Dan’s blog tips recently opened the Regional Chamber’s new “Tips on a Dime” series. Click the pic to see the video.
By Dan Pecchia
When prospective customers visit your website before they consider contacting you, they’re looking for much more than your contact information or your list of products, services or people.
Those were things people looked for online in years past, when the internet was young and limited.
Now, with technology that makes it very easy to build online content very quickly, the expectations of the online community are higher. People are using the internet to make assessments about services they might buy and the professionals they might hire.
One way to convey your expertise to people checking you out online is to have an effective, reliable blog.
Here are four suggestions for getting a good blog in place.
Develop a content schedule
Think about issues important to your clients and prospects. Questions they ask. Things that keep them up at night.
Think about the information you’ve shared with your clients in recent weeks through memos, presentations and conference calls. Somewhere in there are blog topics.
Commit to writing short, effective commentaries about these issues at some regular interval. Depending on your size and logical expectations of interest among your clients and prospects, a good frequency could be once a month, once every two months, twice a quarter, or much heavier.
Be prepared to adjust your frequency based on feedback.
Determine what support you will need
If you have expertise to share but are not comfortable with regular writing, do you have a colleague who can support the effort? Or do you need outside help?
If you wind up going outside your organization, identify someone with experience in writing for others – and with blogging, in particular.
Beware of the prospect of diminishing returns. If the success of your business is at risk when you take time away from direct work with clients, it may be unproductive to blog (or otherwise promote the growth of your business) unless adjustments are made.
Identify ways to leverage your blog content
Posting a blog on your website is great. But it’s even better when you can distribute that content through a regular email program, through social media, and through good search engine optimization.
All of these distribution methods can be leveraged at little or no cost.
The beauty of this form of communication is in the way it differs markedly from mass advertising. Advertising aims to interrupt people. If an ad is sufficiently clever and/or incessant, it will steal attention from the target’s intended focus (baseball game, sitcom, Google search, the road, etc.). The audience reached may include your target, but as it’s not developed specifically for you, it likely includes people who will never be your customer (yet you pay to reach them, too).
Blogging aims to provide information your clients and prospects are actually looking for, so that you don’t have to out-shout or out-gimmick “the clutter” to connect. Build the right content, and many among your key audiences will want to know about it and consume it.
Make a commitment
Finally, you should make a commitment to feed and water your blog over the long term.
If you’re an expert at what you do, then not having a blog to flash your expertise now and then is like wasting a valuable asset.
Don’t do that. Give your business another advantage. Put your expertise on display with a good, reliable blog.
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Dan Pecchia is a public relations consultant and president of Pecchia Communications.
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