Why Blog?

In any industry, there are many prospective customers that are not looking to buy at the moment. Instead, they go online looking for useful information.  Later on, maybe when they get their paycheck or when a new product is released, they will want to spend money.

If you can capture these people’s attention with useful information, you have a good chance of getting them to come back to your site when they want to buy something.

For example, let’s pretend you’re a online video game retailer.  Instead of just having an ecommerce site, you decide to blog about the video game industry.  You publish content like video game reviews, news, and strategy.

As you promote your blog, you’ll start getting traffic from video games fans looking for the information on your blog.  These fans are probably are not looking to buy a video game.  However, through your blog content, they’ll remember your site.

Not only that, but many of them will come back to visit your blog.  Blogs are great at attracting repeat visitors.  Blogs are chronologically arranged with the newest posts showing up first.  This means people will want to return to the blog regularly to see if there is new content.

Through your blog, you’ll gain the attention of video game fans.  Whenever these people want to buy a video game, they’ll probably think about buying the video game through your site.  They have a favorable impression of your site because of your useful blog posts.  Also, they “feel at home” on your site because they’ve been there before.

To succeed long-term in your business, you’ll have find ways to reach more people on a consistent basis.  Adding a blog extends your influence to video game fans that are not looking to buy at the moment.

Also, think about the advantage you have over your competitors who don’t have a blog.  Where will people more likely buy video games?  From a store that gives away quality free information on their blog or from a store that only has product descriptions and a shopping cart on their website?

Finally, by targeting all video games fans including those that are not in a buying mood, you’ll receive a huge increase of word of mouth recommendations.  The video game fans that don’t buy have friends that do want to buy.  The non-buyers will recommend your site to their friends as a place to buy video games because they received value from your blog posts.

Web 2.0. Social media. New media. Join the conversation.

Whatever you want to call it, there is a big shift happening on the internet. Instead of just consuming information, more and more online users are become publishers.

Web 2.0 sites like forums, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube attract many amateur publishers. Also, these sites are taking away eyeballs from mainstream media sites like Yahoo, New York Times, and MSN.com.

In the rush to get the attention of these web 2.0 users, companies are posting in forums, commenting on blogs, creating Facebook pages, and producing YouTube videos.

There’s nothing wrong with this. In fact, companies that do participate on web 2.0 sites have an advantage over companies that don’t. However, many of these companies don’t have a blog. This leaves money on the table, because in the long-term, it’s more effective to send Web 2.0 users to a blog rather than to a business home page.

Web 2.0 users are usually not in a buying frame of mind, so sending them to a sales page will not give you a high conversion rate. However, if you send them to your blog, you’ll enjoy these benefits.

1. You’ll start building a good reputation because your blog provides free, useful information on a consistent basis.
2. Web 2.0 users will be impressed with your company since most business sites don’t have a blog. Having a blog shows them that you understand the importance of web 2.0.
3. You will get useful feedback through blog comments.
4. Over time, as visitors read your blog, many of them will trust you enough to subscribe to your RSS feed or your email list. This subscription lets you communicate and sell to them over and over again.

One of the reasons many online businesses are using blogs is because blogs make their businesses more personal.  However, you may be thinking, “My about page can show the personal side of my business.  I don’t need a blog.”

Here is the problem with only relying on an about page.  An about page tells visitors what your business is all about, but a blog builds trust that what you say in the about page is actually true.

Just saying something about yourself doesn’t mean people will believe you.

Let’s look at an example.  Pretend you have a business that offers home installation services.

On your about page, you say these things:

• We have a quality service.
• We’re better than our competitors.
• We have experience.
• We’re experts.
• We have an awesome staff that’s friendly and competent.

Aren’t these the same type of things most businesses have on their about page?

But with a blog, you can provide evidence for your claims.

What if you had a blog with regularly updated content?  You could publish content in topics like these:

• Testimonials
• Pictures of installations you’ve done
• 10 common installation mistakes
• Home theater industry news
• Reviews of different home theater products
• DIRECTV vs cable

As you build your blog with valuable content, people will realize that the things you say on your about page are true.   This increase in trust will build your brand and increase sales.