There are many people who can help with your online marketing. Why would you call me? Because I’m in front of you every day, demonstrating that I know my subject.
More and more technical businesses are understanding the benefits of having a blog. It’s a fantastic way to engage with potential prospects and customers. And it works well in the most technical of fields. Buyers of industrial products welcome helpful information. They rarely get enough. A blog is your chance to establish your company as the one to turn to. But they won’t read lots of them, so you need to be there ahead of your competitors.
I’ve set up (and run) several blogs for clients. I always suggest it as a marketing idea. The main reason I hear from holding back on launching one is a lack of resources. Writing something, however brief, every few days, is not something most marketing managers want to commit to. Fair enough. But why not subcontract it?
Your first port of call should be any technical writer if you already use one, such as a PR consultancy. They already know your company. Get them to write a bedrock of regular articles – one a week, or one a fortnight, perhaps. You can then add to this at irregular intervals, whenever something comes up that you wish to write in-house. Curiously, with the pressure off, you’ll find you’re more inclined to add your own material.
Is this an expensive approach? It shouldn’t be. Writing a blog entry isn’t exactly researching an academic paper. If a blog entry is taking more than a couple of hours, it’d probably be more suited to be a magazine article. So if you’re asking your PR writer to produce four blog entries a month, you’re barely asking them for a day’s work. If that’s costing you more than a few hundred pounds, then as they say, “alternatives are available”.
So even if you add the cost of your own time, your company could have an excellent blog for £1000 a month. You’ll build up a core regular readership using email, RSS, Twitter or whatever. It’s a lot more effective than the tired old corporate newsletter which nobody reads. And it’ll quickly be a route to market you’ll wonder how you ever lived without.
Read How Small Business Owners Can Build a Blog Without Blowing the Business on Search Engine Guide for more inspiration.