People Are Sick Of The Hard Sell.
Where businesses and advertisers used to rely on grabbing their customers with an offer that was supposedly impossible to ignore. Now they understand that more sales come from connecting with their customers first and then giving them the opportunity to explore their offer.
By writing about your business and your industry or niche, you can naturally slip in information about your products and services. This presents your visitors with the perfect opportunity to explore those further without feeling sold to in any way.
It helps if you are genuinely passionate about your business as that enthusiasm will come across in your blog posts. Enthusiasm is infectious and will therefore effortlessly engage your readers.
As it also comes across as genuine, it underpins your business and brand values with the same honesty and integrity.
Blogging in this way means that you can also sell with integrity. By presenting your products and services in a framework that also offers valuable, informative content for your prospects and customers you are transmitting the same ethos about your business.
Your prospects and customers will understand that you go above and beyond merely selling to them, offering the kind of personal, human approach that people crave these days.
If you think about it, in the past your customers would get to know you face to face. They would drop by your bricks and mortar business, whether it was a store or an office, and talk to you about their needs. These days they might still drop by your business but increasingly in a virtual way.
This is where having a business blog can work to your advantage. By providing those regular posts which can also answer customer queries as they come up, you are still interacting on that human level but it will take you less time and effort.
Your blog posts will reach a far wider audience than that sole customer you would be dealing with on a one to one basis while retaining a personal touch.
Blogging Can Brand You As An Industry Leader
By sharing your thoughts and ideas on your industry or marketplace, you also set yourself up as an expert on it provided, of course, you do so intelligently.
Blog posts that comment incisively on current trends, are newsworthy or in some other way educational and informative are quickly shared and commented upon which means more exposure for your business.
This results in more traffic to your site and in valuable links from other relevant sites which, in turn, boosts your search engine rankings.
Naturally, you need to make sure that you have already optimized your posts for those rankings by including the keywords that are relevant without in any way making your content appear unnatural or disturbing the flow of your words.
Keywords are still important when it comes to your rankings but more so is the quality and regularity of the content that you post on your blog.
Once your visitors realize that you provide stellar content which is posted on a certain day, or days, then they will make sure to visit your blog regularly to keep up with your latest thoughts.
Another rookie mistake is to simply post up those thoughts at random rather than in a considered, cohesive way that serves and builds on your overall business goals.
This is why it is an excellent idea to use a blogging calendar so that you have a strategy in place for your content marketing. This, in turn, will make producing that content a far more streamlined process.
Blogging Helps You Form New Industry Relationships
Once other business owners and bloggers start to recognize you as a thought leader within your industry, they will want to form a mutually beneficial relationship with you.
People always gravitate towards those they perceive to be at the forefront of an industry or niche and this is where a blog can prove invaluable in setting you apart.
These new business relationships can simply be a great way of bouncing ideas off others who understand the intricacies of your particular industry or they can lead to profitable collaboration and expansion in the same or diverse markets.
As a by-product, you as a business owner and blogger can start to attract the kind of media attention that supplies you with priceless free publicity.
The combination of being perceived as an industry thought leader as well as a sought-after business partner or investor lends an aura of success that brings with it yet more benefits for you and your business.
How To Connect and Engage
Smart marketers and business owners understand why old school, hard sell tactics no longer work. These days it’s all about marketing through emotion.
Your customers don’t necessarily remember what you did for them so much as how you made them feel and a blog is the perfect vehicle to tap into those emotions.
By focusing on the underlying emotional benefits your product, services or brand can bring to a customer through your blog posts, you will effectively communicate to them just what sets you apart and makes you special.
This means going beyond the features of your product, service or brand and highlighting how your customer will feel once they have bought into it.
An example of a brand that stands out in the emotional marketing arena is the toiletries company Dove.
Dove was one of the first ever companies to use email marketing to engage with its customers and it has gone on to produce a series of award-winning campaigns that focus on how its products make women feel, i.e. strong, powerful and beautiful no matter their size or age.
At its official website www.dove.com there are all kinds of articles that focus on self-esteem and feeling as gorgeous inside as out. The customer gains the impression that Dove as a brand cares about each individual’s wants and needs.
There are also any number of guides that teachers and mothers can use to transmit these brand values to the next generation.
In its mission statement, Dove states:
“Our mission is to ensure the next generation grows up enjoying a positive relationship with the way they look – helping young people to raise their self-esteem and realize their full potential.”
Through its focus on engaged, emotional marketing, Dove has created a highly profitable brand that has expanded out into a series of high street spas as well. Any business can create a similar level of engagement through applying the same principles to its own website and blog.
For a great example of a blog that extends beyond being a local business into something that is of interest throughout the relevant industry, take a look at The Curious Dentist. This is an excellent example of how a blog can educate, entertain and establish its author as an expert at one and the same time.
There are also blogs, such as the beautiful 101 Cookbooks, that thrive as a business in themselves. 101 Cookbooks was originally started over a decade ago to share recipes from Heidi Swanson’s vast collection of cookery books as well as her food photography.
It has now evolved into a site that is a pleasure to browse as well as a source of income for Heidi through advertising and promoting her own books.
As a business that is built of elements that work physically and virtually, Tim Ferriss’ blog is a successful adjunct to his bestselling books that thrives in its own right.
In his posts and podcasts, Ferriss examines case studies of online businesses, offers advice that complements that offered in his bestselling books and promotes his other products.
He also profits from advertising and affiliate revenue as well as interacting with his readers, thereby continuing to build his profile and brand.
How To Get Your Customers To Take Action
Once you have engaged and connected with your customers, it is far easier to get them to take the action you desire, whether that is providing you with their contact details or purchasing what you have to offer.
The best way to do this when blogging is to include a call-to-action, or CTA, in your posts.
A CTA is a word, phrase or graphic that supplies a clear link to the next action you wish your reader to take and yet another rookie mistake is to forget to include one.
If you don’t tell your readers what you want them to do, they won’t do it.
Simple as that!
You therefore need to ensure you give them clear directions in the form of your Calls To Action.
Examples of these directive phrases include:
- Subscribe Here
- Get It Now
- Download Now
- Find Out More
The following are examples of effective graphical CTAs.
Evernote’s CTA tells you all you need to know to make the decision to sign up on the spot:
While Shoedazzle’s CTA is highly relevant, stylish and boldly tells the visitor where to ‘Get Started’ or how to ‘Learn More’:
Basecamp’s CTA excites the visitor with its headline, underpins its message with a testimonial and then provides a clear directive to ‘Start your free trial’:
Whether you choose a graphical or textual format, your CTA should remain clear and compelling. The most effective CTAs are simple, direct and invite the reader to find out more.
Whatever its form, it is best to keep a CTA short, consisting of one word or at most a short phrase such as ‘Learn More.’