Business Blogging is a valuable strategic tool in business relationship development.
The primary power of your business blog is its ability to engage in one-to-many conversations, affecting a multitude of relationships. Provide some type of value with content that allows the reader to learn something new.
I have found that a blog is very helpful in starting the "Know-Like-Trust" relationship process. The blog adds multiplied value throughout this entire process.
My "Why a Business Blog is Important" article explains the benefits of having a business blog:
It is a tool to connect your business to your customers, your prospects and anyone searching for the keywords you are focusing upon.
It makes your business real to your customers. Your personality comes through and the value of your published content extends who you are and what your business is about.
It provides valuable resources to your readers, displays your expert status and in doing so helps to pre-qualify leads if the reader wants to go farther.
You receive feedback on the content that readers open and, better yet, the feedback to blog articles as comments.
It increases your Internet presence (SEO) and makes it much easier to be found on page one of search results.
There are different styles of blogging. Knowing the 25 basic styles of blogging and when to use each one is important in business relationship development.
A business blog is one component of a skillful marketing plan. Since a blog is permission-based, it is a useful Inbound Marketing tool for attracting new business.
Also, as a business blogger with an active business blog in production, I gain focus on regularly delivering quality content - whether you are a new visitor, a retuning reader, a blog subscriber or client.
I can personally testify that this Business Success with CRM blog has produced all the above benefits. This blog focuses on helping entrepreneurs and business professionals become more successful with the use of a CRM strategy and system. Their CRM system provides the knowledge database of all the business relationships developed. The CRM database becomes an appreciating asset---- something of extra value to the business owner.
To keep abreast automatically of new articles, by Email or RSS feed, go here.
Related resources:
9 Critical Tasks Before Launching Your Small Business Blog
73 Ways to Become a Better Writer
The 7 Secrets of Running a Wildly Popular Blog
The 8 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers
How to be Interesting
The 7 Deadly Sins of Blogging
10 Secrets to More Magnetic Copy
Let me know in the comments section below if you have an interesting blog that your fellow readers should check out.
What value have I missed that you have found from Business blogging and building business relationships?
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A Business Success Requirement- a Keep In Touch Strategy to stay Top of Mind
You need to connect with potential clients many times before they feel comfortable hiring you or purchasing your products.
If you don't have a systematized and automated keep-in-touch strategy in place you may, as the saying goes, leave a lot on the table. Most importantly, you'll miss out on the opportunity to serve people you're meant to serve. Boy- that would be a shame.
The lack of a solid keep-in-touch marketing strategy is where most businesses fail. Either they bombard you with too much information and too many offers that turn you off, OR you never hear from them at all, which leaves you feeling unimportant and irrelevant. Obtain a "Top of Mind" presence with your keep-in-touch strategy.
Having an integrated e-Marketing component to your CRM System is another plus when building business relationships - the Success with CRM factor.
Additionally, more and more people use a search engine like Google to find information and answers. If you are NOT found in the first 3 - 5 results you're not going to be noticed or known. Blogging, social media engagement, receiving inbound links all with revelant, valuable content is a business REQUIREMENT.
Revelant, Interesting, Current and Valuable Content:
Do you have the mindset of a publisher of content about your business offering?
Its up to you to ensure that the content you publish and share with your potential and current customers through your automated keep-in-touch strategy is relevent, interesting, current and valuable.
There are 6 basic categories of content that meet those criteria:
1. Industry information
2. Strategies, tips and techniques
3. Content from other expert sources
4. Product and service offerings
5. Special announcements
6. Your personality, what's hot, fun
1. Industry Information:
This is revelant to your target market and may or may not be widely known. It's excellent content to deliver to your list.
You'll position yourself as an expert within your industry while providing constant value to your potential and current customers. Whats' more they appreciate the information and your generosity for sharing it.
Using this type of information makes it more likely that your potential customers will keep the information and later refer back to it, keeping you at the top of their mind.
2. Strategies, Tips and Techniques:
If you are in the service business this is probably the most common type of content. People love to hear about some tip that will improve their productivity and make a task easier.
NOTE: Don't fear that you are giving away too much of this type of material. You'll find that you'll receive more referrals from people who are not customers just because you helped them for free.
They'll think, "Wow, if Dick and Julie are giving away this much great stuff, can you imagine what I'll get if I acctually engage their services."
Example: the blog articles of ACT Tips.
3. Content from Other Sources
There is a lot of quality published content available. Using valuable information that you find and that will help others promotes community. It also gives me a break from continuously creating content. My hosting partner, HubSpot, is an excellent source of related Inbound Marketing content.
