How do you Blog: – Why blogging should be part of your marketing plan

How do you Blog: – Why blogging should be part of your marketing plan

4b414cb49c771b89213fac92_1920How do you blog? Or more properly, why?

Social marketing is at the top of everyone’s radar at the moment. Twittering, facebooking, digging and other social marketing methods are advertised as the only way to market on the internet. The rush to drive customers to your business is on. And that’s cool.

But if you’ve left blogging off your marketing plan, you’ve made a big mistake. Blogging needs to be at the core of your marketing through the internet.

But why?

Why is blogging so important to a comprehensive and well-balanced marketing strategy? Why should it be the first thing you do? Why should it be in place before you get involved in social marketing, local marketing, pay-per-click or any of the other marketing techniques?

In this article, I’m going to give you four reasons that you will want to make blogging the core of your internet marketing strategy. How you blog will affect everything you do.

1. Other techniques need a place to go
I could probably (okay, make that certainly) write an article just by listing all the other marketing techniques. However, almost all of them — social, article, advertisement — work by gaining customer attention and then driving it somewhere. The problem is where? And what happens when they get there? Yes, you could simply drive them to an opt-in page or a static website. But what happens when the potential customer doesn’t love your ethical bribe? They leave. A blog gives your lead a reason to return. In essence, it becomes sticky.

2. It educates your customer
One of the realities of marketing is that many customers and potential customers really have no clue how your product or service should be used. They need help to understand and know when and where to apply your solution. They need someone to educate them in what your product or service does. A blog can be a great way to educate your customers.

2. Proves that you can do what you say
A blog is (or should be) a small, tasty sample of your product and your expertise. One of the biggest hurdles that you will have when selling your service or products is buyer disbelief and fear of loss. The copywriter and salesperson’s biggest hurdle is to convince the buyer that it is safe and that you can deliver exactly what you promise. If they can’t do that, then you won’t have a sale. So anything that can improve the odds of convincing the buyer is worthwhile. Having a blog can help you to not only convince the buyer but literally remove any trace of doubt.

3. Invokes the law of reciprocity
Favours must be returned. If you get something, you must give something. Given our penchant for free — it’s rather surprising that we feel that way. But we really do.  If a buyer is given a gift — without saying it’s a gift — then they will feel obligated to buy from you. Returning the favour as it were. This is why hospitals and charities have taken to putting a nickel in their cries for money. A well-written blog will help customers, provide them with education and generally provide good value to readers. In return, readers will feel obligated and will seek to return the favour to the blogger. Which translates as a much easier sale.

4. Google search likes it.
It may seem funny to go from active marketing techniques to a passive source of traffic. But in fact, everything cycles through the search engines eventually. And Google loves blogging. Not only does it provide information but it does so on a frequent basis. The information is both available and timely. And it typically is comprehensive and exclusive. All of which are characteristics the searcher (and thus the search engine) loves. Blogs therefore have an advantage over other types of content marketing as a result.