More dynamic than a website, a blog means you can publish articles about your SME and your industry—and establish your expertise.
There are over 200 million blogs on the web. For an SME, a blog represents a golden opportunity to interact with your customers and get to know them. It also helps you share your opinions on products or trends. The company can thus present itself as an expert in its area of business. In other words, a blog helps an SME to raise its profile.
How to create the perfect blog
A blog means you can write and publish articles. These articles should then be posted on social networks to increase site traffic. An effective blog includes the following:
- Simple presentation
- Short and varied articles
- Articles are published at regular intervals
- They present a different and original point of view
- The blog uses an RSS feed to enable other websites to reference it
A blog can be created on different platforms. The most well-known include WordPress (most popular), Blogger (simple and fast) and Tumblr (simple and practical).
Bringing a blog to life
To bring a blog to life and interact with its customers, an SME must produce articles on a regular basis. The ideal is to publish between one and three posts a week. You can prepare them in advance or even write several at once, to avoid having to worry about them continually. An effective post includes the following:
- A title that attracts the customer’s attention
- A subtitle that summarizes the article content
- A meta-description which improves online referencing
- Correct and accurate information
- Links to other webpages
- Calls to interact such as “What about you? What do you think about this product?”
- Quotes and credits
- Bylined articles
The main objective is to create a feeling of community that brings your customers closer to you. For example, the coffee shop chain Starbucks systematically asks consumers what they think about a new product and how it might be improved. They receive a large number of customer responses which are then used to create the chain’s future products. Customers are then happy to consume a product they have helped create.
Source: Small Business Marketing Kit For Dummies, Barbara Findlay Schenck, John Wiley & Sons Inc, 2012.
