I’ve talked about how sites like GoSpotting.com, Facebook, Twitter, and so on are really good for making contact with new customers and bolstering your relationship with existing ones. What if you don’t understand how to be “connected in realtime” to your potential (and actual) customers? Personally, I understand. You’ll notice I’m NOT telling my customers to “find me on facebook” nor am I giving daily updates on GoSpotting.
My excuse for Facebook is it’s too real time for the way I think. I think strategy and then act. I don’t spew a constant stream of information. You won’t find me twitching back and forth between my kids at the playground and my mobile phone. Not when I can help it 
. GoSpotting is a little different. The way it is so local it doesn’t induce realtime addiction. It is more like an easygoing discussion in your place of business. But even that might be too much chatter for you. What then? How can you leverage the power of the web, search engines, and your website for maximum benefit without feeling like you’re spending all your time chatting online?
I have the perfect balance of old school business promotion and web communications: Start a blog. It is simple to do. You update it as frequently as you want to. Your articles or posts can be as long or short as you want. You can refer actual and potential customers to it anytime they have a question you’ve answered before. What’s even better? When someone visits your website they’ll be blown away that you take the time to offer your insight.
While you can run your blog any way you want, some things are tried and true. here is my short list of tips for success:
- Be consistent. If you blog once a month that is a great start. Keep it up though. Maybe increase your frequency of writing later.
- Aim for short but informative. One paragraph is great. Three can be wonderful. More is often more than you need. But, there is nothing wrong with a really detailed post if it stays on topic and the presentation is clear.
- Just write about things you know. You can use the tips from a previous article I wrote on what ideas work.
Why does blogging work?
- When setup correctly, search engines will deliver more and more (as you write more and more blog posts) search results from your site when web searchers are looking for what you sell or do. This is advertising. The best kind too, because the web searcher is ACTIVELY looking for what you sell or do. This is the ultimate targeting. For more on this most important topic see my article “I can’t find my site! Search Engine Help“.
- Your customers see the info on your site and say “Wow! These folks know their stuff.”
- Add quality to your email responses to customers by including a link to an article you’ve written in the past.
Go start a blog! Need help? We can help with that at Digital Mountain Consulting.