Blogging For Business: What To Write?

Update:  This article was written some time ago now. It still holds true but some things that have changed are the way that Google rewards good relevant topical and location appropriate content, even more than ever before. So blogging is a clean and easy way for businesses to keep their articles relevant and fresh. This is critical. 

The other big change? Mobile. With mobile and tablet searching expected to overtake desktop computers for accessing the web by 2015 it is past due, the time to make sure your website or at the very least your blog (connected to your website), is a readable in mobile format. 

Slowly small business owners are starting to 'get it' that being online is something their business needs to do even if they are not sure how to go about it.

Aside from a brochure-style website that lists all the usual details about the business: what you do: where you are; when you're open and how to contact you, it is important to know that you need fresh content that is updated regularly. The best way to do that - the easiest way to do that - is with a blog.

In fact the old days of the static webpage are pretty much over and many websites now are just an upscale blog with some additional static pages. The beauty of this model is that it is easy for non-technical people to just add their new content and not have to fuss too much with knowing how the 'behind the scenes' parts work.

When we think about content being added it raises all kinds of questions that may have not been considered before and chief among them may be "What will I write about?". Not everyone is accustomed to writing for the public and this can seem like a daunting prospect.

Here are some questions I've been asked about this and hopefully this may shed some light you can use in finding topics for writing content for your business.

Social Media For Business Results

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Write about what you know.

We can be blinded by the things that we take for granted and assume that everybody knows what we know. That's not true though and what seems simple to you with your experience, can seem like arcane magical voodoo for me who has never had to know about the inner workings of a magneto or the finer points of painting a house.

What you know about your specialty, if I am in the mindset for needing that thing, is madly interesting to me right then. People go searching for very specific information when they have a need for something and if your article is on target for that thing of which they seek, then your article (blog) will come up and be seen. This is where you can stand out from all the other businesses who do what you do. I may have no interest at all in mixer taps - until my kitchen sink is flooded and I need to buy one. Then I want to know what I need to know before I buy.

If you say it - then you own it. Even if everyone else in your industry does the same thing only the one with the information out there for me to find will get the credit.

What does your blog say to us? We know you know your stuff - and that's evidence right there on the webpage that you have some experience, knowledge and enough savvy to put it out there for us to see.


I don't want to tip off my competition.
This is a common fear and the reality is that they already know part of what you know. That doesn't matter. Focus on what customers will find useful not your competitors. Frankly most businesses are doing zilch about marketing effectively and carving out a slice of the market to own. Be there first and seek to own your little corner of the patch.

You don't have to 'give away the farm' but you can provide background information that makes it easy for me to know what I need to know to make a good decision.

Developing a strategy for your online presence and your blogging means that you can work through all the informaton that you want potential customers to know about your expertise and your service offering. Over time this will add real value to your website and attract targeted buyers to your business.

With a strategy, and a schedule to follow you can streamline your writing and ensure regular updates without taking too much time away from your other activities.

So - what's the message you'd like to share about your business?



Related posts:
How to start blogging for business - and what to write about
10 Steps To Local Marketing Online
The Dirty Secrets Business Needs To Know About Social Media
Why You Need To Build Your Mailing List And How To Do It
How To Get Your Local Business Found Online
How-To: Developing A Social Media Strategy For Marketing
Quick & Dirty Business Review
Test Your Website For Roadworthiness
What You Should Know About Social Media For Business

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Nurture Your Customers - Why and How

UPDATE:
I wrote this blog back in 2011. Four years later, everything in it is still valid. Everything in it is still not being done by the majority of small businesses. Meanwhile large corporations have moved into neuromarketing and can predict our buying habits over time, using algorithms and fancy online tracking software, and know what we do as pattern when shopping, more clearly than we ourselves do.

They will be coming after your customers if you don't lift your game. They may be already.

Many businesses seem to have missed the fact that their clients over the past are the key to promoting future growth and so they fail to pay due respect to this vital element of the business.

The importance of capturing good quality information on customers (and people who are not yet customers but have expressed an interest in the business) cannot be stressed too highly. These are people who have had experience with your business and in the case of customers, have already 'voted for you' with their money by spending it with you.

So what DO you do with a client list?

First thing you do is make sure you have a good amount of the right kind of information about them.

Capturing Data

Some (minimum) things you definitely want, if you can get it:

First and last name
Date of Birth or birthday (depending on your industry)
Postal address
Email address
Mobile phone number
Purchase history
What they bought
When they bought it
What they spent
Family status Single Married Children etc

What you do with the information once you have it will depend on the strategy you are going to adopt for your Client Nurturing Program. Yes, you have won these customers to your business and paid a lot of money in marketing and advertising for them to find you in the first place, so now you have them, make the most of it.

