Blogging for beginners
One of the things I do for some clients is to introduce them to the wonderful world of Web 2.0 and all that it can offer them. For example I’ve got a client who owns her own organizing business. She’s been sending out quarterly email newsletters for quite some time now to her customer base. These newsletters are always informative and her customers typically get value from them. The problem is that they take forever for her to put together and because individual email clients don’t always handle html well if at all she’s doing straight text which is boring and does nothing to further reinforce her brand in the mind of her reader.
Another issue is that rigid spam filtering causes many of her newsletters to get lost.
So I’m helping her enter the world of blogging. The benefits are that by blogging she’ll be creating a dialogue with her customers – something more interactive as well as timely. By posting regularly instead of 4 times a year she’ll be building a relationship and a space where her customers can come on a regular basis to get advice or tips. Additionally, she’ll be creating a space where her customers can participate through comments – this can create an almost addictive quality where customers feel the need to come to the site frequently to read and participate.
Further, blogs have their own search engines and optimization schemes so combining a blog with a traditional marketing site means that she’s now increased the likelihood that her business will be discovered.
As I prepare my client to begin blogging it’s important to get her mind wrapped around the difference between writing for a blog vs. a newsletter. Jane Smith at PR In A Jar wrote a post called How To Blog that talks about the basics of blogging – how to get started and the right way to think about blogging. It’s very informative for new bloggers but it’s also a good review for those of us who’ve done it for a while.
