Steve Clayton secret marketing links,
he explaines why small firms should blog, this is not only true in the
Western world but also applies for African companies who can get a bigger
reach and find new prospects and business by doing so :
I read an article in IT Week
a while ago that was titled "Smaller Firms afraid to take plunge
with blogs". It got me thinking.
According to research of 2000 UK SME's by Fasthosts
quoted by the article's author, Phil Muncaster, nearly half of SME
firms understand the business benefits of corporate blogs (which I doubt highly)
but only 3% have plans to start one. Mad eh? I think so and it almost make me
want to start some 30 minute consultancy workshops on why SMEs should blog. Here
is why I think they should:
It's a differentiator: clearly this research shows your
competitors are not blogging so maybe you should? Get in there early, lead
the way and grab your audience. That's what English
Cut did with significant commercial success.
Your customers will soon expect it: well they will as
soon as your competitors give them a way to talk to them and have an ongoing
dialogue in a way this is becoming increasingly common. If Dell, GM,
Carphone Warehouse and others are doing it (and benefiting) shouldn't you
be?
It's not as hard as you think: creating a good blog is
time consuming but it's getting easier and easier with tools like Technorati
helping you raise your profile, Windows Live Writer making it as easy to
blog as write a Word document.
You control the message: I attended a great seminar with Matthew
Stibbe last week about how to write well (I've got lots to learn) and
one thing I took away is that ad agencies, PR companies and those kind of
tactics have their place but often dilute your core message with marketing
doublespeak. When you control the message, it's likely to be more respected,
authentic and honest. Which means people are more likely to listen.
People will find you: Trust me, search engines make you
very find-able. I often look at my referrer logs to my blog (use Statcounter
for free) and you'd be amazed at how people find you with the most obscure
searches on Google imaginable. Write your stuff, do it frequently and be
honest and people will find you. Trust me.
The Google effect: I know several small businesses who
pay money to appear on Google (and MSN) sponsored ad links. They get some
business from it for sure and it's clearly a good business for Google. Here
is my secret though - I have *never* clicked on a sponsored link on Google
for the simple reason that it is sponsored - to me it's artificial and I bet
I'm not the only one who loses the use of their right eye when using Google
and doesn't even see that list of sponsored links over there. What does this
mean though? Well if you blog often enough and with intelligent use of
titles and keywords you will organically rise up the Google rankings. I've
been amazed at my own rise for pretty broadly used words like Vista so it
proves it can be done. I'm pretty sure that if I wanted to appear top of
Google's search for "Chiswick High Street" I could do so within
about 3 months with some focused blogging. It's a reasonably popular search
on Google and has low competition for keywords. I setup my CHS store
directory, blog about the place, generate some decent traffic and then sell
some links to Foxtons, Barnard Marcus, Lom Bok and off we go...hmmm
You will find your voice: the Fasthost research showed
people were put off by what to say and how to say it. I was when I
started blogging but your friends and customers will soon help you shape
that as they did for me. There are tonnes of places to get advice on this
anyway and I've listed some below. Frankly, that's just a crap excuse.
There is more I could add here but that's my list of 7 for now .
