About Brad Sugars

Social marketing is all the rage these days.

Not only is it trendy to be on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, it’s actually useful. The more companies that join these sites (which is increasing rapidly every day), the more people see your brand.

But what about the blog? The short snippet of information that’s perfect for Internet readers who don’t have time to read a whole article, just want the gist or opinions, and then it’s on to the next?

Is a blog – which has, over time, turned into a legitimate source of news, so much so that journalism classes in universities now cover blogs – a good way to promote a business?

This is a blog. Is this a good way to promote ActionCOACH?

Turns out, it is. Not only is it a great social media tool that provides networking by way of commenting on other blogs, people commenting on yours and leaving links to your/their blogs, it can also spread the word about your company by doing the following:

Increasing your site’s SEO (if you don’t know what these three letters mean, they stand for “search engine optimization”) is something that is hugely important to businesses. Whenever someone searches an online engine for a keyword relating to your business, you want your business to be at the top of the page. It can be used to gain search engine traffic for given keywords or search terms. Your blog offers the opportunity to promote your Web site for hundreds or even thousands of different keywords.

Search engines particularly like promoting blogs because they offer a large amount of content that is updated and added to on a regular basis.

Easy Access to Company News and Info – However, be careful you don’t blog in press release style – if a blog is all praise for the company, it doesn’t sound genuine. Blog about company news and info that is useful and interesting. People would always rather read genuine, high-quality content instead of filler information, too.

Expanding your Reach – A blog is a great way to find new potential customers. Write about the niche your business caters to in the market, and anything interesting within that niche, and people looking for anything related to your business could find your blog in a search. Keep in mind that updating information on the blogs and blogging regularly can keep people coming back to your blog for information and could become customers, too. Regular content is imperative to the success of any blog. This content needs to be informative, accurate, and written in a way that will appeal to your visitors.

Creating Familiarity – Faceless corporate blogs aren’t that fun to read. Why? Besides being dry and boring, they also don’t feel very inviting. Going back to our point about high-quality content, familiarity is very important with content – if the reader can’t relate to it or feels it’s just a higher up writing from a press release, the reader won’t take it to heart. Keep this in mind, and make it work for your company by designating a person (not necessarily the CEO) or a team to do the blogging.

All in all, a blog on your company’s site might be worth looking in to – as it may be the extra piece your company needs to separate it from the competition.