If you read about marketing today or go to a marketing seminar or webinar, you’re almost guaranteed to come across information about blogging. Every decent social media and/or marketing plan contains a blogging component.
At TMR Direct, blogging is an important component in our marketing mix as well. But we don’t blog because “everybody is doing it”—and neither should you. Like any other part of your marketing plan, there needs to be a good business reason to do it. So why do we blog?
Facebook spokesperson, Malorie Lucich said, “People share, read and generally engage more with any type of content when it’s surfaced through friends and people they know and trust.” Quite simply, blogging is one way to build familiarity and trust with people.
How do you build trust with a blog? Why do people read business blogs in the first place? For that matter, why do people go online at all? Most of us are looking for information. We have a problem we need to resolve. Or maybe we have a decision to make. The fact is that we need information to solve our problem or make our decision. The Internet puts a huge source of information at our fingertips. If someone gives us helpful information—information we can actually use to address our needs—that’s valuable. And if they provide that information with no strings attached, we appreciate it. If the information and advice is good (and helps us), we begin to trust the person dispensing it (at least with regard to the topic they’re talking about).
That’s what we try to do with our blogs at TMR Direct. We try to give existing and future customers good information that they can use to address their marketing needs because we’ve learned a thing or two about marketing in the 40 years we’ve been around. We share some of our expertise. You can do the same thing. You have helpful expertise and knowledge that you can share with your customers.
Is this any way to run a business? You may be wondering why you’d want to give away all your expertise. You don’t. You only give a way some of what you know. It still needs to be helpful and valuable—but you don’t have to give away your “secret sauce.” We give away information about direct marketing and social media. But there are times when our customers encounter something that they don’t want to do—or don’t have the expertise to execute. And if we’ve gained their trust by providing helpful information, some of them turn to us for those things.
If you’re a builder and you blog about important information about building a home, that doesn’t mean that your potential customers are going to be able to go out and build a home themselves. But if you give them helpful tips about the homebuilding process, when it’s time to build they just might come to you first.
At TMR Direct we blog to provide people with genuine marketing help and to build trust with the people we meet through our blog. What can you blog about that will help your potential customers and allow them to see you as an expert in your field?