My introduction to blogging was not as a tool to help promote my business, but as a personal diary of a new mum when my first son was born in 2006.
I explored the blogosphere and discovered other bloggers while documenting my thoughts on motherhood and experiences with a newborn. This led to further opportunities as a ‘mummy blogger’ with Essential Baby and Parenting Australia.
When I launched Strawberry Communications in 2007, I’d already been blogging for more than a year, so I felt confident enough to launch a business blog as part of my website. Here I post news about my clients and the business, as well as articles I’ve written and the odd item of interest. This blog has led to guest posting opportunities including ANZ’s Febusave initiative, Media140 for Foodies and Connect2Mums.
I’ve since launched the T-changers personal blog about our move to Tasmania and Business & Baby on Board blog to accompany the book I am writing for business mums. I guess you can say I love blogging.
Blogs are an excellent resource for promoting your business for the following reasons:
- You show your knowledge on your topic and assert your credentials as an expert in that space
- A blog will express your personal views, adding a human side to the business for readers, which hastens the relationship-building process
- Search engines love new content, so regular blog posts increase your online presence and rankings
- You can link to all the websites, articles, videos etc that you mention and others can do the same when mentioning your business
- Blogs can be integrated with other social media platforms so you can automatically post to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc and vlogs (video blogs) can go to YouTube
- A blog will enable you to build a community around your business, which again is good for building relationships
- Blogs are conversational by nature, so they are the ideal venue to conduct market research or test new products and services and see what type of response you get.
Blogs are an easy way to get information out quickly, and if the information is good, people will subscribe and become regular readers.
Essentially, blogs are great PR for your business, so they should be included in your marketing mix.
