While the buzz around using blogging for your businesses is certainly not what it was a few years ago, one might ask one’s self: “Do businesses Still Blog?”.
Of course the answer is ‘yes’ if you’re an internet-based company, that’s a given. But what about good old brick & mortar companies? Is blogging still relevant to them? And has anything changed re the approach?
Blogging for a Brick & Mortar
Blogging for a brick and mortar must have a well thought out strategy with real quantifiable goals, like leads, emails, signups, anything which is a valuable and tangible result. This must be laid out before-hand. Businesses can’t afford to blog randomly and haphazardly, there must be a connection between the blog post and revenue. Every moment and joule of energy must count for something.
What’s the strategy?
By research, surveying, etc., one must find out what their audience would find: valuable, needed, essential, awesome. Obviously the first step is to find out who your audience is, but we’re assuming that you already have that worked out.
After you know what they want you now know what you should be blogging about. But wait. There’s more.
Differentiation
Supposing you’re a landscaping company and after all your research you found that your audience wants clear, professional and free DIY guides that even an idiot could understand and execute. At this point you could deliver just that and have some success. But if you did, you’d be no different than the hundreds of other landscaping company’s out there, with DIY guides. How would you break through the clutter with your new and awesome DIY blog? Be different, and do it different.
This step takes imagination and trial & error. In order to insure you’re different you need to be bold, take risks, and be willing to loose some face.
Examples how you could be different and do it differently:
1) Weird Landscaping Projects. Every week or so, another weird project. Examples could include ‘how to trim your hedges and shrubs to look like minecraft’, or ‘paver walkways that look like lego blocks’.
2) Landscapes/Gardens from Movies. Example: “how to make your backyard look like the ‘Shire’ from Lord of the Rings’.
3) Historical Landscaping. Example: “how to install your paver walkway the same way the Romans did”, or “how to make a cobble stone pathway”.
Promote
Now that you’ve created your unique and valuable blog, all you have to do is pay to promote it and spread the word. If it is good, it will then promote itself.
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