Business blogs have been a dominant force of influence in the last couple of years with Customers moving on from editorials in local newspapers to blogs on the internet. Blogs, twitter and Facebook are some of the many social media outlets available for businesses at the moment. Most businesses now include blogs as a part of their marketing strategy.
Let’s look at some business that have adopted various methods to make their blogs a success
1. Business Blogs that include customer input based content are a huge success – Ana White’s Homemaker is one example
Ana white of Ana White Homemaker is a carpenter/homemaker/mom/blogger who specializes in do-it-yourself projects for all sorts of carpentry projects, from dollhouses and toy boxes to king-sized beds and dining room tables. Ana White maintains a blog that features blueprints and designs on how to build beautiful and functional things for homes at reasonable prices. She also features a brag blog and brag board within the site which is created by the readers, with their experiences and includes pictures of the process and the finished projects of Ana’s designs. Some even share what they would like to do differently the next time and what variations they made to Ana’s original designs.The Result: Her website, receives nearly 3 million page views each month. Ana’s Facebook page boasts over 50,000 fans and within a year her blog began generating enough advertising revenue to support her family. Her business gets a lot of attention for her incredible blogging and online community building skills.
2. Businesses using Blogs to handle customer queries and services requests are successful as well – For instance Worldwide Cycles
Worldwide cycles , a Bicycle retailer began by adding a blog to their website which aimed at striking a fair balance between educational and witty content on everything related to Biking as well as occasional promotions. Adding a blog to their website brought some of the atmosphere of the shop to their online customers, creating the ambience and instilling a sense of loyalty among customers who are the regular readers of the blogs. Their blogs predominantly contain opinions of knowledgeable cycling experts and bike mechanics and one or two occasional product reviews (to increase product awareness) thus attributing to sell the product as well as maintain credibility. Their blogs encourage customers to post queries and service requests as well.
The Result: Worldwide cycles have seen a marked shift in customer communication in the last 18 months. They regularly now handle customer enquiries and sales via direct message on both twitter and Facebook. While most of the credit goes to their blog, Facebook and twitter has also been a reason for their popularity.
3. Business Blogs that are transparent, authentic and share facts often succeed – Classic Cookie Company
St. Paul based Classic Cookie company owner Katie Novonty was in a dire financial situation as her small downtown bakery was in need of rapid stream of customers and cash in order to stay in business. After trying everything, she posted a blog article about her business and stated the facts and appealed to her loyal customers to get the word out that she needed lots of customers. She says that thereafter the blog took a life of its own and in a few days there were more than 3,400 subscribers to a weekly electronic newsletter that carried her article. The viral nature of the blog post resulted in other small business owners in Novotny’s community stepping up.
The Result: From a situation where she had to close down her business, Katie’s cookie company now has now emerged out of the financial crisis and boasts of having close to 2000 likes on her Facebook page. Her blog now include information of her wide range of products and some secret recipes as well.
4. Human Capital Management (HCM) Saas Software Company gets 40% of its traffic from its Blog
This Human Capital Management (HCM) Software Company with clients in three continents has been in business for over ten year. They started with Business Blogs in 2008. It is to be noted that this company isn't yet regular with blog posts. They average about one post every 45 days. Traffic conversion on the website is the biggest contributor to their B2B Lead Generation initiative.
The Result: Because of Business Blogs, the company saw traffic rise by 200% in four years. The blog's traffic contribution increased from 4% in 2008 to 40% in 2012. This goes to show that if you are supporting your incredible business with Business Blogs, you can garner the eyeballs. And if topped with a regular posting schedule, it could turn out into a potent B2C and B2B Lead Generation machine.
More Business Blogs, More Content, More Indexed Pages – More Business
Based on data available from HubSpot it has been determined that an average company that blogs has 55% more visitors, 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages. Another survey indicated that 87 % of shoppers say they trust the opinions of their friends over independent editorial reviews. The conversion rate of online sales stemming from visitors to business blogs and social network sites is 10 times than the overall average. Does your website include Business Blogs? Do you feel that blogging has helped your business grow? Would you like to share your success story of how Business Blogs worked out for your business?
