San Diego Marketing Round Table – Starting the Conversation
At this month’s Round Table, we discussed blogging and how to most effectively use it as a tool to market your business. One of the attendees, Jessica Barna of Kitchens Resolved, wrote and typed up notes that I thought would be good to share. Enjoy!
Topic: The Art of Blogging – Starting the Conversation
Blogs:
Can’t just be all the wonderful things you do
Must provide some type of useful or entertaining information
Helps develop trust with potential customers
For best results: should use an integrated system of blogs, video, email marketing, etc.
Cannot get the full benefit from a blog without using other social media marketing
Need to use all the tools available to us
Portray yourself through your blog
Get involved in a person’s thinking
Can be demanding, blogs require constant updating
Common practice: Offer services to influential bloggers, hope that bloggers talk about your product/services.
RSS Feed allows you to subscribe to blogs, can create reader accounts and have your selected blogs update your reader page automatically.
Takes 6 Touches to get business – use blogging to start touching clients without much time or money from you per touch.
Don’t be “salsey” in your blog. No one wants to be sold, but everyone likes to buy.
Video Blogs:
Idea: Provide a video “power tip” on You Tube. Post a new tip daily, to keep people coming back.
Develop your own You Tube Channel
Mike recommends having out more than 100 videos. Start with 20 or 30, and daily update.
With so many blogs nowadays, how do small businesses create a blog that competes with others?
Placement,
Comment on blogs in your field,
Always provide a link to your website,
Make your blog useful every post
Takes time and effort.
Hire Marketing help.
Optimize your blog for people to find you when they search, SEO.
Cross-pollinate with other bloggers to get exposure to their readers (What is right name for this practice?
The Art of Blogging – the four E’s
- Education
- Engagement
- Enrichment
- Entertainment
Organizing your blog for search-ability: can have keywords for each of your posts, can have a search feature so people can find your writing about any subject you blog about, really good blogs usually have search features.
Blogs used for marketing businesses usually have 1 or more of these 6 goals (adapted from a list by S. Gardner):
- Inform or educate the public and your current customers
- Provide customer service, or help to use a product or service
- Convey a sense of company personality and culture
- Entertain readers and customers
- Drive readers to take an action
- Encourage dialogue with customers
Tools and references:
4 Square – condenses various social media outlets
Alltop.com is a blog directory
Next month topic: Guerilla Marketing
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