Blogging is one form of social media marketing that can enhance your company. But why and what is the best way to go about it?

The Why?

A shop window
By providing a platform via which your customers can get to know you and your products and services. Like your website, its another shop window but one that is ever changing and dynamic.

Creating links to you website
Blogs can help you to create inbound links to your website. Search engine’s like inbound links from authoritative and content laden sources. If your blog is rich with useful information for your visitors then the search engines will treat links from there as ‘good’ and they will help you to increase your search engine ranking. Creating inbound links is a big part of search engine optimisation so if you are serious about your ranking in the search engines then a blog will definately help.

Communication
Blogs that allow comments from its readers enable your audience to communicate with you. This can provide useful feedback for your company.

Advertising
Advertising your products on your blog and linking straight to them on your website will provide extra traffic for your shopping cart. A good blog can generate lots of traffic and enable you to increase sales directly.

The How?

Posting often and regularly
It is important to post often and regularly when it comes to blogs. ‘As often as you can’ is probably the best phrase to have in mind when it comes to blogging.  Its also important not to leave large gaps between posts.

Great content
Your blog posts have to be informative or interesting or funny (or all three). But seriously, keeping good content going is the most important thing. When you are writing, just think about your target audience. What would they like to hear about? What would they find interesting? What are their interests?

Keywords
Use your main keywords and keyphrases to enable the search engine robots to search through your writing. Optimising your blog for the search engines is important if you want to rank well.

Write naturally
Search engines are looking for natural patterns of writing. This means no formula’s but natural, informative writing. This can seem like a contradiction: You are told to focus on keywords but then you are told to write naturally. It can be done. Focus mainly on writing naturally but keep the keywords to the forefront of your mind whilst you are doing it.

Natural writing is also varied. So write posts of different lengths and intersperse text posts with photos and video.

Patience
It can take time to build up a following on a blog. Just be patient and keep going.

The attention economy refers to the population’s attention as a commodity. Its a modern term bought about by the fact that the nature of society is such that there is almost an unlimited amount of information available to us but there is only a limited number of units of information that we can take in at any one time. For online marketing its a very relevant topic – where is the information about our companies? Who is reading it?

Relatively speaking marketing and advertising has never been better value for money. The only way to reach a mass audience 15 years ago was to advertise on TV or the national papers but now you can have a worldwide presence easily via the web. The downside is that because this is possible for very little output then lots of people can do it too. And they do. This means that there is more competition but human beings still only have a limited ability to read and retain the messages that they receive and a limited amount of time in the day in which to receive them. This is what attention economy is about.

What is said about your company is no longer restricted to the information that you put out. Online what is on your website and the advertising you create is not the end of it. There are blogs, social networking sites and forums where people can pass on information about you and their experiences with your service or products.

As consumers become more savy they are more likely to research you online and it pays to keep track of what is being said about you. It gives you the opportunity to redress anything that is incorrect or not in keeping with your company ethos. It also helps you to anticipate opportunities and act upon them. But in order to do this you need to know where best to pinpoint your efforts. This is where attention economy comes in.

Attention economy follows where people are focusing their attention at any one time. This helps marketers to best hone their efforts. Recent research shows that Facebook is latest communication platform for internet users with mobile technology expected to really take off in the next couple of years.

What is Social Media & How Can it Help?

If you’ve been anywhere near online marketing in the last two years who won’t have escaped the phrase ’social media’. But what exactly is it and what can it do for business?

Social media is any form of online activity which offers a platform for the public at large. Its areas where people can interact with the internet and each other. The important thing about social media is that its growing fast with more and more people enjoying the fact that they can express themselves online and communicate with people.

Here are some areas of social media:

Community forums
Community forums are areas where you can post your opinions and information which will be seen by other people in that community who can then respond to your posts.

Businesses can use forums to find out what their customers points of views are about their company and their products and to establish and deepen their relationship with their customers.

Bloging
Blogs are like online diaries. They are easy to set up and provide a space where anyone can have their voice.

For businesses its a cost effective way of engaging with your audience and can provide a human face to a company. It also helps to drive traffic to your website and increases your ability to communicate information about your company and its services and products.

Bloggers often read other blogs and good or controversial posts can end up spreading virally all over the internet.

(Twitter)
Twitter is a micro-blogging site that is used to send one-line pieces of information to your audience. It is currently very popular and mentioned a great deal on British TV.

Social Networking
Social networking sites enable people to communicate with each other. Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn are all examples of social networking sites.

Businesses can have a presence on these sites both as participants and advertisers. In Facebook, for example, businesses can have ‘Fans’ who sign up to receive information about the company, its products and anything that it wants to communicate to its audience.

From an advertising point of view Facebook can track user information and behaviour that allows them to present very targeted advertisements to their users. This kind of behavioural marketing is great for business.

Video
Online video has really grown. YouTube for example allows people to upload their videos for free allowing thousands of people all over the world to see their recordings. Bands who would otherwise have remained unsigned have become overnight sensations because of exposure on YouTube.

From a business point of view, its easy to get your video marketing out there. Its a free facility with huge viewing potential. It also provides an opportunity for your audience to see the human side of your company and a video can have a far greater impact than just text on a page.

Overview
Overall social media can only benefit business by increasing its exposure and allowing the public to communicate with you.  Social media can increase interest in your business and drive more traffic to your website which hopefully will convert into business. But there are downsides to everything of course and Propero Digial will be addressing the negative side of social media over the next week.