4. Product and Service Offerings
This is where some businesses will fall short. They are making only product and service offerings to potential customers and the material may not be appreciated very much. Your offers must be accompanied by an over-delivery of free value.
For us this is the content about contact management (Sage ACT) and Customer relationship management- CRM - (Sage SalesLogix). Additonally resources are available for enhancing the success of CRM with a "Keep-in-Touch" strategy.
The people who have expressed an interest in your services want to know how they can work with you, and it's your responsibility to tell them and show them their options.
5. Special Announcements:
This is a valuable method of keeping in touch if the special announcement is relevant, important, and presented as a learning tool to your target audience. But be careful as this is often overused. This my be appopriate for membership and community related organizations.
6. Your personality, what's hot, fun....
Each of us loves to express our values and interests. It helps others get a glimpse into our personality. Sometimes this may be new tools like the iPad or the Google Droid Incredible. BTW: Two new techy tools I own and really enjoy, especially the intelligence found in the Droid Incredible!.
This can be unique, unusual and special content that stands out. The possibilities are limitless.
What is the best kind of content to include in your Keep-in-touch strategy to stay "TOP of Mind" based on interests of your target market ?
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Hubspot recently produced the 11 Killer Social Media Presentations Worth Watching article. I want to share this Inbound Marketing post because of its strong business importance and the engaging quality of the presentations.
If your learning style is visual, you'll especially enjoy these slide shows. These are some of the best presentations you'll find using the SlideShare medium which shares presentations from other businesses and marketing agencies.
Why is this important?
Unless you have been hiking in Alaska and away from all sources of business marketing you realize there is a lot going on with social media. I have previously covered various aspects of implementing a getting found marketing strategy using social media interaction.
Inbound marketing is a way to use your brains and less of your marketing budget.
Notice the metrics that are quoted - "If Facebook were a country it would be the 8th most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan" - Mark Zuckerberg, January 7 , 2009. Talk about an audience to know more about your business and to make it easier to be found.
Added bonus: View how these 11 different presentations were designed and affected you - then apply what you learned to your next presentation!
One of my favorite quotes is by Josh Bernoff: "The people in charge of talking are in the marketing department. The people in charge of listening are in the research or service or sales department. They hardly ever talk to each other, let alone have full-duplex conversations with customers." This sounds like a case for having a relationship- and conversation-tracking CRM system.
Social Media Marketing Presentations found in 11 Killer Social Media Presentations Worth Watching: (first 5 noted below)
1. The 25 Basic Styles of Blogging... and When to use each one
I found this helpful to understand the maximum number of times to post per week, the "Buzz" factor of each style and difficulty level, and the effort and original thought required. More on business blogging....
2. Basics of Social Media ROI
Business Justification is R.O.I. focused on cost reduction and revenue generation.
Measure F.R.Y.- Frequency, Reach, Yield:
- How often customers transact. (transactions per month)
- How many customer you are reaching, (net new customers)
- How much they spend. ($ per transaction)
3. Conversation by Design- creating an effective, unique blog experience
Make your blog unique and use it to narrow the gap between you and the reader. A great blog experience combines excellent content with conversation and stimulation.
4. Creating a Social Media Strategy That Works
John Jantch from Duct Tape Marketing is well known for his marketing advise to small businesses. This presentation covers the basic components of a social media strategy. What has changed? Content, Context, Connection, and Community.
5. What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later by
An entertaining, in your face presentation about what is social media (conversations) and one of the best in this series.
Why Care:
- Because 3 out of 4 Americans use social technology.
- Because 2/3 of the global Internet population visit social networks.
- Because visiting social sites-Customer Centric is now the 4th most popular online activity - ahead of personal email.
- Because the time spend on social networks is growing at 3X the overall Internet rate, accounting for approximately 10% of all Internet time.
- Because social media is democratizing communications. Big Time.
- Because social media is like word of mouth on steriods.
- Because, Dear Friend, social media is a F**king force to be reckoned with.
"The word blog is irrelevant. What's important is that it is now common,and will soon be expected, that every intelligent person (and quite a few unintelligent ones) will have a media platform where they share what they care about with the world." - Seth Godin, Author
Summary and Next Actions:
These presentations follow my belief that your prospects, your customers, your partners, nearly all your contacts believe you should be easily found and communicate with them through a social media presence.
"93% of social media users believe a company should have a presence in social media.
85% of social media users believe that a company should go further than just having a presence on social site and should INTERACT with its customers" -
Cone, Business in Media Study, September 2008
Social media playtime is over.... Get serious about harnessing the power of this thing.
