Abridged and reprinted with permission from whatsnextblog.com.
1. Humanize your identity.
Blogs are an excellent touch point for human interaction with your constituents. Nobody really cares what you say on your organization’s site these days. People listen to what their friends – the ones they’ve met and the ones they’ve made online – say about your brand before we listen to you.
Blog about things people want to know, not just what you want to tell them, and you can humanize your identity so people will want to talk to you.
2. Establish trust.
If your organization’s blog is conversational, actually helpful, possibly entertaining, open and honest about issues, then, over time, your audience will come to trust you.
The main principles apply to everyone: be factual, write good content, link often to sources, and focus on influencers.
3. Generate leads.
Hubspot Blog does a great job. It’s filled with really useful content, and it also offers downloadable free marketing tools, free training, and lots more lead generation tactics.
4. Communicate frequently with your audience.
Seth Godin posts seven days a week. They’re not all long posts. Some are just a couple of sentences. But he goes out of his way to make the content thought-provoking and helpful. And he’s done it for years.
That’s hard work. And not everyone can pull it off. But it pays off. Big-time.
If people are listening to you because your blog is interesting, they’ll know when you want to sell a book, a report, a course, a service, etc. And, since they’ll already have a relationship with you, they’ll be more willing to buy from you.
5. Be recognized as an authority and source of exclusive news.
Techcrunch – “dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies” – became a must-read for the tech world, and beyond, and Mashable – “the world’s largest blog focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Media news” – is the bible of social media.
What news can your organization deliver that readers can use?
6. Crisis communications.
If your blog has helped you engage and converse with your audience, you’ll have a group of loyal followers in place in the event of a crisis. And guess what? They’ll cut you a break because they know and respect you.
7. Because blogging is fun.
B.L. Ochman is an Internet marketing strategist and blogger What’s Next Blog and can be found Twittering, at WhatsNextOnline.com or with her newest venture, Pawfun.com.
