Why Blog­ging Is Es­sen­tial For Your In­ter­net Business

Build­ing a suc­cess­ful on­line busi­ness to­day means build­ing com­mu­nity.  As so­cial me­dia con­tin­ues to gain mo­men­tum and rev­o­lu­tion­ize the mar­ket­ing world, it is chang­ing the way busi­nesses con­nect with con­sumers in pro­found ways.

Today’s ad­ver­tis­ing gives the cus­tomer a voice, asks for in­put, and sparks a two-way conversation. 

But while com­pa­nies through­out the world are be­gin­ning to un­der­stand the im­por­tance of so­cial me­dia, most have yet to grasp the im­pli­ca­tions it has for mar­ket­ing more generally. 

Blogs have be­come an es­sen­tial as­pect of all in­ter­net busi­ness cam­paigns, and any ecom­merce site with­out one is fail­ing to lever­age one of the most im­por­tant net­work­ing re­sources at its disposal.

Here’s why:

Cul­ti­vat­ing a Community

By pro­vid­ing qual­ity, in­dus­try rel­e­vant con­tent, busi­nesses at­tract vis­i­tors who are gen­uinely in­ter­ested in their prod­ucts.  Thought­ful posts pro­voke con­ver­sa­tions, get read­ers com­ment­ing, and gen­er­ate in­ter­est that feeds the in­dus­try and ul­ti­mately in­creases busi­ness through­out the sector. 

If you can keep vis­i­tors com­ing back to your blog, you will in­spire strong loy­al­ties from your customers. 

Brand Es­tab­lish­ment

Brand­ing has al­ways been a cor­ner­stone of the busi­ness world.  But the in­ter­net, along with the mod­ern pro­lif­er­a­tion of im­ages and ad­ver­tis­ing, have made brand­ing more im­por­tant than ever.  They have also made it more difficult. 

To suc­ceed, com­pa­nies must cre­ate brands that stand out from the sea of oth­ers, while at the same time re­main­ing aes­thet­i­cally ap­peal­ing and con­sis­tent enough to pro­voke im­me­di­ate recog­ni­tion and pos­i­tive as­so­ci­a­tions. As you might imag­ine, this is no easy task. 

So com­pa­nies need every out­let they can find to mar­ket their brands, and blogs are one of the best plat­forms around. 

Link Build­ing and SEO

Blogs are an in­valu­able way to boost SEO cam­paigns and es­tab­lish qual­ity links to com­pany sites and sales pages. 

Ex­pand­ing your busi­ness’ in­flu­ence on­line is a mat­ter of ex­pand­ing the web of con­nec­tions be­tween your own sites, and oth­ers like them.  So don’t shy away from pro­mot­ing other blogs or busi­nesses.  The more re­sources your web­site con­nects vis­i­tors with, the more traf­fic you gen­er­ate, and the more ex­po­sure you ul­ti­mately give your business. 

Mar­ket Research

The com­mu­nity that gath­ers around your busi­ness blog is also an in­valu­able source of mar­ket­ing information. 

• By mon­i­tor­ing con­ver­sa­tions and com­ments, you will be able to get a feel for the trends, in­ter­ests, and val­ues your cus­tomers are most at­tracted to. 
• You will also gain a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of your con­sumer de­mo­graphic, and be able to tai­lor your mar­ket­ing cam­paigns to cater more ef­fec­tively to the unique needs of your customers. 

Break­ing the Cor­po­rate Barrier

Blogs give busi­nesses a chance to show­case the hu­man el­e­ment be­hind their cold cor­po­rate façades.  High­light ex­cit­ing new hires, post videos of your work­ing en­vi­ron­ment, and con­vey your com­pany ethos in cre­ative ways that are im­pos­si­ble on other platforms. 

Blogs are an op­por­tu­nity to con­nect on a hu­man level with a tar­geted com­mu­nity, share hu­mor, and forge loyalties. 

Blog­ging takes time, re­quires a sub­stan­tial in­vest­ment, and de­mands cre­ativ­ity.  Its im­pact is dif­fi­cult to quan­tify and its re­sults are hard to mea­sure.  So many busi­nesses are quick to dis­miss its im­por­tance and write it off as an un­pro­duc­tive waste of time.  But this way of think­ing dis­re­gards the pow­er­ful per­sonal con­nec­tions and loy­al­ties that on­line mar­ket­ing is ca­pa­ble of sparking. 

Mar­ket­ing is no longer just a num­bers game.  In­no­v­a­tive ad­ver­tis­ers to­day have proven time and again that tar­geted cam­paigns are ex­po­nen­tially more ef­fec­tive than tra­di­tional mass mar­ket­ing techniques. 

Blogs are in­stru­ments for build­ing com­mu­nity, and com­mu­ni­ties are in­valu­able for on­line busi­nesses. So start your blog to­day, and stop squan­der­ing the enor­mous po­ten­tial of this un­prece­dented mod­ern resource. 

[rms] Ralf Skir­r’s comment:
Great points here for adding a blog to your busi­ness web site.

The sin­gle one point that, I be­lieve, is most un­der-uti­l­ized is ‘cul­ti­vat­ing a com­mu­nity.’ Hav­ing re­peat vis­i­tors in it­self is not enought to call it a community.

A com­mu­nity requires

• that those re­peat vis­i­tors share some­thing in com­mon that ties them together.
• that there’s some form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween blog­ger and read­ers AND be­tween the read­ers them­selves (= com­mu­ni­ca­tion from reader to reader).

Pub­lish­ing great con­tent to your blog is rel­a­tively easy to do, it only re­quires time and effort.

Turn­ing your blog into a place for a com­mu­nity is a much higher and also more re­ward­ing task. I’m work­ing on that for ibmm, we’ll see how it turns out a few months from now.