I recently blogged about a conversation I had with an old friend. He owns a small service company in the health care industry. With skepticism in his voice, he asked me whether or not I thought he should add a blog to his website. I took a moment to touch on the SEO benefits of generating fresh content via blog posts, and then I hammered on the main point—if you have something useful to say that enhances your customers’ experience, then why not share it with them?
We’re all experts at something whether we realize it or not. My friend is an expert on a particular subset of the health care industry. Fear, uncertainty and doubt are big motivators in that area. By sharing his expertise with potential customers, he could be building the kind of credibility that you just can’t buy with advertising. And yet he doesn’t think of himself as a publisher, so he does nothing.
Mashable.com recently hosted a conversation about how brands are using publishing to engage with their customers. It’s a conversation that a lot companies are having these days. I completely agree with the assertion of the interviewee that “if businesses can be transparent, be authentic—in the right context—then the brand and the brand story can be conversational and influential.”
If you’re not having the kind of success you envisioned with your company blog and your social media outreach, then you should watch this video.
I’ve devoted a lot of virtual ink to this topic. If you still don’t understand how to properly engage with your audience, then you could benefit from browsing through some of the links below.
- Use social media to talk with, not at, your customers
- Don’t beg for traffic. Lure traffic with great content.
- Five easy blog post ideas to drive traffic to your site
- The six most basic steps to SEO success
- Mandatory reading for entrepreneurs (and new marketers)
