BLOGGING FOR GOLD A lot of business owners talk a good game when it comes to “customer intimacy.” But what does it really mean? Well, the more you know about a customer, the more you can cater to their needs. But how do you get them to really open up? It helps if you open up first, and one great new way to do that is with a Web log, also known as a “blog.” Or CLICK HERE and we will create for you a FREE 80pg Custom Marketing Plan... A blog is essentially a formatted Web page with a chronological series of posts and replies on a particular subject. Blogs started out as online diaries for any Joe Schmoe, but they’ve lately transformed into a great tool for business owners to cultivate customer interaction. “It’s more than just people reading your words,” says Susannah Gardner, author of Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies. “They get to interact with you, which is a huge advantage in building that relationship.” Blogs give customers a level of access and honesty they don’t typically get elsewhere. “Frankly, consumers often think that marketing isn’t trustworthy,” says Gardner. “They get so many marketing messages every day, they can’t really believe that what you’re saying is true. So when they see something that is sincere, it’s pretty mind-blowing.” Rebecca Thomas has seen that effect first-hand. Thomas has been blogging for about two years, partly for her own enjoyment, but also to promote Rebecca Thomas Designs, the business she runs from her Seattle home. Thomas makes handcrafted jewelry, and her blog features a combination of how-to information for jeweler wannabes as well as the cultural history of her materials and designs. Thomas says that, although she doesn’t blog solely for marketing purposes, her stories and musings do seem to entice people to buy. “People love when there’s a story attached to the design,” she says. But the paradox of blogs is that the more overtly you try to use them for marketing purposes, the less successful they’re likely to be.“ The medium won’t support pure marketing speak,” says Susannah Gardner. “If it sounds too promotional, no one is going to want to consume it.” HOW DO YOU GET STARTED??? Once we’ve downloaded some blogging software (see “Choosing a Blogging Tool” below), we’re pretty much ready to begin. We can set up our own blogging site. yourcompanyblog.com is probably still available. However, Jeremy Wright, author of Blog Marketing, suggests that we resist the urge to start posting immediately. To test the waters, start by reading a handful of blogs in your industry for a couple of weeks. You can find blogs by searching on Yahoo or Google for “yourproducts blog” or “yourservice blog,” or whatever. Once you’ve found a few, don’t post any replies: just read. “Substitute it for reading your newspaper, so you’re not taking more time out of the day,” says Wright. Once you’ve got a sense of how things work, start posting comments. “After a few weeks, when your comments start to get to about 250 words, that’s when you should start blogging on your own,” says Wright. Once you do, don’t tell anyone about what you’re doing, at least at first. That way you can get a feel for blogging without any pressure or expectations. “If you can do it daily for two weeks, you can start telling friends and linking to other sites and blogs,” he says. An added benefit to this approach is that you’ll have built up a bit of a blog history that readers can search through and that you can refer readers back to in future posts. HOW MUCH TIME WILL IT TAKE??? You need to post often enough to build the interest of your audience. “If you’re posting only once a week, people won’t have enough of a sense of you,” says Gardner. But you also need to be careful of blogging too frequently for the appetite of your audience. “I don’t have the time to read four or five posts a day. With new bloggers, the fun sometimes causes them to get carried a way.” Jeremy Wight suggests five posts a week, or one for each weekday. “You need to have enough so people are coming back every day to get something new,” he says. That may sound like a huge time commitment at first, but blogging doesn’t need to be onerous. In fact, if it is, you’re probably missing the point. “It doesn’t need to be perfect; it just needs to have value for the reader,” he says. “People think they have to write a 2,000-word essay five times a day, but nobody has time for that.” Wright recommends spending no more than 10 minutes a day on your posts. “Otherwise you’ll get burnt out,” he says. Rebecca Thomas agrees. “I maintain roughly seven blogs, so I tend to write very short posts, maybe 250 to 300 words,” she says. Thomas spends a half hour to an hour a week on each of her blogs: every day she writes all the posts for a particular blog for the entire upcoming week. That way, all she has to do is post them each day. Potential bloggers are often intimidated by the idea of having to write something brilliant every single day. “The pressure to be a guru can stop you from being one,” says Wright. “People think they have to come up with industry-transforming thoughts for every post, but that’s not a reasonable expectation. The blog needs to be sustainable. It’s more like sitting down with friends and chatting than talking at a conference.” Most Web denizens have learned that they need to take everything they read online with a grain of salt. But when you do make a mistake, whether it’s a factual error or a bold prediction that didn’t quite come true, the best thing to do is it simply fess up. It’s really tempting for errant bloggers to surreptitiously change their previous posts, or to delete them, but odds are that if you do, you’ll wind up getting found out. “When you make a mistake, you can change it on your blog, but you should do it in an open and forthright way,” says Gardner. “There are too many ways to get caught, like getting cached by a search engine.” But more important, says Gardener, being open about mistakes is a great way to build readers’ loyalty. “If you make a mistake and correct it,” she says, “readers know that they can trust you.” CHOOSING A BLOGGING TOOL... Once we decide we want to blog, we’re going to need special software to do the actual blogging. The best-known tool is Blogger but according to Jeremy Wright, author of Blog Marketing, most business owners are better off with either Type Pad or Word Press, both of which feature templates and tools that will have you posting your first online missive in a matter of minutes. Or CLICK HERE and we will create for you a FREE 80pg Custom Marketing Plan...