[ This is a guest blog post. Amy enjoys creating marketing campaigns for small business owners and entrepreneurs. Amy runs an indoor fountains ecommerce business as well. To learn more about Amy’s current project (work in progress), please visit Phoenix Internet Marketing firm, Niche Solutions, LLC. ]
True connections happen when you engage with your followers in an open and transparent manner. In today’s transparent world, it is becoming increasingly important to have a responsibility and accountability when it comes to blogging.
Here are the top 5 ways in which you can blog responsibly and increase your followership.
1. Listening to your audience is an important aspect of blogging responsibly.
Most of the business communications are one-way street. Blogging is about creating and facilitating discussions through content sharing. When your followers feel that their voices are acknowledged, they become your ambassadors, and thereby, take your message beyond your current reach. One of the best ways to acknowledge to your audience is to respond to and actively engage in the comments section of your blog. When your audience starts leaving comments on your blog, it shows that your blog has become an actual bi-directional communications platform – an ultimate objective for a business blog.
2. If you blog is not achieving the bidirectional communications platform, you may entice the feedback through polls.
When conducting the poll, it helps to have it about the blog itself. For example, one internet marketing platform is AskDatabase.com, which is very effective when it comes to creating one-question polls and surveys. Ask questions such as, “Would you like to see more videos on this blog? Yes, No, or Other (please leave a comment)”, have proven to be effective way to get your readers attention.
3. Contests are great way to please your audience as well.
When your audience is involved in the process of creating a new logo or a product, they feel a sense of ownership and realize that their opinion truly matters.
4. Tracking your company’s name mentioned on the internet is fairly easy.
All you have to do is setup a Google Alert for your company name, and every time someone mentions your company’s name on internet (e.g. a review), you are notified about it. This enables you to actively engage in discussions about your company. When people are talking about your company, your brand, or your products, you can’t stop tat, but at least you can become aware of their discussions and improve any lapses or negative aspects of your business based on the knowledge you gain from these discussions.
5. When someone leaves a negative comment on your blog, the way you respond to that comment reflects your business style and personality.
Responding courteously to negative comments shows your readers that you take responsibility of your business and customers. The best course of action would be have your customer service contact the customer who left the negative comment. Once you have resolving the issue or misunderstanding, comment back on your blog about it. By dealing it with publicly, you show to your audience that you truly care about your customers.
Blogging responsibly is not only going to help you become more trustworthy in your industry, but also increase your business share and customer fan base. Following the five tips mentioned above would help you get started on creating a transparent and bidirectional communications platform for your business.
Do you have any other suggestions for small business owners looking to improve in this area?
Although I have not started actively seeking feedback on my blog just yet, what are some contests I can use to entice readers who visit? Also, what are ways, other than comments, to acknowledge regular contributors to your blog?
My recent post Poll: Will you vote for your A…
Since your blogs deal a lot more with local news and such, perhaps special gift certificates to notable places might be an ideal to have as a prize. You could ask users to blog about your contest and at the end, pick the one that has stayed loyal as a commenter on your site and has blogged. You might even want to require them to put a link to your site or the contest post during the contest. 🙂
Good post. I'd agree with all the points you have mentioned. Responding to the comments is also and important aspect of blogging. Blog owners need to make sure that they respond to the comments left, whether positive or negative, in a timely manner.
Timely manner is not always necessary. However, it is important to respond in general. Every so often I get a question that although I have the answer, I need to dig up the websites that the person is requesting. Might take a day to get back.
Those 5 tips are useful and are important in marketing online a small business. For me responsible blogging means blogging on the right track, like writing articles inline with what you are selling. Replying to comments is important because it is like you are talking to a prospect customer, so we must deal with comments in a positive way.
My wife runs an hair salon and last year we set up a website for her. Each month we run contests giving away free goodies and the traffic she receives has exploded. Not only has it helped in bringing more business to her salon, but her online revenue from the site as increased dramatically as well.
Great and very informative article thanks for sharing!
Great article. Audience engagement truly matters. And a great way to involve someone is to award them in one way or the other. Having a contest is a great idea to do that. It definitely is a win-win situation for both the consumer and the business owner.
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