BULLY FOR BLOGS
Like many artisans, Brandy Agerbeck makes a variety
of jewelry and quirky crafts. But unlike so
many in her business, Agerbeck has a following
that tracks and buys her designs far beyond the
metropolitan Chicago area where she works and
lives. How does someone in Boise, ID, or Kittery,
ME, find out about her colorful finger puppets? Mostly,
by way of her blogs online diaries that are accessible
to anyone surfing the Web.
Blogs, or Weblogs, are fast becoming one of the
hottest and most cost-effective ways small businesses like
Agerbeck’s Loosetooth.com can market themselves, either by capturing
audiences with like interests or by creating a personality that online
surfers seek out. Blogs are Web-based journals that can be easily
created and updated with software without requiring someone to have
any kind of special technical expertise. Blogs became a big hit last year
among media outlets and personalities, mostly driven by politics and
the presidential election. However, over recent months, small businesses
have begun to capitalize on the medium as a means of grassroots
marketing and cultivating more interactive relationships with customers.
Agerbeck, for example, keeps her audience in the loop on her projects
by providing running diary entries complete with photos and funny
commentary. While she declines to make a direct correlation between
the blog and increased sales, she says traffic to her Web site has never
been higher and she s been presented with opportunities an interview
on HGTV, for example that she otherwise wouldn t have had. It s
been more grassroots more marketing than sales, but it proves my
credibility and shows people what I m doing, says Agerbeck, who also
runs a Web design and visual communications business for corporate
customers.
"Keeping people abreast of your work and accomplishments
is a perfect application for blogs, and one
that can benefit any type of small business," says
John Jantsch, principal of Duct Tape Marketing, in
Kansas City, MO, who also has a blog for his own
marketing consulting firm (www.ducttapemarketing.com
). "The wonderful thing about blogs is that
they allow you to tell a story, develop a personality, or
express and educate in a way like no other tool,"
explains Jantsch. Blogs are also a cheap way to
reach out. Small businesses can expect to pay
around $20 a month if they want a company to host their
blog, or invest less than $100 in software to produce their own
blog.
One of Jantsch s clients, a home contractor, used a blog to chronicle
one of his renovation projects. Every time major work was completed,
he took a photo and posted some comments on a Web site. Not only
did it give homeowners a sense of how the contractor worked and a
sneak peak at the renovation, it also landed the contractor stories in three
national publications as well as a new, half-million-dollar contract.
To get these kinds of results, Jantsch and other experts recommend
you:
- Be consistent.You need to commit to keeping up the blog. It s like
a conversation where people are listening in; "if you don’t say anything
for weeks, they stop listening," he says.
- Make sense. He suggests keeping a theme for your entries,
something that people will seek out and keep revisiting.
- Don’t use a hard sell. Most people reading blogs are early
adopters and they don t want anything crammed down their throat.
Jantsch suggests keeping it low-key and educational.
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