Effective Inbound Marketing Tips

To blog or not to blog. Unsure of what business blogging can do for your business? Have you ever wondered why even big businesses maintain their own blog sites. As major players with unlimited resources, why don’t Coca-Cola or P&G, for example, just bombard the airwaves and print media with advertisements, sit back and wait for the profits?

Big or small, businesses need blogging in order to thrive in an online landscape. A blog is an informal and interactive platform that the average reader can relate to. It is a good source of relevant information and not just mere promotion. Can your business really benefit from it?

A good way to position yourself as a thought leader

It’s nice to have good leaders but thought leaders are looked up to by their peers because of the innovative and insightful ideas they bring with them. They are often associated with terms like first, best, most, top and other superlatives you can think of. Well-thought out blogs can make well-thought-of leaders who inspire, not demand, a following. When you know what you’re blogging about, you build credibility and reputation for your organization, making it a trusted resource in your niche.

A good feed for the human mind

What has this got to do with your business? The human mind works with ideas and is constantly searching for new ones. Customers are humans with minds continually looking for good products. If you provide informative blogs that help customers make informed decisions on the products they buy, you stand to win their trust and grow your clientele.

A good bait for search engines.

SEO is the lifeblood of online businesses. Business blogging is one of the most effective baits for search engines because blogs are interactive and constantly updated. Be careful though with the quality of your content. New search engine algorithms are now equipped to detect what’s good or bad bait for them. Bringing your blogs to the social web where there is an overwhelming crowd could give you an added bonus. Stellar content is shareable content that can easily go viral, providing a feast for search engines. This then drives traffic to your site, generating leads, conversions and improved ROI for your business.

A good repository of resources

Good blogs contain useful information for readers and good bloggers know how to provide them. Comprehensive company knowledge, industry expertise, subject matter understanding and familiarity and, of course, a great writing ability are what draw wows from audiences. Your information nest egg must be consistently updated in keeping with the changing needs of searchers. Discontinuity and long intervals are potential recipes of disaster that can ruin your reputation, something that is not easy to rebuild. Once you’re an established trusted resource, make sure to maintain a good supply of blogs because people will keep coming back for more.

A good crowd drawer

A crowd is what you need to grow your business. Business blogging helps you fulfill this need. People are by nature social and they often want to be in a crowd where they can connect, interact and build meaningful relationships. Blogs with shareable content can spread like wildfire. Talk about controversial industry issues, for instance, and your’re sure to precipitate a deluge of opinions, ideas and discussions. This means traffic and more traffic to your site.

Now you’d complain that your small or mid-sized business would be a dwarf to the giant Coca-cola or P&G. According to Wikipedia, even Coca-Cola started small in the 1800’s with Asa G. Candler, a Coca-cola cofounder, acquiring full ownership of the business for $2,300. Look at where it is now. There was no business blogging to speak of in those days but this just shows that one small step after another can bring a business to the big leap. Business blog writing could be that small step to that big leap.

Not convinced yet? Tell us why.

Small business blog marketing isn't easy, but it's one of the most effective and cost-efficient ways of growing your online business. It requires persistence and hard work, but fundamentally, anyone can do it if they put their mind to it.

Here are three strategies we constantly see utilized for great effect. These are the things that successful blogs do, and you should too!

1 - Blog Consistently!

If there is any reasonable way of defining small business blog marketing strategies that work, it has to be based around customer acquisition. Fundamentally, you only get a return on your investment if someone buys something.

On the matter of converting visitors into viable customers, Blogspot's 2012 "State of Inbound Marketing" report makes one key element quite clear: The more you blog, the more likely you are to gain customers.

Among companies with blogs, only 43% those who posted less than monthly reported gaining a customer through their blog. Among those who post multiple times a day, that number rises to 92%. And it's a pretty smooth progression the whole way. The more often and consistently you blog, the more likely your blog is to attract actual paying customers.

Maintaining this level of output can be tricky, especially for small operations. That's one of the biggest reasons we recommend those who are serious about content marketing investigate article writing services as a way to obtain quality content in the quantities needed to make your small business blog marketing strategies pay off.

2 - Pursue Social Media

As we've mentioned before, we strongly feel that your online marketing strategies are best served by pairing blogging and social media strategies, using one to reinforce the other. There's no reason for it to be an either-or game when they both have so much to offer.

