Feature Article:
How To Bring Sales To Your Business Through A Weblog
By Danny Wirken
An increasing number of business entities are
actively using blogs as part of their marketing
strategy. Why? Blogging is providing them the
ability to connect with their audience thus
encouraging goodwill which in turn helps bring
sales.
Marketing through Blogging
It is nothing you have not heard for quite some
time now. Blogging has caused quite a stir. It
has, in fact, continued to proliferate rapidly.
In early days, a blog is just a personal online
diary. It is a place to publish one's thoughts,
to collect and share things that one finds
interesting. It is a venue to express one's
rants, raves and musings.
Today, professional and amateur journalists,
political pundits, business honchos,
entertainers, everybody seems to be blogging.
Blogs are now being used to promote a business,
run a political campaign, elicit publicity,
among others.
A blog or weblog is an online diary of events
arranged in
reverse chronological order. The author of a
blog is known as a blogger and writing or
maintaining a blog is referred to as blogging.
An individual entry or article is called a post
and is available in the form of a blog page for
the public to read.
A blog may have a commentary box for readers to
leave comments or opinions. These comments act
as stimulus for further conversations. A
business or corporate blog is simply a blog
about a specific business. It is an effective
medium for communicating with current and
potential customers to share knowledge and
expertise and foster relationships.
A company that employs a well-planned blogging
strategy can spur significant market gains and
sales earnings. Marketing is not just promoting
a product or service. More importantly, it is
about understanding the needs and wants of
customers and developing products or services
that satisfy these needs and wants effectively.
A blog enables a company to reach out to current
and potential customers, in a more personal way.
A blog builds connection and links between the
company and its key audience which helps the
company use this network over time to improve
overall business.
A business blog especially if regularly updated
can inform readers about a company product or
service, information, industry news, tips,
tutorials or company developments. Links to
industry-related stories can also be found in a
blog. The way the targeted audience responds to
these information or content is important to any
company.
A blog is a good venue for customers to air
issues, concerns and give comments. Through a
blog, customers can give their own inputs. A
company can hear directly from customers and
understand what they desire to get from a
product or service.
Sometimes, the most well-intentioned product
under perform because of lack of customer
feedback. With blogging, a company can ask for
feedbacks, albeit not the whole world, but at
least the blogging community. Once a company has
insights into what a large community thinks of
the product or service, the company can then
further improve the product or service to meet
customer requirements. After all, customer
satisfaction is of utmost importance.
A company who listens and responds to customer
feedback conveys the message that there is
somebody who listens behind an otherwise
faceless company. Because a blog is
conversational, it gives the company a human voice.
This assures customers that there is a "real"
person who will take care of their needs.
Customers will feel an affinity with the
company. Regular visits brought about by regular
updates through fresh blog entries will
familiarize the customers with the company and
make them feel that they personally know the
company. In due time, trust and loyalty is built
and relationships fostered. As we all know
people generally buy products or avail the
services of people they know and trust.
Rest assured that return visits to the blog,
maybe for more information, will transpire even
after a purchase has been made. As they say,
customer loyalty is the end-all-be-all of
marketing.
A company that utilizes customer ideas,
feedbacks, and opinions can further satisfy
customer needs and wants and thus facilitates
goodwill in the blogging community. It is
standard practice in blogging to provide a link
to a thought originator which is important
because backlinks are a method for search
engines to rank a blog. Search engine ranking is
very important. Google and Yahoo are two of the
most popular search engines. A blog is typically
written daily thus the blog post is new.
The search engines index the new post more often
than the regular website. The result is a high
rank compared to a website. If a company has a
product to promote and publishes blog posts
about the product regularly, chances are one of
the blog posts will be found by readers who may
be looking for information about the product.
Hopefully, after reading the blog post, the
potential customer will visit the company
website and make a purchase online or buy the
product in a "brick and mortar" store. Marketers
acknowledge that potential customers can be
customers once they find the information they
want about a product from the company's blog.
