If you are a small business owner, you are familiar with the daily activities that are necessary to keep your business afloat. Your first priorities are ordering supplies, paying your vendors, taking care of payroll, tracking sales, and creating invoices for those sales. While you have all of those procedures down to a science, there is one activity that is falling through the cracks.
According to a report by the Huffington Post, blogging is a vital activity that many small businesses are letting fall to the wayside. Many experts have stated that social media is an important way to connect to customers and get much needed feedback. The misconception there is that if your company has a Facebook page or a Twitter handle, you are headed for success. Social media requires interaction. Blogging is a way to engage your audience, create interest, which will translate into sales.
There are plenty excuses that you may have not to blog such as not having the time, not knowing what to write, not knowing how to write, and not knowing what to write. All of those obstacles are easily conquered. If you don’t have the time or the ability to write, hire a ghostwriter. As a business owner, you know how to delegate duties. As for coming up with the content, that is an easy fix. You know your niche and you are passionate about your business. All you have to do is to translate it. Is there a question that many of your customers ask? Talk about it on your blog. The objective is to establish yourself as an authority in your area by sharing your knowledge.
The problem with popular social media is that your posts may be buried by other activity on your subscriber’s accounts. Blogging allows your audience to subscribe to your emails and offers. In your blog posts, you can strategically place links to your products and the services that you offer. This tactic also allows your audience to share relevant stories with their friends and family. You can also place links to recent blog posts on your social media accounts. The objective is to drive visitors to your site. Visitors translate to sales.
Understand that blogging is not meant to be a direct sales technique. You don’t want to barrage your readers with messages to buy, buy, and buy. Your intention is to educate and create the need through that education for your products and services. There is no “boxed“ strategy that works better than any other. The great thing about blogging is that you can customize and adapt to meet the needs of your customers.
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