Why Should Local Businesses Have A Blog In Their Marketing Plan?

Good public relations is one of the most important elements to any marketing campaign a company has at its disposal. But not all public relations are equal: some campaigns involve massive outlays of cash, while some other methods can be extremely cost effective!

Blogging is at the forefront of publicity mediums in today’s connected world, giving anyone or any business the opportunity to get their message out around the world. And with the recession hitting companies hard, it’s more important than ever to find cost effective ways to attract new customers and increase revenue.

Here are some reasons to start a blog:

1. It helps your SEO ( Google loves consistently new content )

2. You are seen as an expert in your field, a ” Thought Leader” - reinforcing your brand.

3. Depending on content, you can been seen as an advocate for the community or another cause.

4. Companies should blog to engage with customers and demonstrate that they are people.

5. Great content gets people a reason to keep coming back to your site.

6. Blogs are a much more trusted source than company press releases and official company PR.

7. It moves customers to a conversion point of trusting and believing enough to buy.

8. You can beat the competition to it. If your competitors don’t have a blog and you do, that already puts you ahead of the game. You will be immediately at an advantage from a media and public relations stand point as potential customers will be more likely to hear of you first. If you are lucky enough to have an extremely successful blog there is no end to its ability to accelerate the growth of your business as readers link to it from their own blogs and social network profiles.

9. You can engage and understand your customers better.

10. You maintain control over your communications. Starting a blog gives your business the opportunity to inform customers of upcoming products, services, conferences, trade shows or even to give an insight into the day to day running of the business. It allows you to become your own news reporter and gives you control over what reaches the public domain.

11. Marketing has moved ahead with the times. In days gone by the consumer would wait to have a flyer drop on their doorstep to read about the latest news, deals and offers available to them. Today millions of people subscribe to regularly updated blogs and use their feeds to stay abreast on everything from news and current affairs to sport and fashion. So it is absolutely necessary for businesses to keep up with the trend and become multi-faceted in how they interact with the public.

12. The beauty of blogging is that it encourages interaction between potential customers or other businesses and yourselves who are able to leave comments that you might address in a later blog post. By adding questions or provocative statements in your blog, you are in effect inviting subscribers to leave feedback.

Ask Reformation Productions about your company and blogging. We can evaluate your marketing picture and see how blogging fits in and what we can do to help make it happen for you. Contact Rachel at 404.862.8814.

www.ReformationProductions.com