WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF BLOGGING FOR BUSINESSES?

EXAMPLES PROVIDED.BY SABASTIAN DYER

CARRY OUT VITAL MARKET RESEARCH

To gauge an idea, product or proposition

Blogging is a direct route to your prospective customers or interested audience

A fast way to understand your customers’ needs or to simply ask them a question.

Pretty much all blogs allow you to simply insert ‘polls’

What does this = a structured data gathering environment which you can then use as smart data.

By Sabastian Dyer

Source: Social Media Examiner

Blogs are a great way to ask your audience questions and gain insight from your customers.

Social Media Examiner does it effectively by incorporating questions into the blog.

Social Media Examiner

By Sabastian Dyer

Hint?Incorporate questions into the text so people read and formulate a response as they’ve come to a conclusion after reading your valuable post.

THREADLESS

What’s great is that threadless firstly calls

comments notes, and uses a heart symbol,

recognising how much it values contributions

from its community.

It also asks for submissions and they’ll feature their features.

Finally it gives them explicit directions of what to do, a call to action.

Hint? Ask something that they care about. Make a response easy and hassle free.

By Sabastian Dyer

I WEAR YOUR SHIRT

A simple concept, what’s your opinion?

I wearyourshirt.com concentrates on

identifying celebs that affect brand

value.

Asking for your opinion, why wouldn’t

you give it?

Hint?Try closed questions as it’s easier to respond more quickly. By Sabastian Dyer

PRIMARK

Hint?Try asking them what to do, like if they agree, comment to give opinion? Share if they love?

Whilst this isn’t a blog, it follows the

same concept, making its fans share or

show if they like something or not.

By Sabastian Dyer

COCA-COLA

Considering its product, Coca-Cola tries

exceedingly hard to connect with its

customers on another level.

Reaching out to them on a level they

understand, and about things they enjoy

and are passionate about.

Coca-Cola isn’t just a company.

Hint?Ask them something they are passionate about, they’ll give you their opinion.

By Sabastian Dyer

STARBUCKS

Starbucks even has a whole website

dedicated to asking people to submit their

ideas, offer feedback and see how ideas

develop.

What better way is there to get market

research from your customers?

Hint?Show them that you appreciate and will consider your ideas. Put the idea to the vote with the public. By Sabastian Dyer

HELPS OTHERS TO DEVELOP BUSINESS

A blog enables you to add further value to your business.

Just one way to develop customer and brand loyalty with your customers.

They’ll feel compelled to stay with you as you offer more value to them as customers.

They’ll begin to connect with your organisation on a deeper level.

By Sabastian Dyer

DEZREZ

Hint?Show them that you appreciate and will consider your ideas. By Sabastian Dyer

Dezrez offer photography tips as many estate

agents provide this service, through their own

means, equipment and so on, every little piece

of advice to help them will show that they care

as a company.

Providing software is one thing, but when they

offer tips on photography as well, what more

could you ask for?

TREDZ

Hint?Connect with them and offer help, along with solutions to their problems. Need a bike light by any chance?

By Sabastian Dyer

Connect with your readers and customers. Showing

that you understand them as people. Sometimes it’s a

necessity to ride in the dark, others do it for fun, but

it’s important to stay safe too.

Identifying these things makes the customer think

about things they need, and they’ll appreciate the

advice. Maybe they’ll even learn something?

INNGOT

Hint?Offer them advice about their needs. ‘How to use your skills to make money. ‘ By Sabastian Dyer

Sometimes a barrier to a sale is the lack of understanding itself. New concepts can be hard to explain, and don’t always catch on.

Explain your product / service in its most simple terms, how do they benefit from using you?

SELL A PRODUCT

Blogging is a great way to indirectly promote a product.

For example if someone wants to know about how to fix their puncture or straight a

bicycle wheel then you could promote your own tools. You’re helping out the user as

well as promoting a product.

Another great way to promote a product is giving it a review (if it scores highly); people

tend to trust other human beings when it comes to reviews.

By Sabastian Dyer

CURRYS

Hint?Solve a problem that everyone has with related products. By Sabastian Dyer

So if someone made it quite clear that you had a problem that could be solved, wouldn’t you think they were great?

Companies that are innovative and solve problems, reap the rewards.

Can you think of problems that your customer has?

How can you as a customer solve those?

If you own a surf shop, chances are your customers will want to know when good surf is right?

MAGIC SEA WEED

Hint?If you’ve got local experts that aren’t part of the business, interview them as the public will appreciate this new approach. By Sabastian Dyer

Educate the customer, don’t patronise, but make sure they

know you appreciate them as a prospective customer.

Speak in an informal tone, like they are having a chat with a

friend about the best course of action.

SAMSUNG

Hint?Try video, it’s better content, easier to follow, and easier to explain. Winners all round. By Sabastian Dyer

People don’t like change. But

explaining how to use a product,

and the benefits of it, will help

overcome any worries.

Samsung do this very well.

IMPROVE SEO

So the more you generally use a word or related words in a sentence / paragraph / text that isn’t robotic and makes full sense then search engines (Google, Yahoo etc) will index your blog and rate it

more highly than if you hadn’t blogged about it.

This is because search engines deem your blog to be more valuable to a reader if it believes you’re helping the reader. For example if someone typed ‘How to’ guides for break dancing into a search

engine then Google only wants to show related content, so that the user has a positive experience.

If you blog about related topics and things that interest you and your business then this will ultimately help with your search engine rankings.

By Sabastian Dyer

ZOOPLA

Hint?Discuss topics which people will want to read. Topics that they need to know more about, keywords will mean that your providing them with good content. By Sabastian Dyer

Using key words will get you better rankings in

search engines.

Talking about related topics will keep your

customers coming back.

Keep the value there, and so will your customers.

Word of mouth and recommendations are

powerful.

ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY

Hint?Write about topics that are relevant so that your keywords naturally fit. By Sabastian Dyer

The type of customers you have will control the

tone of writing you use.

Consider this when writing, and choosing

keywords, what will your customers search?

Develop a strategy and content then to build

around these terms to create consistency, thus

resulting in specific SEO results.

HOMETRUTHS

Hint?Try variations of words so that your writing doesn’t sound robotic. By Sabastian Dyer

New visitors to your property need to be certain

that they’ve come to the right place.

People have a short attention span so keep

content short and snappy; which is easy to

digest.

Variations of words will make your content more

readable. It will also mean that it flows as a piece

of writing.

OTHER IDEAS

• Insight marketing- Rather than just sell a dress, why not offer advice on fashion and colour choice. why not help them out with the rest of their outfit? Advice on good places to get shoes for example.

• SEO friendly- If you’re trying to sell PC software and have done a review on it, why don’t you link to the product page directly. This will give you SEO benefits and you can begin to use analytics to see how many people actually visit the product page from your blog- exceedingly useful when trying to justify the benefits of blogging.

• Play in a band? Get more fans by blogging. You can develop more fans or business by blogging. For example if you play at a venue or have a new track then you should blog about it. People may either want to listen to your new song or find out what the venue is like. This is also a good relationship building tool with the venues that you play in. They will look upon you favourably if you add value to their digital and offline proposition.

By Sabastian Dyer

THANK YOU

Any questions?

Why not connect with me…

By Sabastian Dyer