Your existing clients will always be a more economical source of new business than anything else you do to gain customers.

Many businesses throw money at new people who have never supported them, in the form of special offers, discounts and the like - and completely ignore their existing customers!

Your customers:

Buy more things in the future
Influence friends' purchases
Talk about the things they buy
Can recommend you
Appreciate being appreciated

What are you doing with your existing customers to nurture them and encourage them to come back and buy from you again? What are you doing to capture good responses from customers who are happy with you in the form of referrals and endorsements? Do you even know where to start to put a Nurturing Program in place?

This should be your priority to get this done.

If you don't know how, ask.
If you don't know who to ask, ask me.
If you think you know how to but you're not sure where to start, get the help you need.

Spending money on marketing without getting this in order is just pouring money down the drain.

How long have you been doing that?

Start using your head.

Your customers need to hear from you.




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Love Your Customers. Engage.

UPDATE: 

Taking a look back at past articles I have posted on this blog has been interesting. While not much has changed from a strategic viewpoint, the environment around us has definitely changed. Who could have predicted that Facebook would be the place whole families connected online - even grandma and pop! 

Engaging with customers who are online and those who are in their social circle and could be your next customer, has never been so easy. Small business has never had the leverage they do now to spread their message - and I don't mean advertisements - and attract people who love what they do. 

Yet many small business still have no real website that has the capacity to work for them in this way. The changes that would make them function are often not big, but they are significant changes in so far as how well they work. The look of the website may not even be changed, though most websites tend to be poorly designed visually and with respect to functional navigation layout. Sadly few have much in the way of quality, relevant writing that is on target for their product and customer demographic. 

In other words - they have nothing that someone looking for that information and to buy - will find from those stores. They have not bothered to make it available - not to Google, and so not to customers. 

Facebook for business pages, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, Instagram, your blog - all of these have the capacity to drive traffic to your website - people who are interested in your product. See my articles on Blogging for business for more information.

Please, let this be the year you get that sorted for the sake and welfare of your business. - Lindy

The social media world is abuzz with messages on how the future is all about caring for customers and your network, showing you care and being authentic in our engagement with people online.

I see this and I know it's true, and I wonder if this should give me hope that business will soon come to understand this too.

Now while I'm prone to be optimistic, I am perhaps not optimistic enough to expect that this will happen for the great majority of businesses. More than that, I predict a great many businesses will continue to not 'get it' at all, and will keep doing what they are doing, without regard for the changing face of business and the new way that people are coming to expect to deal with businesses as they look to buy goods and services.

For the smart business owners, they will realise The Jig Is Up... and if they want to be relevant to customers, if they want to have their loyalty and their ongoing business, then they have to smarten up the way they do business. The smart ones, will do just that. And in doing that, they can own that segment of the local business, if that's what they want and if that's what they incorporate into a strategy to accomplish this as an outcome.

Enter the era of Engagement. Well it isn't such a new era. Years ago my parents opened a corner shop to let them earn money when my eldest brother was hospitalised for quite a long time. The corner store was a great example of local business engaging and relating to local customers and responding to the market. The shopkeeper was a part of the community and 'they knew where you lived', so your reputation was important, as was your ability to provide a service model that accomodated the needs of your customers and made your business an integral component of their day-to-day life.

In 2010 that's still the way it is. I hear business owners say "customers aren't loyal any more". And they are probably right. Customers have no reason to keep coming back to your store if you aren't providing them something different in the experience. If you train your customers to just look for discount prices, then guess what? They will find the stuff cheaper somewhere else. Probably at a big box store that can buy supplies cheaper than you can. So there is no future in that kind of selling model. What the big box stores can't do - and the family business can - is provide expertise, and engagement and responsiveness. The family business can determine to be the best in their particular field, sell stuff that is worth the price to buy and be there when things go wrong, to make them right again. That's what business can do - and that's what business will do... if it wants to stay in business in this new economy.

But that's not all bad. And technology lets us not only provide this expertise and superior service model in our local downtown area, but potentially, across the internet to those people who want what you specialise in. If you set your business up well, you can sell your stuff to people close by - and people not so close by, but who want what only you can do.

So what is the 'takeaway' from this? Simply this.

If you want your business to be vital into the future you need to start approaching it as a business. Understand the way the market works and you make sure you have:

• A clear Vision for what you want to achieve
• Communicate that Vision to your employees, friends, partner, and customers
• a strategy of your own to follow in implementing your vision
• actions and steps in place to deliver what you promise
• methods in place to monitor and track your progress
• a clear understanding of who your competitors are - and
• what strategy they are using.

It's not good enough now to just turn up each day and do what you do. Think. Plan. Take Action. Engage.

That's what will keep your business healthy in the new economy.

