Blogging & Your Business Day 1: Promoting Your Business Through Your Blog

Blogging & Your Business: Day 1

So it begins! The purpose of this week long forum is to answer questions readers might have about why blogs are an important tool for businesses today. They’re inexpensive to start, and just take a little love and cultivation, much like a garden. Today, there are over 15.5 million blogs, and many people deliberately seek out a business’s blog. If you don’t have one, you might be missing valuable customers.

Let’s get started. Each day I’ll post a few questions, and the answers from the Blogging & Your Business panel. At the end of each post, you can learn about one of the panel members (you’ll meet them all throughout the week). PLEASE add to the conversation, ask questions, and comment!

How do you promote your business through your blog?

This is something I don’t do too aggressively, so I was eager to see what the panel had to say.

Tammy Munson: Thru posts that reflect my expertise, tips, suggestions, etc.

Liz Strauss: I talk about business and I talk about how business works on my blog. When those are the topics of conversation, I follow my signature with a link to the page that outlines what I do. In my sidebar is a button to that same page. The button says “Work with Liz!”

Beth Agnew: I talk about topics of interest to my customers, and expand on any innovations or new concepts we are working on. Since I am always looking to solve customer problems, I provide solutions in the blog as well.

Kevin Eikenberry: I focus on giving good content related to our areas of expertise and our Clients (and prospective Client’s) needs. I blogged for a couple of years before I ever posted something even marginally promotional. I do that more now, but far from exclusively, especially on the blog for my new book Remarkable Leadership. In the end I believe content is king.

Vikram Rajan: My readers are just getting started in the blogosphere. So my number 1 way is still through my e-newsletter. But of course, being active on other people’s blogs (commenting, exchanging links, etc.) also helps. I use Google Adwords to promote some of my audio-books which also links back to my blog. I have also noticed that I score high in natural context search results when my topics are relevant.

Dawud Miracle: The primary way I promote my business is by writing posts on the topics that I can really help clients in my niche market with. With each of my posts, I’m interested in creating a conversation. In the conversation, I take the opportunity to share my expertise. Ultimately, I’m looking to have the conversation build to a relationship that can go in many different directions – including readers becoming clients.

I do take advantage of social networking, link sharing and social bookmarking to increase my reach. But primary, I focus on writing quality, helpful posts that create conversation and relationship and I let the relationships build my business.

Susan Payton: I tie in examples from my marketing & PR firm to illustrate my points in my blog. I’m working on adding more promotion, like my company logo. I also have a link to my book on the blog, and have written blogs on it. So far, I’m not getting a lot of traffic from my blog to my business, but am working on it.

Meet a Panelist

Tammy Munson is currently the owner of New Media VA, which specializes in blogging, audio/video production, new media marketing, web and graphic design. In 2006, Tammy launched Business and Learning, a business education community for those that work from home, and host of the wildly popular and successful Work At Home Expo, with her business partner, Wendy Cooper. Tammy currently lives in Washington DC Metro with her husband SPC Munson and their two beautiful daughters, Kiersten and Rebecca. They also have 2 dogs, Ranger (Lab/husky) and Jack (Border Collie).

-Susan

Need More Resources?
Your Business Needs a Blog
10 Ways to a Killer Blog
What is Business Blogging?
Turn Your Blog into a Big Success
10 tips to better business blogging
How to determine a name for your business blog