A blog is a great way to connect with your customers, and an essential component to building brand awareness.
People often choose a brand because of an emotional attachment or feeling as if they have a personal connection, and blogging can nurture this relationship.
how to craft a noteworthy blog
what is it?
A blog is like a journal, updated on a regular basis usually about a specific engaging topic or theme. Consisting of daily or weekly articles, also called posts or entries, is typically a few paragraphs in length and can include links to articles and videos on other websites.
know why you’re doing it
How would you like your potential customers and target audience to share their comments, ideas, and feedback with you? Blogging in your business is an essential component to building brand awareness. Blogging builds credibility and if done well, can create a following of devoted readers. The ROI that can be achieved when using your blog to increase your brands visibility is invaluable. People often choose a brand because of an emotional attachment or feeling as if they have a personal connection, and blogging can nurture this relationship.
developing your blogging voice
Developing an interesting, readable writing style is vital to creating a noteworthy blog. For those of you who love writing, this may come easy to you. For companies looking to build a successful blog, this step is critical. Your blog voice can help to humanize sometimes corporate PR marketing, such as press releases, advertising and direct mail. The best blogs have a personable feel and the top 5 things to focus on when developing your writing style are:
- Speak to your target audience
- Be Authentic
- Be Transparent
- Be Useful
- Be Approachable
what to blog about
An important step to blogging is deciding what to write about. Take a look at your target audience and define what it is you want to accomplish and who you intend to reach. How can you create content that is engaging and useful to this audience? Create a resource that people want to come back to and subscribe to. If your content is already found on other blogs, try to explore new angles and give your personal opinion.
Another valuable thing to remember for companies building a brand blog is, don’t just write about you! Don’t treat your blog like a press center. It’s great to hear about news and promotions, but remember you are writing for your audience and developing a relationship where people can identify with you and share questions, stories and opinions.
encourage feedback
In the vast online world today, it is easy for people to form opinions and share them with the world, especially on social media where opinions can be broadcast far and wide. For a brand looking to build trust and loyalty amongst customers this is an incredible thing – if they are a well liked organization.
Unfortunately there is no way to stop negative feedback from getting out into cyberspace, and this is why it is so important for your brand voice to be authentic and transparent, and build brand trust. For those brands that encourage feedback, you will develop the ability to rise above your competition. A great blogging tool is the comment box, you will find it under the text of each blog post. Readers can leave comments, tips or impressions about specific articles. When you provide this kind of transparency, it shows you are listening and value their opinion, it also gives you the ability to take a negative experience and turn it into a positive one.
spread the word
Now that you’ve built a solid blogging foundation, you need readers! You can create social profiles such as Twitter and Facebook to post links to your blog articles, as well as encouraging your readers to spread the word via social media. Adding social media buttons in your website make it easy for customers to share or tweet your posts, while adding links to their social profiles.
have fun!
March 3, 2010, Rachelle Hynes
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