If you really want to get customers, you need to give them something useful other than selling your products through your online marketing channels and online content. That’s what we tell our prospective customers while deciding the online content writing strategy which is such an integral part of online marketing. One of the blogs we have been working on for the last six months just got listed among the top 10 blogs within its vertical by a third party expert in the field. In the foreword to the top 10 declaration he mentioned these blogs were selected over several hundreds of other contenders within the field mainly because they offered regular content which was valuable and insightful to readers and were not simply pushing their own products in every post as some other business blogs do.  The aim of a good business blog shouldn’t be to write content which talks about the products or services that you offer. The aim should be to provide useful, interesting content which your target audience consume and bringing them towards your website and allowing them to approach your business using the right call to action methods.  Vadim Liberman interviewed online marketing guru David Meerman Scott recently for the “Conference Board Review” and this is what David had to say when asked “What are organizations doing wrong?” :

Unfortunately, traditional-media marketing is heavily product-centered, and companies are translating that approach to the Web by creating banner ads that simply announce products or services. But marketing on the Web should be different. It’s about publishing interesting information that people will want to consume. The focus on product that offline advertising has had generally is not the right way to go when marketing online, because people searching the Web are looking for answers to problems, not for companies’ products. The problem is that managers are still focusing on doing what they learned in school or have been doing on the job for years. Think about it: The first thing you’re taught in school and take with you to work are the four Ps of marketing, the first being product. But if you want to get people talking about your product, it’s really unlikely that they will do so because of your actual product. Stop talking about your product! Nobody really cares about it. Ultimately, the best marketing understands people’s problems and articulates how the product will solve those problems. For example, there are thousands of companies out there that develop similar software or hardware technologies, and their marketing is pretty similar because they talk about the product in similar terms: “a flexible, scalable solution for improving business processing.” But what the hell is that? It’s a router or a piece of software for accountants or some other group of people. It’s not “a flexible, scalable solution for improving business processing.” Instead of creating jargon-filled, hype-based advertising, you can create the kind of online information that your buyers naturally gravitate to by using their words, not your own. You should speak in the language of your buyer, not the language of your founder, CEO, product manager, or PR agency staffer.

It couldn’t have been said better. A corporate blog which talks about the company, the products and little else is perhaps a good sales tool or marketing collateral at the most. However, thats not online readers are looking for when they search for information. For example, a hotel blog which talks about their location, the things you can do while you are there, places to visit during ones stay and similar content would attract more readers and engage them as compared to a blog on just facts about the rooms and facillities. You need to give something to get something. When it comes to online marketing and getting customers, what you need to give them is useful online content.