BroadVision Marketing Blog

When it comes to business blogging (or any blogging for that matter), content is king of social media. You can save money by writing from your own experience and you can build your business at the same time.

You want to create original content full of your sage advice. You also need to keep your blog fresh with more and more of this original content. Of course, it is always great to have a guest blogger who has a different approach to add to the originality of your site. All these are clues in how to reach your audience.

What you want is to create posts that are not only original, but also give in-depth answers to your clients’ questions. Here are some suggestions on how to do this:

• Be sure you use your keywords constantly. If you want clients to find your answers, you have to improve your blog’s search-engine-optimizationability (yes, I just made that up). If you are writing about eye care, be sure you talk about eye care. If you are focusing on homecare services, house cleaning or Rolex watches, you want to use key words as often as possible without sounding silly.

• If you are a local brick and mortar business or if you are a national chain, it is always best to blog to a particular region. Talking about clients or using testimonials with a particular area mentioned is always a good way to tag your community. In doing this, if a person in Fort Worth is looking for a house cleaning service, your site will come up in the search.

• What you don’t want to be is a blogging commercial. People don’t watch television to see nothing but commercials. No one will read your blog if it is one long commercial for you. You don’t want to promote a product, service or your business in every post.  One source I read suggested that you use a mixture of 75% information and 25% promotion.  It’s worth an experiment. You can always tweak your percentages depending on the success of the experiment.

• Along those lines you want to vary your posts. You can embed videos from YouTube or link to cartoons and comics. There are always occasional funny stories or cool illustrations, maybe even with one of your clients as long as you don’t violate privacy. Guest blog posts are a super addition and so are graphics or charts. Info graphics are becoming a popular item.

Blogging is one of those bread-and-butter items of social media that will keep you in front of your clients, prospects and search engine.  Yes, content is king.

What do you think is the most important aspect of business blogging? How are your blogging efforts working for you?

For more information please refer to our new guide: An Introduction to Business Blogging.

Jaco Grobbelaar, owner of BroadVision Marketing, helps business owners and business professionals put marketing strategies in place that consistently secure new clients. He can be reached at jaco@broadvisionmarketing.com or 707.799.1238. You can “Like” him at www.facebook.com/broadvisionmarketing or connect with him on www.linkedin.com/in/JacoGrobbelaar.

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[caption id="attachment_2508" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Constructive Conflict Resolution"] [/caption]

Just because conflict happens, doesn’t mean that it is always a bad thing. That Leader will know whether the conflict is destructive or is constructive.

How do you tell when a conflict is destructive?

That Leader will know that a conflict is destructive when the team is supposed to be working on goal setting and instead wind up in the middle of an argument that takes attention away from the purpose of the meeting. If someone is having a problem and decides that the meeting is the place to air it, That Leader needs to take control of the meeting back, offer to meet with the argumentative person later and return to the topic.

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[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="240" caption="Classified Ad"] [/caption]

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Digital advertising

Television commercials are “The” most efficient mass-marketing advertising platform. That’s why they cost the big bucks, especially during popular airtime, like prime time or the Super Bowl football game. In 2009 the single 30 second spot during the game cost its advertiser $3 million. Besides just showing the ad, the advertiser includes a song or jingle that help people remember the product. Virtual advertisements on television are interesting phenomena. They are mostly used at sporting events where the backdrop has computer graphics that changes as different products are displayed.

Topics: Using Different Media, Advertising, Marketing and Advertising, Super Bowl, Email lists, Product placement, blog, Marketing Plan, Facebook, Social Media, Marketing Principles, Business, Branding, Marketing strategy

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="240" caption="Story Time"] [/caption]

Are you still worried about spending too much time writing your blog and not enough time doing your work? Not to worry, there are still some more good ideas around.

Let’s take a quick look at why you need some good ideas. First, there is the fact that you want to be consistent about publishing.  Your readers will quit coming to your site if you don’t put up work in a timely fashion. Whether you write three times a week or once a month, you need to be there when they come. People get very put out when they look up information and are sent to sites that haven’t been active for years.

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[caption id="" align="alignright" width="216" caption="Jewelry Shop"] [/caption]

Do you think that content is more important than the headline? Many people would agree with you or at least agree that both are of equal importance. Since this is so and this blog has explored writing good headlines, it’s time to give content attention.

Sometimes it seems like writing content is actually harder than just running your business. At least with your business you understand what your clients want because they will tell you loud and clear. In blogging you cannot even be sure that anyone is reading. In your shop you understand cash flow, both in and out. When you blog you get all sorts of analytics, except the one that tells you the number of people who came into the shop because of what you wrote.

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[caption id="" align="alignright" width="144" caption="Business blogging"] [/caption]

Since I have been talking about what works with blogs and what doesn’t, I want to add some ideas based on Michael Stelzer’s recent remarks in Social Media Examiner July 22, 2011 at http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/top-7-reasons-blogs-fail-and-what-to-do-about-it/.

Michael talks about business blogging mistakes that can cause a blog not to get enough traffic or views.

Mistake: Writing about yourself

Have you looked at some of the tweets on Twitter and passed them by because they are selling their business with the same tweet over and over? Did you feel guilty for passing over them? I’ll bet you didn’t give it a second thought. So why would you blog about your products, your services or yourself? No one is interested in that to start with.

What people really want is help solving their problems, getting useful information or feeling like they are recognized. Can you see that if you focus on giving them what they want, they will come to see what else you have?

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[caption id="" align="alignright" width="240" caption="Early blog machine"] [/caption]

At a Chamber of Commerce meeting recently someone mentioned that they were using niche blogging, but you didn’t have a chance to ask what that was. So what is niche blogging?

You already have a blog set up for your business, but what would happen if you set up blogs that could be used in your business from different angles. In other words what if you took a vertical move and created more than one blog that crossed several industries? These multiple approaches are called niche blogging and are a way to greatly expand your influence.

Topics: Chamber of Commerce, Niche blogging, Social network service, blog, website, Marketing Plan, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Business, Blogging

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="240" caption="WordPress blogging system"] [/caption]

Not everyone who reads the blogs I've been writing is an expert yet. If you are a newbie, do you know if you are writing a blog that is used for a website? What does it become then?

Mike Clough in his post of June 28, 2010 ( http://bestbizpractices.org/2010/06/28/is-your-blog-really-a-blog/) clarified the question by saying, “When a blog is used for website functions, it loses its value as a blog and in fact becomes just another website.”

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[caption id="" align="alignright" width="240" caption="Blogging workflow"] [/caption]

You have decided to add a blog as a marketing method. You’ve looked at questions that help you focus what you want to say. But throughout all the studying you have done, you are not really sure what you are using blogging to accomplish.

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[caption id="" align="alignright" width="193" caption="Google search"] [/caption]

Now that you have decided to write a blog for your business, you go on line and ask Google to do a general search on your product. What’s this? There are millions of blogs on the internet and it looks like millions about your product. One look at the competition and you are tempted to head for the hills.

But don’t do that. You can compete if you spend the time to create informative blog posts. This is not just a business whim, but a strategic point of your marketing campaign. If you want to be successful, you have only to take the time and effort to write content about your product. Before you start you might want to spend time answering some questions that will help you develop your strategy and actually help you write.

Topics: marketing, Using Different Media, Marketing and Advertising, Google, Google Search, Customer, readers, social media strategy, product, informative posts, brand awareness, blog, clients, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Marketing Principles, Business, Branding, Blogging