To Blog or not to Blog – That is the Question

Blogging – What Are The Business Benefits

There are many ways that blogging can be used as an effective marketing tool for businesses big and small but amongst the compelling are:

• Brand Awareness – A blog is an excellent way to get an awareness of and buzz about your brand. A well planned (and subtly branded) blog can be an excellent marketing tool for a company.
• Displaying Expertise – If you consider yourself to be an expert within your field, you can explain why on your blog. Customers are more likely to trust a company who can display why they are the best in their particular field.
• Affordability – Setting up a blog on your company website or elsewhere costs virtually nothing and maintaining the blog is also easy. If a blog is written in the right way, it can serve as a first rate marketing tool. This is why many companies use copywriters to maintain their blogs.
• Direct Communications – As time goes by, your blog will build up a readership of dedicated readers and each time you publish a new story, it will be disseminated to them at the touch of a button and you communicate instantly with your target audience. This is a good way to build good word of mouth and a buzz about new happenings in your industry.
• Media Matters – If your company has a blog and your competitors don't, chances are that if the media contacts a company in your industry, it will be you as blogging often transmits an air of authority that makes a company appear more of a viable option in media relations.
• SEM (search engine marketing) – The algorithms and spiders that search engines use to index sites look favourably upon blogs as they are regularly updated, keyword rich and well written. All these factors will boost a blog's placing in the search rankings.
• Social Networking – Blogs are prevalent on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace not to mention social bookmarking sites like digg, stumbleupon and delicious. Blogging on these types of sites can produce dramatic results especially if your blog happens to go ‘viral' across one of these mediums. If it does, the number of website visitors you get will rise dramatically and you will most likely get a host of quality inbound links.
• Competitive Differentiation – If you feel that you have got the competitive edge over your competitors, then a blog is an excellent way for you to exactly why your company is most suited to your customer's needs.