5 Easy Ways to Use Your Blog to Promote Your Business

This is a guest post by Tom Mcloughlin.

In these days of far more social interaction online, it’s more important than ever to connect with your customers rather than just pushing information to them and walking away. People want to know who the personalities are behind a business and by doing that they develop an increased trust for you and your brand.

There are many ways of connecting online, whether it be on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, forums specific to your niche or even on your own blog. External platforms are great places to connect, but people often overlook the power of their own blog and whilst many businesses have them, they don’t use them to their maximum potential.

Below are 5 tips to maximising the power of your blog to enhance your business and promote your brand online:

Write Relevant Tutorials Based on What You Offer

A large proportion of what people are searching for online is how to do things. You will undoubtedly have a lot of expertise in your business area which many people will want to tap into. Your blog is the perfect place to do this, by creating information areas on topics which people in your field or searching for your service will find useful. Obviously you don’t want to give everything away, but by drawing people in with some good quality information and tutorials, you can then look to connect further with these people who have the potential to become future clients or customers.

Answer Questions

Following on from the previous point, one great way to approach which tutorials and information to cover is via and question and answer system. This can combine using your presence on other social media platforms to reach out and ask for questions or issues that people are having, which you can then answer and promote on your blog. This approach ensures you are writing content people want to read and should increase the success and interaction you develop.

Connect with Other Bloggers

Many businesses don’t know how to create connections with bloggers. They won’t want to be contacted out of the blue right? Well, maybe not, so you need to create something which gives you a good reason to contact them. Posts where you highlight the good work of other bloggers, mention them in a favourite bloggers list or just reference them at some point are a great reason to drop them a line and say hello. Everyone likes a complement, so what better email to send than to say thanks for your great work, I gave you a digital pat on the back here? This opens the conversation, and then as you continue to develop the relationship you can start to look into how you might work together, or you might even just get some natural exposure through the blogger as they’re happy to mention you in a positive light.

Highlight Great Customers and Testimonials

What most new visitors to your website and business will be interested in is whether you are a trusted brand and if you are sufficiently reputable to be worthy of their business. One great way of doing this is through testimonials and customer feedback. When you have excellent experiences with customers who give great feedback, use it to its maximum! Ask that customer if they would mind if you mentioned them on your blog or, even better, ask them to contribute something themselves about their positive experience. Not only does this create fabulous content which will instill confidence and trust in new customers, it will also reinforce a brand advocate in that particular customer who will feel special and probably tell other friends and family about their experience.

Share News on Deals and Products

Companies are always trying to promote new products or particular deals that they are running, but often have to pay over the odds for external advertising in order to get the word out. A blog is a great way to promote these kinds of offers or releases and it is the sort of material that gets a lot of traction on social media platforms which customers are highly likely to share with each other. Stop relying on other sources to promote your deals, and do it using the people who are already fans of your brand!

About the author
This is a guest post from Tom at Enjoy Bed and Breakfast, which offers a guide to the best marketing practices for bed and breakfast properties in the UK and around the world.