Beginning Blogging: How a Blog Can Help Your Business

In a previous article, Types of Blogs, I noted that business blogs are blogs that meet a business purpose. The purpose of your business blog is totally up to you, the business owner. There is really just one question to ask: does your blog fulfill the needs of your customers?

Meeting the needs of your customers can be fun and rewarding as you develop better associations with those customers. Some reasons to have a business blog that will help your customers are:

• Show your expertise. You can express your authority, knowledge, and passion about your field. This helps customers gain confidence in using you. This can also have a secondary effect as you become a resource for others in your niche.
• Provide help. Many business blogs have tips on how to best use products or services. This is an excellent way to add value to what you already offer.
• Highlight customers. Blogs are a wonderful place to showcase how your products or services have helped real people. As you highlight different customers, other customers using the same products/services will respond with comments. Sometimes these comments will be about benefits you hadn’t realized existed.
• Release new info. News, updated information, and events are natural things to write about on your blog. Blogs are also a great place to build momentum when you are launching a new product or service.

More and more businesses have blogs for the above reasons. They realize the benefits to their customers. There are also benefits to you as a company from having a business blog. These include:

• Providing a place for existing customers to have access to relevant information. When you release an update on something, you don’t have to send out a ton of mail. You can send an email and link to the information on your blog.
• Gaining insight from customers as to why they like certain products and services.
• Spending less money on traditional marketing methods. Blogs are cheaper than other advertising methods and they are usually more effective as well because you can speak in your own voice.
• Increasing your company’s web presence.
• Attracting new customers.
• Creating a venue to put FAQ’s which will cut down on customer service calls.
• The last, best, and most fun benefit is that if you meet or exceed customer expectations, you will develop a following around your blog.

I know I haven’t listed all the benefits to customers or businesses of having a blog.

What other benefits do you see of having a business blog?

Previous: What is a Blog?
Types of Blogs
Why Do You Need a Blog?
Next: Beginning Blogging: Blogging and Editorial Calendars.