Blogging Will Help Build Great Business Word of Mouth Online
A recent article on eMarketer.com, “Blogging Has Come a Long Way, Baby,” discusses the growth in numbers of blogs and in blog readers. According to the article, 27.9 million US Internet users blog at least once a month. By 2013, it’s expected that 37.6 million users will be updating blogs monthly.
Even more impressive are the numbers of blog readers. eMarketer estimates that in 2009, 96.6 million US Internet users will read a blog at least once a month. By 2013, they estimate that the number will increase to 128.2 million users or 58% of all US Internet users. Can your business afford to ignore this channel to your customers?
The eMarketer article also notes that the lines are disappearing between a blog run by a large company and the free or low-cost blogs provided by Google, WordPress, and and TypePad. So if you have a small business, and you want a medium to deliver a message to lots of potential customers, a free blog might be a good thing to try.
What can you do with a blog? Just about anything you can do with a website — collect customer feedback and reviews, announce business events, provide articles helpful to your customers, display photos and videos, and so on. Blogs will appear in search engine results just like a website, so its important to apply your keyword research when drafting your blog posts. Also remember that today’s blogs are about “conversations”, so give your readers a chance to comment on your posts and limit the “marketing speak” you use.
2012 Update: The free or almost free blogging platforms provided by Google Blogger and WordPress have become even more user friendly and more search engine “powerful” over the last couple of years. I read once that the blog is the Swiss Army knife of social media — the most useful tool and the one most taken for granted and ignored. Pretty much any business can benefit from blogging, and IX Brand SEO Services Company can help you make your blogging, using low-cost tools, as effective as possible.
The three blogging platforms mentioned above are easy to set up, easy to customize, and easy to use so why not use one of them to build word of mouth for your business. If you need help getting started, you can use the form on the Contact page or give us a call at 713-234-6346.