You should ensure that you have social media sharing buttons available for every blog you post, to encourage people to share them. A popular link shared on Facebook, Twitter, or Linked-In can result in a huge influx of hits. Likewise, while you probably should not use your social media accounts to announce every single blog you post, use it to promote major articles that you think have the potential to "go viral" or might genuinely provoke debate.

Social media can also be used indirectly to aid your small business blog marketing. The wealth of user information they have is generally put directly into your hands, and you can use it to leverage your market research. Check out Facebook Insights, PeopleBrowser for Twitter as well as their new targeted advertisements, along with other social-tracking systems like Klout to learn as much as you can about your audience.

3 - Become an Authority

Easier said than done, right? Well, while truly becoming a respected expert authority is quite hard, it's still quite possible to create the appearance that you are one, and that's one of the main ways to go about actually becoming one.

The key is to structure your blog and website to encourage people to continue reading your content once you're there. The more you can create an air of authority, the better that will go, and the more likely they are to either share your content, decide to make a purchase, or (hopefully) both!

Here are a few general tips:

• Blog on a wide variety of topics relating to your own industry. The more ground you can cover with good articles, the better it looks.

• Use plenty of internal links. When you mention a topic you've talked about previously, link back to the past article.

• Utilize intelligent tags with a sidebar map allowing users to easy access information on specific topics.

• When adding external links, link to the highest-quality sites you can find.

• This last one's a toughie: be willing to admit when you're wrong and post updated blogs when needed.

What other effective small business blog marketing strategies have you discovered?  

So, it's become trendy lately to write about how blogging may be dead, or at least on its way out the door. Leaving aside the slight irony of blog writing about why blogging is dead, this is a matter that, honestly, comes up year after year.

To the detractors, we say: hogwash. Blogging may not be the cool new kid on the block anymore, but it's far from dead. In fact, we say "blog or die" is still the name of the game.

A Few Facts

When we say "blog or die," it's because blogging still remains one of the most versatile and cost-effective tools in your online marketing toolbox. Here are a few statistics from a recent set of infographics from Hubspot:

• 81% of firms polled said that blogging is at least "useful" to their strategies, with fully 25% considering it "Critical."

• 57% percent report getting at least one customer due to their blogging.

• 26% percent of customers rated bloggers as having the most influence over their own buying decisions.

So, while it's true that social media is making in-roads as a method of online advertising, it's in no danger of wiping blogging off the map. It just illustrates that, as online marketing matures, there are going to be more tools developed that all have their place in a marketeer's toolbox.

Blogging As a Hub

So, why do we say "blog or die?" Because, fundamentally, your website is the hub for your business online. You might visualize your social media efforts as being satellite offices, or perhaps as embassies to various online groups. Only rarely will they make sales by themselves, unless you're in very specific fields that allow for direct buys through social media, such as the music industry.

For the most part, you put posts on Facebook or Twitter or Linked-In to lure people to your website to look more closely at what you have to offer.

Even though your blog may no longer be the first part of your organization that someone is exposed to online, it's still part of your central hub. People who are interested in what you have to offer will want to explore your website for more information. You still need to have that information there for them to peruse.

Blogging Allows In-Depth Coverage

We get it. People today have short attention spans and like the instant gratification of short social media posts. It's a fine format for sharing blurbs, one-liners, quick tidbits, questions, and George Takai's latest "lolcat" photos.

However, you still cannot truly advance an argument on social media. Many social sites of don't allow long-form content at all, and among those that do, the feature is hardly utilized by anyone. Facebook's "Notes" can emulate a blog, but in general, they're too long for the format and few people read them.

Business blogging allows you to go beyond "bumper sticker" bids for sales and to more fully express your ideas on subjects. You can't get ahead in business solely by appealing to those who only care about thoughts which can be expressed in thirty seconds or less. You need a format that allows you to explore thoughts in-depth, provoke meaningful discussions, and position yourself as a business that knows their stuff.

This is all far easier to achieve with a blog than with any social media outlet.

The Realistic Answer? Do Social AND Blog or Die.

Fundamentally, this should not be an either/or discussion, and I hope I haven't presented it that way. Don't get me wrong, social media has plenty of valid functions and can be a great tool for gaining leads. Ideally, both should be employed together, hand-in-hand, to get the best of both worlds.

So, going forward, how do you see this mix evolving in your business? More social, more blogging, or some of both?