user’s question about where one might find a certain type of rock for their landscaping.

This one link and referral from another user contributed to a good chunk of business, however it was done without the knowledge of our client. The reason that this link was so powerful was that it encouraged very targeted users to click through to their site and ultimately buy the rocks. Once the customer realised this, it was not long before we were sponsoring the forum, holding regular forum competitions, posting authority pieces, giving away vouchers and driving highly targeted traffic to their web site via the forum. Then it is a case of tweak, rinse and repeat, a perfect example of how using web site analytics can increase the effectiveness of your web site.

If you would like us to have a look at your web site or marketing plans, please contact one of our consultants today. You never know, we might unearth that hidden rock for you too.

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When you think about the growth of the Internet it is absolutely amazing. Looking back to when I first developed a very simple web page, circa 95/96 it would have been impossible to look ahead and predict what would happen. Most of the improvements to usability of the Internet is to do with the speed of access, especially with high speed broadband and GSM.

Since we’re looking back with rose tinted glasses, we thought we’d use todays post to outline some facts that show just how much our lives are touched by the Internet.

1. 18-34 year olds are the biggest computer users, spending around 60 hours per month on their computer. Source Nielsen/Net ratings

2. The largest online group is the 35-44 age group. Source Hitwise

3. About 8.6m people in the UK and approximately 14% of the UK population are registered disabled with 2 million having a sight problem. Sources Disability Rights Commission & Royal National Institute of the Blind

4. Advertising expenditure in the UK passed £19 billion in 2006 and online accounted for £2,016 million which was a rise of 47% Source Advertising Association

5. In the UK search engine market Google has 79% of the market with the next nearest competitor being Yahoo! with 7% Source Hitwise April 2007

6. 77% of B2B companies regard the primary purpose of the website as a source of company and product/service information. Only 12% of B2B companies cited online sales as the primary objective of the website. B2B Marketing/IAB, April 2006

7. 65% of SMEs have websites Silicon.com/Yankee Group, July 2006

8. 7% of UK workers use the internet to frequently to carry out Internet searches in connection with their work. Vertical Search Report 2008 Convera

9. Ease of use was cited by 59% by customers as the reason for shopping online, compared to only 32% who cited low prices. Online Retail 2006 User Experience Benchmarks - Sales Logiq

10. 64% of companies believe that joined-up online and offline experiences are essential for engaging with their audience. However, some 60% of companies are either not very advanced at mapping customer experiences and identifying touch-points. Customer Engagement Report E-consultancy Nov 2006

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Speaking to clients and prospects recently (within last couple of months) its been really interesting to hear their concerns in relation to their business and the so called ‘credit crunch’. I’ve read and heard so much in the press that I though it was about time to voice my own opinion.

Yes, I agree that the market isn’t great and it’s certainly not how it was back in 2006. Food prices have increased significantly with Marks and Spencer’s this week reporting a 5% decrease in sales….wow a whole 5%! Due to the ridiculous increase in fuel prices we have lorry drivers driving their HGV’s through Westminster protesting outside the Houses of Commons. House prices have reach a plato and inflation is continuing to rise at a steady rate, so I do understand why people and business owners are, and rightly so, looking over their shoulders and waiting to see what happens next. However, with that said there are still plenty of business’s out there vying for, creating and driving good business and therefore reaping the rewards. The market I believe it still pretty strong, there is plenty to play for and it the dawdling and protractive companies that will be left behind!

Many companies I’ve spoke to have had a bumper 2008 and this is set to continue. I believe that you have to be conscious of what’s going in the economy but focus on what you can do to help drive your own business forward rather than waiting to see what happens. If this means buying a new piece of software or investing into an online advertising strategy then so be it, if it will provide you with a return then do it?

The hype and media surrounding the credit crunch I believe is a bit of farce and inevitably puts the willies up businesses looking to expand or invest. It makes them think twice which isn’t always a bad thing but can additionally then stiffle their business growth. If one Managing Director of a company who I spoke to on Tuesday is puting her marketing budget on hold for 3 months as she is worried about the economy, looking at the bigger picture there will be plenty more Managing Directors like her doing the same and the end result is FACT the the economy will suffer! A vicious economic circle built up by media hype!

Working in the digital marketing sector I feel blessed at times like these as it enables me to understand what’s happening on the ’shop floor’ as normally if things are tight the first area that business’s cut back on is their marketing budget, which has never made sense to me and is another story for another time! However Digital Marketing is different in the fact that everything you do is measurable, if you spend £100 on a PPC campaign and see a return of £200 then that’s good business. On top of this I sell our professional services which makes a huge difference. Service is critical to any business and often make you stand out from the competitors.

So when when I’m trying to close business and prospects mention the state of the economy and the so called ‘credit crunch’, I suggest to them that most of it is media hype, business growth is all about taking the initiative and focusing on seeing the end results. Sell your added value services, product features and core benefits, focus on that and I think people will soon start to see the wood through the trees and change their negative perception concerning the so called ‘credit crunch’!

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I’ve been on-site a lot during the last couple of weeks in talks with one of my clients about their Internet marketing strategy. I enjoy these types of meetings because they are a great opportunity to throw everything at a whiteboard, no idea is too outlandish and everyone has an opportunity to be involved in the growth of their business.

There were some really inspired ideas, some were easy to implement while others required a little more thought and some understanding of the business processes. This is not unusual, what you want when you’re thinking about your Internet marketing strategy is a selection of ideas; some of which can be introduced immediately and have an immediate effect, whilst others you can work on in the background.

We’ve been working with this client for a number of years now, fortunately we know what their objectives are for their site and we can try to ensure that whatever is formally entered into their Internet marketing strategy has a direct impact on this. However it is an interesting point, how often do you see conversations about strategy before the objectives have been agreed.

In our opinion, the question of “Why do you have a web site and what do you want to achieve from it?” is fundamental to Internet marketing. As once you know this anything in your Internet marketing strategy can be linked to achieving these goals. Most companies we speak with understand this, what they are looking for from their digital marketing agency is for them to earn their money and come up with ways to get the most from their site.

So now that you know what you want to achieve from your web site, the question is what does one do from a marketing perspective to meet these goals? The short answer to this question is lots, including the usual SEO/SEM and keyword analysis all the way through to creating video content and content. In fact there is an enormous amount that you can do, so much so that this can be counter productive. There’s so much that can be done, that nothing ever gets done.

This is especially true the mid to large companies where there a sign off is required to implement changes. Often the Internet person is still developing their career so they do not have the experience or knowledge to be able to justify their ideas or validate them with research.

We all aspire to have the perfect Internet marketing strategy, unfortunately we believe that there is a short window to be perfect. The Internet changes, what was perfect 2 years ago might be considered out of date today, rather than stick with what we know there is a whole host of opportunities to try other ways. The great thing about the Internet is that if these new ways do not work; you have the opportunity to fine tune them, tweak them slightly or in the more extreme cases… hit the delete button.

If you would like to talk to us about your Internet marketing strategy or discuss how we can boost the traffic or profile of your web site, please do not hesitate to contact us.

What do you think? Please feel free to comment below.