Blogs may have been futuristic just a few years ago, they’re now a must-have for any business, large or small. This is also very true if you are a commission only sales rep. By not blogging, you are missing out on serious access to potential customers.
If you are thinking, I am in such and such industry I do not need to blog. Or blogging is just another fad, I never needed to before so why should I start now. It is a necessity to have a website, but if you do not do anything to help people find it, only those that know your company will go to it.
Let me pose it to you this way, Lets go back to the days before the Internet took off, if you had a business and did not list in the yellow pages, chances are only the people that came to your business are the ones that knew about it. You may have gotten referral business, but that can only go so far. The chances of generating new business would be harder.
The reality of today’s world, is people want information. Your website & blog are open 24-7, 365 days a year. I cannot tell you how many times, I have turned to Google looking for answers to questions. Chances are very good that your potential customers are searching online for answers to their questions. Think about the most common questions people ask you about your products or services. Now go to google and type one in, I am willing to bet you will find at least one blog post or article answering that question. If not, than imagine if you wrote a post about that, what do you think the chances for that person or people that do search for that ending up becoming a customer. A lot higher.
Blogging Benefits
In the Internet world, content is the currency, and blogs are the gold behind the currency. Search engines love blogs because the content is always changing and being updated. It is a proven fact that, sites with blogs will rank higher than sites whose content doesn’t get changed very often.
As I stated before, people are looking for answers to questions every minute of the day. Some people will search online rather than asking someone. When you decide to do business with someone, you want to do business with someone you trust and someone you feel knows what they are doing. By blogging, you establish your expertise in your industry, and by allowing for comments and providing feedback you build a relationship with visitors. By hosting a blog that relates to your industry, you can answer those questions and get people to your site.
You can blog about:
- Commonly asked questions
- Problems your customers have
- Industry news
- Company news
- Response to blog or article on another site
- Your insights into your industry
If a customer had the choice between you, whose blog he or she has read, and a competitor, of which he or she knows nothing about, he or she will likely choose you because you’ve proven to be useful to her.
Logistics
As a small business owner or commissioned sales rep, you may or may not have time or skill to churn out several blog posts per week. If that’s the case, you can hire someone to do the work.
When I work with a client, I always suggest them to at the very least provide the topics if they do not have the time to write.
Before you begin, set your blogging strategy.
Determine:
- How many posts per week you want
- What your blog will be about
- Where and how you will promote blog posts
- How much you can afford to pay, if you’re outsourcing the work
Spreading the Word
So now you have a blog, whether you have hired someone to write or you have been posting yourself, now how do you get people to read it? This is another topic on its own. But if you are a do-it-yourself-er than you can set up your blog so that it posts to your facebook and twitter automatically. Ask others to share the posts as well as having a share button at the end of each post. If you send out a monthly newsletter, include the link to your blog in it. Give incentives to existing customers to comment and subscribe and share. The more you promote your blog, the more people that will read it, the better you rank in search engines, and most importantly those people will eventually transform from visitors to customers.