"For companies, resistance to social media is futile. Millions of people are creating content for the social Web. Your competitors are already there. Your customers have been there a long time. If your business isn't putting itself out there, it ought to be." Business Week, February 19, 2009.
Social media with a CRM system allows the people throughout your business to capture those critical conversations and thus make smarter decisions.
Contact us for ideas on how to move forward with Social media and success with CRM.
After you've reviewed these slide presentations, let me know what insights you have gained that will be applied to your business.
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HubSpot has created a Great Audio/Visual presentation with valuable and practical ideas and actions for marketing in this recession - check it out here. In 75 minutes you'll gain new insights from Mike Volpe, VP of Inbound Marketing, at HubSpot. So close your office door - invest time in how you can use your brains instead of dollars from that very limited marketing budget.
Key take-aways I found useful and that have reaffirmed my beliefs:
Be Your Own Media
I found this statement powerful: "Think like a Publisher". You can now create, publish and obtain feedback on your own content. David Meerman Scott drills on this point in his book The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly. A very insightful, useful read. (I have both the book and audible version).
What to publish? It can be in a blog, podcast, video, photos, presentations, eBooks, news releases and so forth. Use multiple avenues- they are all free or very minimal in cost.
Seriously get involved with the move to an Inbound Marketing focus
Inbound marketing makes sure you can be found first when the prospect is ready. Inbound marketing uses the best of what social media has to offer.
I have covered the importance of and tips on Social media engagement in several blog posts. Social media powerfully combine with a CRM system to increase business and gain success with your CRM business strategy.
Business Blogging works - in many different ways.
You are a publisher of your content- you don't have to wait for another high priced advertising firm or a web designer. A blog is lead nurturing. Be yourself and let your remarkable content flow as you educate your audience. More on Business blogging...
Create content to match the buyer phase and concerns. Make sure the content is targeted to buyers in today's economy.
Participate in Q/A and Discussion Forums
For Business to Business companies use Facebook discussions and LinkedIn Q/A or get involved in discussions in Groups of your interests. For a B2C company, you should check out Yahoo answers.
SEO - Search Engine Optimization is both a science and a Art.
Everybody uses Google to find information and being found first takes an effective SEO plan. Content is king, and knowing the keywords used by your prospects to find you is paramount. Your business blog will help to push you to the top of Internet search listings.
Twenty-five percent of SEO comes from your web site pages and blog articles. Some comes from the visible content of key words people use to find information and some is the invisible technical part.
More importantly 75 percent of SEO is off page - recommendations you get from friends and inbound links TO your site/blog. These links are online recommendations and valuable feedback on how you are attracting other people.
Use tools to Measure your Return of Investment
Use the www.Grader.com tools: Website Grader, Press Release Grader and the social media grader tools for Facebook and Twitter.
If you have Hubspot (like we use) there are several Analytical tools for Keyword grader, Page grader, (inbound) Link Grader, Blog analytics (views/links), etc.
The number of subscribers, the number of leads and the conversion percentage to customers are trends you can use to measure success.
Analytics provide you with the ability to make better marketing decisions.
Set Priorities
Mike recommends you split your time up into thirds:
Spend 1/3 of your time consuming information by reading and reviewing the information. Subscribe to key industry blogs of the RSS feeds through Google Reader. "Listen" to what others are saying and topics on their mind.
Spend 1/3 of your time producing new content. Publish content in your blog, presentations on sites like SlideShare and video on YouTube.
Spend the remainder 1/3 engaging your prospects. Discuss and communicate the value of your products and services with the needs you hear from those conversations.
Other useful resources:
Would you like to learn more about Extending your Reach and Attracting Qualified Leads?
We offer a free marketing consultation session to help get you started. As an Inbound Marketing Certified Professional, I enjoy looking forward to our conversation.
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Social CRM enhances the value to a people-centric CRM system thus providing more Business Success with CRM.
Part I of Social CRM vs. Traditional CRM focused on how customers are changing and how we must therefore change the way we relate with them.. In Part II we examined the importance of online conversations, on the customers' terms, to gaining their trust; the need for relevant content placed where social customers can find it; and what part software automation can play in maintaining the flow of that content.
To automation, now let's add analysis and audacity.
Analyze which social media tools spread your message most effectively to the people you want to hear it.
All the tools currently available, whether online or on our desktops, make it easier to analyze results of our social CRM and marketing activities.
Blogging platforms include tools for measuring how many people go to your posts, how they find you, what links they click on, and more. Readers have the opportunity to comment, which obviously gives you useful information.
If you're on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you can compare the number of people reading your feeds in each place and make wise decisions about where to direct your efforts.
