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BLOGGINGBUSINESS HOW A BLOG CAN GROW YOUR BUSINESS Chris Garrett http://twitter.com/chrisgarrett 1 Friday, 27 February 2009
BLOGGINGBUSINESSHOW A BLOG CAN GROW YOUR BUSINESS
Chris Garrett
http://twitter.com/chrisgarrett
1Friday, 27 February 2009
Business Blogging
WHY BLOG?
• Attract an audience
• Inform and Interact, learn from your audience
• Retain your audience
• Energize your audience and motivate action
• Recruit help, contacts, employees
• Respond to stories and customers
2Friday, 27 February 2009
Business Blogging
BLOG SIDE-EFFECTS
• Grow Links for traffic and to improve search rankings
• Build familiarity and trust
• Communicate and establish your brand
• Grow a sense of community
• Offer better service
• Initiate more sales
3Friday, 27 February 2009
Business Blogging
BLOG VERSUS ...
• Website - Static pages of information or sales letters
• Newsletter - Information sent to inbox, drive action
• Forum - Conversation and interaction
• Blogs combine elements of all of the above
4Friday, 27 February 2009
Business Blogging
ATTRACT, RETAIN, RECRUIT
BLOG
EmailRSSTwitter
ReferralForwards
Re-tweets
SEOSocialLinks
PR
5Friday, 27 February 2009
Business Blogging
RETAIN WITH STICKY FACTOR
• Provide value with empathy, keep engaging, be inclusive
• Video/Audio - keep on site longer, more emotive, entertain
• Comments/Polls/Surveys - show interested in opinion, interaction
• Series/Related Posts/Categories/Tags - serialize content
• Events/Competitions/Call-in - fun, rewards, excitement
6Friday, 27 February 2009
Business Blogging
PUBLICITY+-
The conversation is happening with or without you
2004 2009
Back in 2004 Kryptonite had a famous PR problem with blogs - today companies learning same lessonsYou have to have a place where you can put your story, state the facts and establish your position.
7Friday, 27 February 2009
Business Blogging
SUCCESS STORIES
• Gary Vaynerchuk
• Family wine store
• Wine Library TV
• $50m business
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Business Blogging
• Woot.com/blog/
• Launched July 12, 2004
• Sold its 1,000,000th item, a 4GB micro hard drive, on February 5, 2007
• Little to no advertising.
SUCCESS STORIES
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Business Blogging
SUCCESS STORIES
• Thomas Mahon
• Bespoke Tailor
• Using only blog as marketing
• Full order book, including celebrities inc. Prince Charles
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Business Blogging
WHO SHOULD NOT BLOG?
• Be Present, Be Interested, Be Authentic
• Listen, Serve, Delight
• Starting a blog raises expectation of openness and interactivity
• If you don’t want a conversation, don’t start one.
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Business Blogging
PLAN
• Must start with a plan, or at least know where you want to go
• Why are you building a blog?
• Who do you want to attract?
• What story do you have to tell?
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Business Blogging
RESEARCH
• Find out what your audience is interested in, needs, wants
• Surveys, Polls
• Forums, Comments, Q&A sites
• Social Bookmarking sites
• Search.Twitter
• WordTracker, Adwords Tool
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Business Blogging
YOUR COMPETITIVE EDGE
AudienceNeeds
YourPositioning
BrandExperience
• Serve your audience needs, wants, motivationsin a way that is uniquely yours
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Business Blogging
WHAT TO TALK ABOUT
What you know
What they want
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Business Blogging
DRIVE THEM HOME
• Don’t leave your content scattered. As well as post on Flickr, YouTube, etc, also post in on one easy to find place - your blog.
• Find people where they are and bring them to you.
• Drive people from their inbox or feed reader to interact with you rather than passively read.
Your Brand Here
16Friday, 27 February 2009
Business Blogging
GROW YOUR AUDIENCE
• Think long term
• Offer overwhelming value
• Be genuine, approachable, helpful and friendly
• Raving fans are created by going extra mile
• Make strong and lasting connections based on mutual respect
• Ask questions, get feedback, learn as they learn
17Friday, 27 February 2009
Business Blogging
TRAFFIC PROBLEMS
• Attract targeted, engaged traffic
• Attention for own sake = bad
• Remember your brand
photo by chadmiller
18Friday, 27 February 2009
Business Blogging
STICKINESS
• Stop the “revolving door”
• Harder and more expensive to attract new visitors and customers than to retain existing.
• Happy, loyal visitors also much more valuable than constant stream of strangers.
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Business Blogging
SOCIAL MEDIA JOURNEY
• Take your audience on a journey
Visitor
Return Visitor
Subscriber
“Converted”
Advocate
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Business Blogging
PERSUASION+CONVERSION
• Education, Articles - Inform, solve problems, demonstrate your solution works
• Community - Encourage conversation, involvement and sense of belonging
• Call to action - Remember to make offers that match audience wants/needs
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Business Blogging
TWEAK YOUR SALES ENGINE
• Audience Targeting
• Attraction Tactics
• Persuasion Content
• Conversion
• Consumption + Results = Proof
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Business Blogging
CONSUMPTION
• Encourage sampling
• Follow-up, encourage, enquire
• Get to consume then consume more
• Consumption leads to best positive “Word of Mouth”
• Positive experience shared leads to powerful trust in your brand
23Friday, 27 February 2009
Business Blogging
PEOPLE NOT HERD
• Keep interested with engaging content
• Personalization
• Empathy ➙ Loyalty
• Learn from actions
• Customer Service
• Segmentation We are all unique individuals!
24Friday, 27 February 2009
Business Blogging
SEGMENTATION
• Create an email list just for customers, if possible split along product lines
• Use highly specific topical lists to Sell / Cross-Sell / Up-sell without annoying uninterested
• Discover your best customers and give them extra special treatment
• Work out via email unsubscribes which content causes defection, loss of interest
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Business Blogging
SOME DON’TS
• Don’t Me-Me-Me - It’s not all about you!
• Don’t force it if it isn’t working
• Don’t over-sell - Give first
• Don’t use business-talk - and don’t assume
• Don’t try to “control the conversation”
• Don’t ignore your audience
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Business Blogging
SUMMARY
• Attract targeted visitors who have a problem you can solve.
• Inform, advise, discuss, help.
• Build trust with positive experience over time.
• Demonstrate positive results.
• Make offers that match audience wants/needs.
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Business Blogging
ACTIONS
• Decide agreed metrics (eg. Links? Sales? Traffic? PR mentions?)
• Gather keywords and content research
• Create valuable content that meets audience wants/needs
• Promote content with social bookmarking
• Retain with email, feed, and social media engagement
• Learn from feedback and metrics, repeat
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Business Blogging
THANKS FOR READING ;)
• http://chrisg.com
• http://twitter.com/chrisgarrett
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