Blogging used to be seen as a social tool. It was a way of telling the world how you felt about things that mattered to you - and in a way that has never changed, even though many business owners have now cottoned on to the fact that blogging is a great way to attract new customers and visitors to their website.
The concept of blogging has clearly changed somewhat over the years, and while there are still people out there blogging about what matters to them, the format is now regularly bringing in fresh sales and new business to people who are players in the internet marketing field.
So why are blogs so popular in this way?
One of the main reasons is that online businesses have a tendency to be 'faceless'. You cannot see the person or people behind that business and it can be all too easy to set up a bogus business that looks good on the outside but consists of nothing more than a way to fleece ordinary people of their cash.
Blogging helps to distinguish the honest traders from the bogus ones. It identifies those people who are passionate about their business and want to share the vast amounts of knowledge that they have on that subject.
This helps to establish trust between the business owner and their potential customers, and with links from their website to their blog they have an excellent chance of gaining new customers who don't immediately buy something from the site, taking the time instead to explore first.
One of the advantages of having a blog as part of a website promotion drive is that blogs are generally viewed as being a 'hands off' form of promotion. They don't directly try to sell to the customer in the same way that a website does; instead they strengthen the business by allowing the potential customer to find out more about that business and the person (or people) who runs it.
Most business bloggers do still have links from their blog back to their website, and they will also indulge in deep linking to pages within the site instead of constantly linking back to the home page all the time. This in turn helps the blog to build more backlinks to different areas of the website, building an even better chance of attracting more customers from the search engines, even though they won't directly visit the blog at all.
It is perhaps ironic that a blog which is designed to help an online business develop and increase its profits doesn't actually have to sell very hard at all. In the end it is all about adding depth and value to an online business - in effect the owner is taking the opportunity to show his or her potential clients that they know a great deal about what they do and can help their clients or customers accordingly.
In the end, a blog certainly can be a selling tool, but it is often one step removed from the selling process itself.
Web Profits specialises in search engine optimization, online marketing & web design, helping businesses generate profits from the Internet. For a free report on 'The Secrets of Online Marketing for Offline Businesses' visit Web Design. |
0 comments:
Post a Comment