Get audacious.
As Brent Leary says in his white paper, "Social CRM," "Automation and analysis, when implemented effectively, can free up time for creative thoughts and actions."
Really think about:
--> who your customers are,
--> what they need from you, and
--> how you are uniquely suited to give it to them.
Then ACT: get audacious in finding captivating ways to meet them where they are and grab their attention.
Social CRM does not replace traditional CRM. Your foundation must be set. It must include:
- An easily accessible centralized and relational customer database
- A way to track events and coordinate activities
- A system to manage important sales and marketing processes.
To this foundation, social CRM adds an essential dimension for engaging social customers and the wider internet-based community. It requires a different mindset, one that understands the rules of social media.
Sending one-way messages to people looking for conversations won't work, and in fact will damage your business. Learn to understand the laws of attraction and Inbound marketing that focus on valuable conservations. So take your time to understand the new lay of the land, and then give your strategy some time to work, making creative, audacious adjustments along the way.
Social CRM does not replace traditional CRM - it enhances and extends relationships! Social CRM adds value to a people-centric CRM system thus providing more Business Success with CRM.
As you earn the respect of this new social community we're all doing business in, I wish you all the best for success.
More from Part I: How customers are changing and becoming ready.
More from Part II: Importance of communications
Looking for Ideas and practical practices for Extending your Reach and attracting higher quality leads?
Comment below and share with other readers what you are doing in your business relating to Social CRM.
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Need more evidence of Why a business blog is Important?
A study to identify lead generation best practices shows More Pages Indexed by Google Means More Leads. Having a valuable business blog is one of the best marketing strategies for being found before your competitor.
These findings are from The State of Inbound Lead Generation, a new HubSpot report based on statistical analysis of 1,400 customers' inbound marketing activities.
Increasing Google Indexed Pages by 50-100 Causes Double-Digit Lead Growth.. more information.
The graph above shows the strong positive correlation between the number of Google indexed pages and median leads. More specifically, it reveals that an incremental 50 to 100 indexed pages can cause double-digit lead growth up until customers reach several hundred Google indexed pages.
The study indicates:
- Median Customers who blogged generated 67% more leads than median customers who do not blog.
- There is a 77% increase in leads when the blog contains more than 52 blog articles (posts) versus 24 -51 articles.
- The results were the same from both B2B and B2C Hubspot customers.
So blogging is valuable whether you sell to other businesses or directly to consumers.
Marketing Takeaways
Marketers are likely to ask: What are techniques for growing the number of Google indexed pages on my site?
- Build page volume: consider starting a blog to quickly increase number of pages
- Improve each page's optimization as per Google's methodology to maximize chances of having all of your web pages included in the index:
- On-Page Search Engine Optimization: placing keywords in the right places on web pages such that Google and other search engines know what each page of your web site is about, and what keywords to rank you for
- Off-Page Search Engine Optimization: building inbound links from reputable sites, thus demonstrating your popularity to search engines
Read More about the value of business blogs or extending your reach with Inbound Marketing.
In my blog post: Why a business blog is Important I cover the basics of a business blog.
Looking for an executive overview of Business Success with CRM blog posts?
Interested in discovering how you can get started and extending your reach so you can more easily be found?
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As you've probably heard, blogging is no longer just for narcissistic teenagers, political junkies, and cause-driven hippies. A blog can be THE tool to connect your business to your customers.
A blog, an informal and informative "journal" that you update regularly, can be an active marketing tool. A business blog is a major part of social media to extend your reach within your strategic Marketing plan. Rather than merely set up a picturesque website that you hope someone will find, you put out helpful information related to your products or services. People who are looking for remarkable information find your blog and discover you and your business, and find out that you have the ability to provide solutions to their problems.
Even better, they have the ability to respond to your information and insights, ask questions, and interact with you via your blog. You build relationships with your potential customers, and people are more comfortable buying from someone they know.
As you build these relationships, you make your business real to your customers. You share what's new and changing in your company- staffing, research, and special events. You show your expertise by providing useful information. You become a point person and a resource by solving problems for your readers.
When you show you have the expertise, ability, and credibility to meet the needs of your reader, you are better able to persuade them to make the purchase or contract a service.
In addition, regularly updated information, like a blog, is more likely to be picked up by internet search engines than a static website. That's why blogs are likely to be listed in the top ten of any Google search. When potential customers connect with you via search engines, they find you. You haven't had to spend ungodly amounts of your marketing budget on buying a mailing list or purchasing ads on the TV or radio. You also haven't run the risk of annoying your potential customers with those kinds of interruptions. Inexpensive and effective... win win!
