I’ve just come back from giving a presentation about blogs to a networking group.
One of the many questions I’m usually asked is how to get people to read the blog posts once they’ve been written. Of course I grow through the usual shamozle of explaining about keywords, SEO, search engine spiders, sharing via social media, publicising the blog’s URL offline and each post’s URL online, etc, to raise awareness of the post and to attract a new audience.
Blogs are everywhere!
There was general amazement that some people would have probably read a blog without realising it. They were unaware that most of the top entries in a search result are probably blogs, as these are the ones that are most likely to be suitably optimised to match the search requirements.
Getting over this phenomenon resulted in gradual realisation that blogs had the power to bring in a lot of traffic. But one woman was concerned that this wasn’t going straight to her website; to her everything should be going directly to it with the hope that every hit would result in business.
Well, that is certainly a requisite that is worth aiming for, but would she want every Tom, Dick and Harriet arriving at her website only to bounce away again?
Filter out your prospects
A blog could act as a selective filter for a business website. Also it could be an intermediary level where visitors could spend their time undertstanding more about the business, and getting to know, like and trust the company before making the commitment to enter the website and do the necessary transactions.
This filter would sieve out the time-wasters, educate the uninitiated or satisfy those that desired more knowledge. Providing lots of information for free (or for an affordable amount) will set the blog owner up as the expert they claim to be, introduce the author as a thought-leader in their industry, and provide a much more professional outlook than the website could provide within its space constraints.
Groom your customers
Blogs groom potential clients to think how you want them to, provide a host of answers so they don’t have to bother the company with the usual questions, and mould them into making the most appropriate move towards doing business. This may happen over a long period of time, but a lot of irritation can be saved because several processes will have been gone through via the blog, transforming the client into a much more manageable prospect.
And this is achieved by clever navigation, well-placed informative categories and a clearly retrievable archive system. A blog that has been in existence for a long time will have a lot of information stored away within it, so this should be recycled and brought back to the fore, suitably updated and improved for the present day or situation.
Want to know more?
If you would like Alice to give a presentation about blogging at one of your groups, contact her or check out her diary via the app at the top of the sidebar.
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