The blog is a diary-like online platform to post a personal opinion or account of daily events so that others can read right?

…..Wrong! And this is what turns off many who think to themselves “What am going to post everyday and how will that help bring customers?” A blog is a highly versatile publishing platform. It can be what you want it to be and is only limited by one’s creativity. While some use it effectively to publish a daily account of events, others use it just as well to turn it into a learning resource with informative articles and some can adapt it to publish an online magazine with content that’s of interest to it’s readers. What you choose to publish depends largely on one’s business and more importantly their customers.

A very niche high tech company which needs to attract a very no-nonsense technical audience may need to publish more along the lines of technology publications maintaining a more serious tone and ensuring it’s valuable to the readers. A business targeted towards a younger audience may choose to publish a more rich media based one with a lighter first person tone to strike a chord with their readers. Finally the objective is to create a real social connection through the blog and develop a valuable online resource for your target audience.  That’s how your customers will discover you. How do you decide what kind of publication your business could use and how to leverage a blog? Simple….

• Define your target audience and customers (what kind of audience would you like your publication to draw?)

• Now put yourself in their shoes for a while and think about what kind of an online publication would attract your attention and have you go back for more on a regular basis? (What kind of content? What kind of tone? What are their current favorites? What can you learn from them? How could you make your publication even better?)

• Execute! Start working towards building that dream online publication  and spend some time every day thinking “how can I make it even better?” , “what would a reader like to see here?”… and make your publication the best there is.

Virtually every industry, business vertical or interest area including the niche one’s have successful online publications in the form of blogs, journals, portals, news sites and magazines. The blog as a platform is perhaps the most versatile marketing tool we’ve seen in a while. Use it well, and with a little effort you can also have one of those publications your customers value so much.

Business vertical based blogs are a great alternative to high ad spend and are one of the most valuable mediums of inbound marketing. It’s important to note the main objective of such a blog or online publication is not outright push selling to a customer simply using the blog as a tool to do that. The objective is to create the most engaging and useful publication with great content for targeted audience in your business vertical. If you can publish a blog or online magazine which can do that, you will build a community of followers who will be pulled to your business website eventually simply because they enjoy your publication. It’s non-intrusive pull marketing. For example, if you’re reading this article on online content marketing and value the articles we publish, the chances are, sooner or later you will be curious enough to explore what we do and what we offer at Buzzfactory.net. The objective is: this article you find useful will lead you to our website and perhaps even contact us to see if we may be able to work together.

Thinking out-of-the-box and not restricting your content to revolve only around your business can play an important part in how others perceive your publication. For example, if you are hotel or resort located in Miami, a blog which talks about the hotel property itself may be interesting but can you really build a long term reader base around it? Instead, if you could build a blog with great articles on “Travel in Miami” which has tips, guides, advice and articles on what those visiting the city could do, that could scale into a widely read travel blog. In effect, the branding space on such a blog would be more valuable and the reader base perfect for those who may be interested in checking out the resort website and perhaps making an online booking. An adventure sports blog for an adventure sports apparel company, an automotive blog for a a car dealership or a boat & yachting online publication for a boat manufacturer are all along the right lines to attract attention online and build a good platform. In the B2B space the objective is the same. Create a publication that the audience finds useful and ask yourself, as someone interested in this vertical, what would you like to read?

Finally the success of an online publication for any business  comes down to it’s planning and execution. While many set of to create a vertical or industry blog or publication, few actually manage to keep up the momentum and publish fresh content as frequently as it should be. The way we approach completely managed publications for our customers is much the way a magazine would. Setting monthly objectives for both content and traffic goals is important as is a weekly plan of the articles that need to be done for the week. Once articles are published they need to be promoted on social networks shared through social bookmarking and the process needs a dedicated effort. It’s a gradual learning process which needs experimenting and constant review to understand what is working, what the audience respond to and how to stay creative and continue to make it valuable. It calls for a dedicated effort where you can consistently publish fresh content and continue to keep readers happy.

If you’ve looked at the best blogs and online magazines in your industry and have made up your mind to take them on with your own, our advice is “Go for it!”

Almost everyone who comes across the idea of setting up a blog for their business is excited by the prospect and gets into it with the enthusiasm of a six year old going to Disneyland for the first time. Whether its to communicate with customers, drive traffic or create more online awareness about a business, thousands of company or business blogs are kick started every week across the web with hopes that it can be a great channel to get to customers on the web and there is a lot of activity and frenzy in getting the blog launched. Few months later…. it didn’t quite seem like such a great idea. So are blogs really than ineffective for online marketing? No!

Blogs can be extremely effective as online marketing tools and customer acquisition but they don’t happen over night. You can’t expect to plant a packet of magic beans and expect a beanstalk overnight. This expectation gives a lot of first time marketing bloggers false hopes and when they see in the first week or so that they aren’t getting a gush of visitors, they give up, lose interest or reduce the frequency of their updates. Inactivity is the number one reason why a business blog can fail. The flipside of this is constant updates and regular refreshing of blog content works towards building a successful blog.

If you look at how a blog starts drawing readers and visitors, keywords have a special significance in helping visitors find you. Compare this to a fisherman using line with more than one hook. Every single time you put up a new blog posts it’s like adding a few more hooks to your fishing line and you’re increasing your chances of people finding you online. If you can post every day, you are effectively increasing your online reach daily and over time you will have what could be compared to a net of content instead of a line. However, this process needs to be done consistantly and as often as possible to build a successful blog around your business. It’s easy to lose interest and managing a blog can be very time consuming which explains why many busy marketing executives and business bloggers find they don’t have enough time to keep up with posting daily or weekly and the blogs are neglected. Whether you hire a content writer or manage your own blog, building that blog content consistently and being persistent will pay off. Don’t give up!