What is a Blog?
A Blog, slang/shorten for web log, is in essence a version of an online diary. Possibly as a child, you kept a book where you recalled your daily activities, writing down interesting items or events that occurred throughout your day, and performed this over a period of time. Fast forward to today, and blogs are everywhere, and for business, they are essential. Blogs are now the 4th most popular online activity ahead of personal email, and are the fastest growing inbound marketing category.
Customer Acquisition through Blogs
In 2009, 10% of all internet usage time was spent on blogs. Bloggers are talking about businesses; brands, informing people of items liked and disliked, as well as issues reviews and summaries of products and companies.
But don’t think just having a blog is going to get you customers. It is imperative that a blog is maintained and kept current. In the chart below, blogs where there are multiple entries a day, have a 100% customer acquisition capture rate, however, those that do not post at least once a month, only have a 13% capture rate, a huge difference in productivity.
What are actual benefits of Blogs?
- Easy Access to Company News - Blogs provide a very user-friendly way to notify your customers and clients of any changes, new products, latest offers and much more, which can result in news sales or additional contracts.
- Enhance SEO - A blog can be used to gain search engine traffic for given keywords or search terms for your company. Your blog offers the opportunity to promote your Web site for hundreds or even thousands of different keywords.
- Brand Awareness - The more a customer hears the name of your company, the greater the chance of remembering it. It takes, on average, around seven items of direct communication between you and your customers to make a sale.
- Relationship Building - It can be difficult to build a line of communication with your customers. A blog enables you to speak more freely and in a more informal and personable style than your website does, and your readers will soon feel like they know you and have an easier way of relating to you. The more they know, like and trust you the more likely they are to visit your main site, click your links and purchase your product.
- Reputation - Blogs help you fill your particular industry niche and manage your online reputation.
- Low Costs - Blogs are inexpensive to set up, operate and maintain.