Another feature of a blog why search engines
love it is a blog's high number of incoming
links. Bloggers link to other blogs, articles
and websites. The reading audience is exposed to
a plethora of information. Bloggers, thus,
create and retain a loyal following of readers.
PageRanks for blogs are usually very strong too.
As you and I know, high search engine ranking
translates to high traffic and more sales leads.
Generating Sales from Blogging
The way to get the most from blogging is by
building a strong brand. A brand is simply value
for the customer. It is good customer service
and products or services that will satisfy
customer needs and wants. A blog can help a
company demonstrates its expertise in its
industry or field. Blogs do create buzz about a
company's authority in its niche. A blog
connects a company to its target audience and
peers and starts a more dynamic conversation
with the marketplace. A blog helps to show a
company's value, its online brand on the web.
Once a company has built a strong brand, sales
will just follow.
Publishing a blog will not automatically
generate higher sales. However, it is an
efficient way to communicate with customers and
prospects. A blog in itself is an excellent tool
to support a business, provide value, build
relationships and establish brand and image. The
ultimate purpose of a blog is to brand, to
communicate and to connect. Increased sales
should only be viewed as a positive indirect
effect of a successful blog.
About the Author
Danny Wirken can be contacted via The
International Journal of Internet Marketing.
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Hello Readers!
The new buzz word in the search industry this
month seems to be "certification". Every man and
his dog appears to be discussing search industry
certification in one form or another.
Others are offering
scholarships or internships to help people
learn search engine optimization or search
engine marketing within a commercial
environment. I am delighted at this newfound
interest in education that seems to have swept
the industry. It shows that Search has finally
been recognized as a vibrant career path.
Here at Search Engine College, we too have been
concentrating on our curriculum. We are about to
launch
SEC Certification Pathways, a series of
bundled SEC courses that follow 3 distinct
tracks of study:
Pathway A: Certified Search Engine Optimizer
Pathway B: Certified Pay Per Click Marketer
Pathway C: Certified Search Engine Marketer
As a Search Light Subscriber, you are amongst
the very first people to hear about these new
Certification programs so spread the word!
But enough about us. In this month's feature
article,
Danny Wirken talks about how you can connect
with your customers and generate sales from a
commercial
weblog. We've also got a huge mailbag of FAQs
for you this month.
Enjoy this issue and remember to visit the daily
Search Engine Advice Column to check out
my answers to frequently asked search engine
questions or submit one of your own.
Till next time - wishing you clicks and
conversions...
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| FAQ1: Should I use | to separate keywords in my Title Tag? | | |
 Dear Kalena...
This is a great website, there's definitely a
cup of coffee coming your way. Wondered if I
could ask your opinion on the following.
Title Meta Tags, I was recently looking at a
website by a guy in the UK who works for an SEO
company, I noticed he had separated his Keywords
in his title tags by using the | character. Do
you think this makes any difference whatsoever
as far as search engines are concerned?
Thanks again Kalena
Graham
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Dear Graham
The short answer is no. If you actually conduct
a search for the "|" (vertical bar) in Google,
you get zero matches, suggesting that Google
ignores that symbol. However, according to this
site, Google uses the vertical bar as an
operator that means the same as "OR" when
conducting advanced searches.
I don't believe this would prevent Googlebot
from indexing a Title Tag containing "|", but it
may confuse things. At best, the symbol would be
ignored. To be on the safe side, I would avoid
using any symbols in your Title Tags to ensure
your entire keyword phrases get indexed in the
order you prefer.
Kalena
| | |
| FAQ2: Why isn't my site in the top 2000 results on Google? | | |
 Dear Kalena...
I just created a new site, its dead basic and
mainly an affiliate site. I have linked to it
from a couple of my other sites that have a
Google PR of 4 & 5 but of course I need loads
more links yet as it's in a very competitive
sector (www.autoinsurancedeals.co.uk).
Its been indexed by Google this week but of
course its not even in the top 2000. In your
opinion Kalena, without a ton more links is that
where it's likely to stay, outside the top
2000?. It seems to be a catch22 situation, if I
don't have a decent PR, why would another site
want to exchange links? I seem to find this
concept of asking other sites to exchange links
akin to begging :-)
Graham2
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Dear Graham2
If your site is brand new, you won't be able to
find it for your target keywords for up to 9
months. Why? Because nearly all new sites are
subject to Google's
aging delay. That explains why you can't see
it in the top 2000 results right now.
