Realty Blogging: Marketing a Business Using a Blog Gains Focus
The idea that you can market a business using a blog is beginning to catch on.
[This blog, Making Communications Buzz, has moved to the new McBuzz Communications website located at www.mcbuzz.com.]
If you are considering a redesign of your business website, don't take another step until you have looked at the possibilities opened up by "blogging" software like WordPress. WordPress is evolving into a fairly sophisticated content management system. It allows you to edit and update a website with no knowledge of HTML or any other code, and it's great for search engine visibility. I will return to this topic in coming posts.
The purpose of this post is to point out that marketing a business using a blog — and the information available to help you do so — is becoming more specialized. This is a great thing for anyone with a business to promote, and it's another reminder that blogging is not just for teenagers and techno-geeks.
A new book, Realty Blogging: Build Your Brand And Outsmart Your Competition (McGraw-Hill 2007) is reviewed by Gayle Pollard-Terry in the print edition of the Los Angeles Times (Sunday, March 11, 2007). Authors Richard Nacht and Paul Chaney are marketing consultants who offer clients direction in setting up and maintaining a blog to promote their business. Nacht and Chaney specialize in serving real estate businesses.
Their website, realtyblogging.com, calls itself "A Network of Blogging Evangelists Writing On Effective Real Estate Blogging". Good idea!
In coming years, we will see innumerable analogous sites, networks of "Blogging Evangelists Writing On Effective [Your Field Here] Blogging."
Here are the bullet points from the cover of Realty Blogging. This is what a blog can do for your business, according to the authors.
Before you can dominate your market niche, you have to define your market niche, and this is something owning and operating a business blog will help you to do.
Perhaps one of the greatest things you can do to promote your business — whether it's a small privately-owned shop, a start-up looking for funding, or a major corporation — is to perfect a 60-second "elevator pitch". This is the quick summary you give to anyone when you first meet and they ask, "What do you do for a living?"
A strong elevator pitch goes a very long way toward advancing marketing goals. It grabs people's attention, and states clearly and succinctly what sets your business apart from the competition.
By blogging regularly about your industry, you can learn to define what you do in concrete terms that your customers and your peers understand. Blogging about your industry, and your business's place in it, is like honing your elelvator pitch. You think about it before you "put it out there," and once you put it out there, you see how people react. If you get blank stares, don't worry! Tweak the material, find something more interesting to say, and try again.
It's trial and error all the way. Persistence pays off. Just be sure to ask for — and listen to — feedback.
If you are not getting any feedback, then start sending people links to your blog posts via e-mail. Ask them directly to read a post and to let you know what they think. Tell them you would really appreciate their feedback!
And ask them to forward the link to anyone else that might be interested, because you plan to write more about this topic in the future and you would like to incorporate their thoughts and address any questions they may have in your next post.
Marketing a business well is an ongoing conversation will customers, prospective customers and peers. Blogs make it possible to extend that conversation around the block, or around the world, all for the cost of web hosting and a little setup. Amazing!
Let me know what you think!
[This blog, Making Communications Buzz, has moved to the new McBuzz Communications website located at www.mcbuzz.com.]
If you are considering a redesign of your business website, don't take another step until you have looked at the possibilities opened up by "blogging" software like WordPress. WordPress is evolving into a fairly sophisticated content management system. It allows you to edit and update a website with no knowledge of HTML or any other code, and it's great for search engine visibility. I will return to this topic in coming posts.
The purpose of this post is to point out that marketing a business using a blog — and the information available to help you do so — is becoming more specialized. This is a great thing for anyone with a business to promote, and it's another reminder that blogging is not just for teenagers and techno-geeks.
A new book, Realty Blogging: Build Your Brand And Outsmart Your Competition (McGraw-Hill 2007) is reviewed by Gayle Pollard-Terry in the print edition of the Los Angeles Times (Sunday, March 11, 2007). Authors Richard Nacht and Paul Chaney are marketing consultants who offer clients direction in setting up and maintaining a blog to promote their business. Nacht and Chaney specialize in serving real estate businesses.
Their website, realtyblogging.com, calls itself "A Network of Blogging Evangelists Writing On Effective Real Estate Blogging". Good idea!
In coming years, we will see innumerable analogous sites, networks of "Blogging Evangelists Writing On Effective [Your Field Here] Blogging."
Here are the bullet points from the cover of Realty Blogging. This is what a blog can do for your business, according to the authors.
- Build your brand
- Find new customers
- Attract major search engines
- Dominate your market niche
Before you can dominate your market niche, you have to define your market niche, and this is something owning and operating a business blog will help you to do.
Perhaps one of the greatest things you can do to promote your business — whether it's a small privately-owned shop, a start-up looking for funding, or a major corporation — is to perfect a 60-second "elevator pitch". This is the quick summary you give to anyone when you first meet and they ask, "What do you do for a living?"
A strong elevator pitch goes a very long way toward advancing marketing goals. It grabs people's attention, and states clearly and succinctly what sets your business apart from the competition.
By blogging regularly about your industry, you can learn to define what you do in concrete terms that your customers and your peers understand. Blogging about your industry, and your business's place in it, is like honing your elelvator pitch. You think about it before you "put it out there," and once you put it out there, you see how people react. If you get blank stares, don't worry! Tweak the material, find something more interesting to say, and try again.
It's trial and error all the way. Persistence pays off. Just be sure to ask for — and listen to — feedback.
If you are not getting any feedback, then start sending people links to your blog posts via e-mail. Ask them directly to read a post and to let you know what they think. Tell them you would really appreciate their feedback!
And ask them to forward the link to anyone else that might be interested, because you plan to write more about this topic in the future and you would like to incorporate their thoughts and address any questions they may have in your next post.
Marketing a business well is an ongoing conversation will customers, prospective customers and peers. Blogs make it possible to extend that conversation around the block, or around the world, all for the cost of web hosting and a little setup. Amazing!
Let me know what you think!
Labels: blogging, howto, marketing, web marketing
posted by Mark McLaren at
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