Oh and one final thing. If you don't love your customers ... get out of business now.

Related posts

Nurture your customers - how and why
Businesses are hiding online and nobody can find them
Business articles on social media and online marketing 
How this clothing business in an Australian country town started selling to the world

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Business In Hiding Online

Almost every day I am checking out websites for businesses. If I meet someone or an enquiry comes in for coaching or help with a Facebook page, or other social media or marketing issue, I check out their website.

What Does Your Business Present Like Online? 

I check it out first to see if I can find it by their category of what they do.

Then I check it to see how it looks to me as a potential customer. Does it make them look like they know what they are doing and presents them as professional in their manner, or amateur? Are the images real or stock photos? Are they well shot or dark and impossible to see clearly?

Then I look 'in the back' to see what it looks like for Google.

After that, I check to see if basic contact information is easy to find.  Do the links work? Are their social media platforms connected? Are they updated? Do they even have any?

And then I check to see what position it has in Google search for the category of business they are in for their location.

Professional Pride And Your Website 

As you might have guessed, by now, a great many businesses don't rate very highly on the basic performance of their website and online presence.

I don't get it.

Making your business present well online is not about a website. It is a matter of professional pride in your work and your attention to detail within your business. Hell, it is a matter of sales, sales conversions and ultimately about profit and loss.

You'd Never Do This In Business 

Business owners who would never dream of  leaving a pile of junk in the front of the building, with filthy windows, looking messy and discouraging people from using their business, will do just that when it comes to their website.

And they would never dream of not putting a sign out to say they are there, or not show their address on their advertising. Yet they will do exactly that with the biggest environment available for potential customers to find their business. The web.

Can't afford to get help to fix your website and make sure your business looks the best option for customers?

The reality? This is one of the costs of doing business. Like paying the electricity , or keeping you suppliers paid. You can't afford to continue to not fix it.

If you're willing but not sure how, give me a call.


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Business Articles From Hunter Social Media Marketing @lindyasimus

Over on my Hunter Social Media Marketing blog I post articles that relate to
Newcastle, Hunter Valley or Australian online business issues and local studies that are released that have an impact on business engaging online, and focusing on customer needs at the local business level. Here are  some you might find of interest.

Levels Of Being Online For Your Business. 

Many people say they are "online" with their business but that doesn't tell the full story. In fact your presence online for your business will range from 0 to Level 5 - and not all levels will give you any chance at adding profit to your business and your bottom line. You can certainly make this a profit source for your business but first you have to invest and do the work. But what exactly is the work to do? This article explores the different levels and what you would be doing at each stage, so you can at last know where you are in the pecking order.
What level of being online has your business achieved? 

Business Trends To Know 
These changes are not just in marketing, they are reflected all across the business and the way that businesses must learn to operate in this age using technology and responding to the requirements of those customers they want to have spend money with them. 
Online Business - Trends you need to know about and understand

Understanding How Customers Are Finding What They Want
Customers now have a range of ways of finding good information on what they want to know and they expect to find it online! Make sure your business is helping them to find you.
Understanding Customers Expectations and Service Needs

How One Regional Business Is Using The Internet To Sell To The World
Case study:  Birdsnest ladies fashion website and store based in Cooma NSW
Selling To The World From An Australian Country Town

Blogging For Business Article Series 
Why do we need a blog if we are in business? What does it do to help me get more traffic? Where do I start if I want to begin blogging for business? What would I write about?  These are just some of the question I answer in this series on #blogging for #business

Part One:  Your Business Blog
Part Two:  Blogging for business: How do I start? 
Part Three: Blogging for business: Ideas on what to write


How To Make Your Website Work
A pretty website isn't necessarily a website that is going to work for your business or bring you new sales. But with the right tweaking your website can deliver you more sales, more enquiries from prospective customers and higher levels of conversions.
Making Your Website Work Hard And Smart For Your Business

Online Retailers Given The Drum
ABC Lateline's host Emma Alberici wrote an amazingly insightful post into the state of online retailing that outlines the real reasons that Australian customers have for shopping at overseas websites - and it is nothing to do with the GST. The reasons might surprise you. They should open your eyes.
Retail and Online Shopping In Australia 

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Small Business Survey 2014

As another year begins it is worth reflecting on the changes that have continued to happen in the business environment and the way that we manage our commitments. I've created this short survey - just 10 questions most with multiple choice answers,  to get some feedback from you on how you believe your business is situated right now.

When there is a good size response recorded as a sample size, I will post on the results.

If you would be willing to help and complete the survey and share it with other business owners, I'd be delighted and that will get the results publication that much closer.

To complete the survey you can use the form here or go to the live form here

Thank you!
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Ovid on An Idea

Post by Lindy Asimus Business Coaching.

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