Do you have a blog for your business or non-profit? Here are 3 top reasons to blog for your business or non-profit organization.
Here’s the Who, What, and Why:
Authority – Who knows your product or service best? You do. You are the expert in your field so tell us more about how great your product or service is.
Exposure – What is it that you do? Show them!
Empathy – Why should they care about what you know? Show your audience you care. You know they have busy lives and kids to take care of so how can you be helpful to their needs.
If you read my previous post, How to use 3 Top Marketing Tools – Podcast, Video, & Blog you’ll learn that blogs are here to stay and will help you gain authority, exposure, and show empathy.
Authority
YOU know your service or product best. You have to let people know who you are and where you’ve been. Tell us about how you’ve learned about what you do and how great your service or product is.
How many years of experience do you have?
Here’s an example:
There are 2 roofing company businesses that have been around for 30 years.
- The 1st company has a one page website with a contact form and phone number.
- The 2nd company, has a website with a contact form page AND a blog. Their blog talks about the difference between shingles versus rubber and ideas on how to maintain a leak-free house.
Which of these companies show authority? Who seems to know more about their service?
The blog gives the 2nd company that little bit extra to make them seem like they know what they’re doing.
Exposure
How can you gain exposure to your business with a blog?
Here’s what you can do on a blog:
- Photos
- Videos
- SlideShare presentations
- Podcasts
Let’s go back to the roofing company scenario… Before and after photos would be great. Show off what you can do!
Videos would be even better, maybe give tips on a DIY job.
Be creative and have fun with it. When you’re passionate about what you do, it will show.
Once you have your blog going then you can post to your favorite social media platforms. You’ll need an awesome graphic to grab attention because social media is noisy.
Images go a long way. Check out my post on How to Use Canva Like a Pro for tips on how to use Canva to create a FREE graphic that you can post along with your blog URL.
Michael Hyatt has a great post on the Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid When Blogging, be sure to check it out. Michael Hyatt is my personal favorite on how to build a platform with blogging and leadership skills. His website is chock full of juicy information to help you become a better blogger and businessperson. He has a book called, Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World*, which has rave reviews.
Another way you can get your blog seen is through Alltop. Get your blog feed onto Alltop and you’ll get some traffic that way as well. Many businesses have their feed on Alltop.
Check out some popular companies on Alltop:
I encourage you to take a look at other company blogs and see how it can inspire you to blog for your business.
Empathy
When you take a look at company blogs, they can be informative on what’s going on with their company and also have emotional stories that affect you.
Here’s Southwest Airlines blog, Nuts About Southwest.
Read about their posts:
They have a video about their first international flight ever to Jamaica.
They also have a post about retired greyhound dogs that need to find good homes and they help them with a program they have.
Talk about fun and sweet exciting news about your business! People like to hear about what your business does to help others and THEM. Find out about your clients. Are they single, married, have children, have houses, have farms, etc.? The more you know your demographic the better you can post related blog posts that will hit home with them. Bring your blog to their understanding.
When you connect with your clients or potential clients in your blog you build amazing relationships.
TWEET THIS!
“Connect with your client.”
Does this seem too hard to do for your business? It does take some time to build an audience and you must have a schedule of posts. Will you plan to blog monthly, weekly, or bi-weekly?
There are some questions that must be answered before you can start, which I will talk about in a different post.
Think about how much time you want to commit and if you think it’ll be worth it. Hiring a virtual assistant to run your blog may be the answer for you.
Questions for you:
- Do you blog for your business? If so, how is it working for you?
- Do you want to blog but you’re not sure where to start? Tell me about it.
Take care,
Lillian De Jesus
* Disclaimer: There is an Amazon Affiliate link here and if there are any purchases made I would receive a small percentage of the sale. I would only provide links to Amazon only if I feel that it is of value to my readers.
I do both SEO and Facebook business page for my part time income tax business. I target locals. Facebook has been more effective for me. I share great images and cartoons with my customer base.
Chris
Owner CEL Financial Services
http://web.userinstinct.com/53620168-cel-financial-services-fillmore-income-tax-preparation.htm
Hi Chris,
That’s great! I’m glad Facebook is working out for you. It’s been hard for many to get posts seen since they changed the algorithm. Images do work wonders in FB.
Take care,
Lillian
Great post and it still amazes me how many companies out there don’t have a website especially in the digital information age! Tells me there there is still plenty space to help educate and inform the un-informed..
Exactly right Rohan! Relocating to the countryside of Indiana from Chicago, I have learned that there are so many businesses that need to be informed. If you don’t have a website, at least have a Google+ local page. However if you do have a website, get a blog on it.