As for exchanging links - reciprocal linking is
soooo last year. Every link you place pointing
away from your site is diluting the value of
your incoming links somewhat. That doesn't mean
you shouldn't link to other sites or swap links
- as long as the outgoing links are useful to
your own site visitors. But you shouldn't pursue
reciprocal link exchanges solely for search
engine value.
The most valuable links to build up your site's
PageRank are non-reciprocal links from
high-quality, high-traffic sites that have a
similar theme to your own. How do you find
these? Do a Google search for backlinks pointing
to your competitor's sites by entering
"link:http://site.com" in Google's search box.
Take a look at the type of sites linking to your
competitors and see if you can get those same
sites to link to you.
Look for niche
directories, portals and search engines in
the insurance industry. Submit your site to
those. Write some articles about auto insurance
and submit them to ezines
and article annoucement lists for
re-publishing on other sites. Make it a
condition of re-publishing that
they include a link back to your site in the
Author Resource box.
Kalena | | |
| FAQ3: Is it considered black hat SEO to hide H1 tags within CSS? | | |
 Dear Kalena...
If you make H1 tags hidden by using the CSS
method, do search engines like Google and Yahoo
consider this black hat SEO? I've heard that
using the colour method is definitely considered
bad SEO but that wouldn't be used along with the
CSS method. It was suggested to use the CSS
method for our H1 tags we're creating for
clients but I wasn't sure if it was something
that would be safe to implement as part of our
SEO set up for clients.
Demi
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Dear Demi
It depends on the intent. If you are
deliberately hiding tags in your CSS because you
don't want search engines to find them, that's
black hat, in my opinion. If there is a
legitimate usability or design reason to put
these tags in your CSS, then my feeling is it's ok.
Google's own staff recommend
against using CSS to hide text so I would
probably avoid it if you can.
Kalena | | |
| FAQ4: How do I update my RSS feed? | | |
Dear Kalena...
I read your
article
about RSS feeds and I'm trying to create
one. But I am not clear on the updating. Who
updates the items? Do I update my RSS files with
new stuff or if I just update the pages in the
links of the RSS files will they get updated by
the aggregators? I am confused.
Joelle
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Hi Joelle
If you create an RSS or XML feed from scratch,
you add items manually to your feed. Every time
you add a new story or post your feed will be
updated. Aggregators will automatically index
your RSS or XML file and recognize when new
items are added to your feed.
But these days, it is not necessary to create a
feed from raw code. Most people use a blog or
feed service such as WordPress or Blogger to
make and add automatic updates to their RSS or
XML feed. You can also "ping your feed" to alert
aggregators whenever your blog or feed is
updated. Learn more at
Feed101,
Introduction
to RSS and
What
is RSS.
Kalena | | |
| FAQ5: What does the term "long tail phenomenon" mean? | | |
Dear Kalena...
What does the term "long tail phenomenon" mean?
Carmela
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Dear Carmela
Here's your
long
tail phenomenon definition and an article
about how it relates to keyword research.
Kalena | | |
| FAQ6: How do I change our domain name without losing existing customers? | | |
 Dear Kalena...
How do I change our domain name without losing
existing customers?
Tracy
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Dear Tracy
Your question is not crystal clear to me but I
assume you mean: "How do I change our domain
name without losing existing customers?".
If you are changing domain names but you want to
make sure that existing customers still find
you, you simply keep your old domain name and
place a permanent 301 redirect on it, pointing
it to your new domain. If you have access to
your hosting CPanel, you can also achieve this
by parking the old domain on the new one or by
simply editing your .htaccess file.
Once this is in place, anyone typing in page
URLs from your old domain, or clicking on
outdated links in search engines will be
automatically taken to your new domain. The
search engines will eventually update links so
they point to your new domain.
Kalena | | |
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