Blogging to Boost Your Business

A business blog is an incredible online marketing tool that saves you thousands of dollars but provides great business opportunities in just one click. Blogs are user-friendly, customized and a flexible medium for circulating useful information for effective positioning of your products in the market. 

Some of the definitive advantages companies that engage in business blogging have over their competitors include:

1. Word-of-Mouth. In a survey, there are currently 14 million blogs with 80,000 more being added each day and about 30 percent of the 50 million users are blog readers. Imagine how much gain your company will have, if your products are advertised through blogs. With Internet, information spreads so quickly especially if an impressive write-up goes with your product. Soon your blogs will be passed on to hundreds of possible customers.

2. Awareness and loyalty.  Open communication with your customers creates trust and loyalty among them. Being there to respond to their questions and comments make them all the more willing to try your products and services.

3. Feedback. Blogs are good for product research and reviews. It would be easier to improve on your products if you observe your customers� thinking and behavioral patterns. You can also take immediate action to your customers� concerns.

4. Community halo-effect. Bloggers are reasonable, friendly and helpful. They are more than willing to create blogosphere of comments regarding your product. The only thing you have to do is embrace and take active part in the culture and your product will surely be considered in their next stop to the supermarket.

For better marketing results, actively promote your business blogs by submitting your blogs to blog search sites and directories. Do not forget to paste in with your blogs, URL. Be sure that your blogs contain exclusive information with value and are always updated to keep readers popping in, read your blog, move on to the next and click on again for updates. 

Your blog is like a booth setup in the biggest everyday trade show on earth. Marketing possibilities are just around the corner waiting to strike and scale up your sales.

The Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds are important too in conjunction with your blogs to get the best benefits. Use effective keyword phrases to generate high ranking status in the search engine traffic. In this way you enhance the chances of people finding your website leading to your blogs. More traffic means more potential sales. For this to be successful, you can use RSS for news update feeds which can be read through RSS reader application. This is a very useful tool for business and internet marketers as well. 

If you are already convinced with the potentials of business blogs for marketing and targeting sales increase, your company is now ready to start blogging. But first, you have to be in tune with your company�s business objectives and determine if blogging will really help you achieve your goal.

Read blogs that are dedicated to teaching people the do�s and don�ts of blogging, READ them! Also include in your reading materials blogs that are consumer-based to give you an idea. After your research go ahead and setup several test blogs right away. 

If your initial try out with blogs worked well, you can now start setting up your blogs. 

1. Study blog design. Blog hosting services provide pre-designed templates. But if you opt for paid blog service, you can ask your artist to design and layout your blog site to match the company�s identity and needs.

2. Choose a topic. It is good to have a list of topics you want for your blogs but be sure they are in accordance with your business objectives. This would be a test of your flexibility and open- mindedness since results may be going against the set objectives.

3. Remember the following safety measures in blogging:

•  Legal issues are sometimes involved in blogging; it is safer to include disclaimers and limitations of liabilities;
• Corporate communication and legal department are responsible in educating the senior management on how blogs might affect business;
• Create blogging policies; set limits on who gets to blog and what information are allowed to be made public; 
• Avoid outright marketing blog or you will shy away your readers;
  
• Make content updated, relevant and fresh;
  
• Reinforce the company�s core values; and, 
  
• Encourage employees to use it.

4. Start blogging and complete 20 posts before going to marketing.

5. Begin marketing.

6. Regularly monitor the coming ins and outs of readers and get updates. Then, measure your results.

7. Adjust if needed. You can always play with your designs in the blog site as long as it remains to match the company�s identity.

8. Strive to be consistent with your topic all the time.

9. Try to have unrelated topics with general and broad appeal.

10. Schedule updates regularly. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday would be best to update blogs.

Once you have done all these things, you can now ultimately enjoy the benefits of business blogging.

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For more about Business Blogging and related topics Doyle invites you to visit: Blogging Guide , A-List Blogging
and Advertising and Marketing Tools
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