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Rules of Being Found and Connecting Buyer to Seller-
"Traditional Marketing" will and must change
As a business coach I hear all about the traditional ways businesses market their products and services. They attend a trade show, pass out business cards at networking events, and push their marketing messages out to anyone interested - by direct mail and email campaigns.
"Being Found" Lesson a truck driver can give us:
Recently in a group of entrepreneurs we started down the trail of marketing strategy and I asked, "How are you being found?" Nearly all of them again mentioned the traditional methods. Some were beginning to use e-mail and most had a static web site - few were at the stage of electronic newsletters. One business owner told the story of a semi-truck driver driving down the Interstate, looking for a nearby repair shop. The driver reached over to his cab's online computer and typed in three words: "Semi Repair Elkhart." Google came up with the top 4 findings, with one having a Google map of the business. The driver took the first Google result, exited off the Interstate ramp and drove into this entrepreneur's business. Talk about being in the right place with the right message at the right time. That is what BEING FOUND is all about.
It is getting simpler all the time for a buyer to find what they want online. Millions of people will bring up Google, even on their phones, and type a few words about what they are looking for or have a question about. Type, point and click - it can't get much easier than that. Heck, my grandkids have been doing this since they were in preschool!
So what is your desired outcome and what are some of your next physical actions?
Develop a strategy to be found- quickly and easily
1. Know who your current customers are and who will be your future customers.
Get to know them well. Invest the time and resources to gather quality insights.
-
- Identify specific characteristics of what they like and what they don't like.
- Place this information into a shared, collaborative, relational database system.
- Start to build groupings of these contacts based on intelligent categories.
- Improve the quality of new conversations and insights with detailed notes for each conversation's highlights.
- Hint: these items are what ACT contact management and SalesLogix CRM systems are designed for.
2. Know where they 'hang out.'
Now that you know your customers and prospective customers, where will you find them?
-
- Online on major search engines: Does your demographic prefer Google, Yahoo, Bing, or another industry-specific search engine?
- Networking events- Do they prefer face to face, discussion forums, LinkedIn Questions & Answer section, or commenting on niche blogs?
- Industry-related web sites - Do they go there to find information about a product and do they look for the distributor? For example, if you look for ACT! By Sage contact software, you'll go to the http://www.act.com/ web site and find that Julie and I are listed as ACT Certified Consultants.
- Trade associations - Are they members? Is there a newsletter or preferred vendor web pages?
3. Know what they use to find you
-
- If they never use the Internet - please refer back to #1. This group is shrinking in size daily.
- What are the key words and what are the combinations of key words (long tail key words) that will lead them to your web presence?
- Are they using social networking tools such as LinkedIn to check out your business profile, recommendations from others about your products and services, and your expertise?
- Are they using rating services sites to see how other consumers recommend or DON'T recommend what you have to offer?
- Are they using network bookmarking sites to identify the ratings of your marketing content? How popular is your web site or blog articles?
- Do they measure your quality based on other social media: Facebook fan pages, YouTube videos, presentations on SlideShare or content in Podcasts?
4. Assess your Internet presence.
-
- "Do you have a web site?" is first and foremost. But remember, a static web site that may have been traditional years ago will need to be updated to a dynamic content delivery system. Was the last content update over 3 months ago?
- Do they have ability and desire to subscribe to your electronic newsletter? They may be an email newsletter and a blog subscription.
- Do they have ability to check out your expertise from your business blog posts?
5. Now plan to BE there with remarkable content to their questions, wants, needs and interests.
-
- Lay the platform/ system for being more dynamic. Move to a web site with a CMS- content management system. We use the Hubspot integrated inbound marketing system.
- Start a business blog with remarkable and valuable content - promote it, and get found.
- Link your content to your Unique Selling Proposition.
- Engage in the social media where your prospect will be looking. See #3
6. Review, repeat, refine
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- Incorporate Internet presence analytics to measure the basics for trends- web site visits, page visits, time on site
- Measure the number of responses to your calls to action. How many are taking you up on your offers on the landing pages?
- How many of these leads are converting to actual customers who buy your products and services?
- Review the changes in key words used to find your business.
- Repeat what is successful, modify for new buyer characteristics and execute.
We offer consulting services in the development of your marketing and Internet presence strategy, along with the tools for action. Our number is 269-445-3001.
CRM Readiness Assessment - are you ready to discover options and take the next step.
Inbound marketing to attract prospects and extend your Reach across the Internet.
Various ebooks and downloads.
Specific details on ACT by Sage and Sage SalesLogix CRM solutions.
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