Blogging has been fully embraced by the business world as a “must have” for any business. However, many business owners fall into the trap of building a blog and not being able to keep the content fresh, start visiting company websites and when you click on the blog link sometimes you find that they have not been updated in weeks, months or years. While business news or update blogs are important, they help with the search engines, etc… they are not the only way to use blogging as a platform for getting your message out. We are going to focus on other aspects of blogging…
Contributing, PR distribution, and Enthusiast Blogging.
Most businesses are members of a trade organization like SEMA or ASD and the supply you with a list of press contacts for the industry. While that is a great list to have, it is not the whole picture when you factor in the power of the internet. Lets break it out and look at each tool and the benefits of each.
Contributing: Many bloggers blog because they are passionate about a subject be it Travel, Cars, Sports, Clothing, or any other subject. Regardless of what kind of business you are in, there is a blog or web-magazine (some have started to call themselves that) that reaches your target demographic. Find these blogs, find the ones that are most active, and contact the blog administrator to see if they would be interested in having you contribute to their blog. Most of them will be excited about the opportunity to have an industry insider or expert write a story for their blog. If not offer to make your business available for an article and offer a tour if they are local. Most bloggers will be excited to work with you as it validates them as a actual news or information source, industry functions are starting to recognize the power of blogging and have extended press credentials to major blog authors.
PR Distribution: Bloggers are often overlooked when it comes to sending out press releases, many will dig up that information from a publication that has received your press release and post it on their site if it is relevant industry news. Why not make it easy on them and send them the press release directly, most likely you will see a major increase in your footprint on the web right away. Find as many blogs as you can, if you are using a bulk mailing service anyways it does not take any more time to send a press release to the bloggers who will likely post the story with a link to your website.
Enthusiast Blogging: If you are a true enthusiast about a subject that relates to your business start your own blog that talks about the industry you are passionate about. I love everything on wheels so about 10 months ago I started a blog called TheGentlemanRacer.com TM that is dedicated to the news and stories I find interesting in the automotive, motorcycle, and transportation world. The first few months required a lot of writing to get all the stories I wanted to tell and I back dated them to the time that they took place. This gave the blog a more establish appearance. The site also has space for advertisers that more than cover the operating costs, however, it also gives me a forum to place ads for the companies I am involved with, post press releases, and do feature stories on the businesses I work with.
So How does Enthusiast Blogging work? Well in 10 Months TheGentlemanRacer.com TM went from zero traffic to on average 3,000 people a day visiting the site for one reason or another, people from over 93 countries have visited the site. In the last 5 months the Facebook Fan Page has grown from just a handful of fans to over 2,600 with more joining each day. The blog is not dedicated to any one company, product, style of car or motorcycle, it is just a carguy site. Linking a your blog into a good social media strategy will only amplify the reach, to give you an example the very popular mainstream Auto-Blog has just over 375 fans.
Now let me remind you that under new Federal Laws you have to disclose any relationship you may have with a product or service you are promoting.
So get out there and start looking for some blogs that have impact or just create one of your own, now remember content is king so don’t dive in unless you are willing to really work at it. The rewards are there if you are willing to work the blog-o-sphere…
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