Blogging Can Be the Voice of Your Brand

Why blogging? People are social animals. One might argue that even our method and ability to communicate stems from our need to connect with other people. To tell stories.  To share our experiences. Early on, communication might mean the difference between life and death.  Which berries were poisonous, which animals were dangerous, and the best way to hunt or gather either. This information was passed down through oral tradition and then written communication that could withstand generations longer than word of mouth could ever accomplish. In solving this problem, new information could be collected, brainpower could be used to work on solving other problems, creating entire societies and cultures. Civilizations!

In business, what you are doing really isn’t much different than that. You are inviting a community of customers, producers, sales representatives, wholesalers, and media gurus to help build the structure of your financial empire. Everyone working together with the end result in mind to make money, to provide a service or a product, and build your business. Get people to know your brand.  Solve problems and continue to adapt to the dangers and pitfalls of the commercial market.

People have been geared to listen to each other’s stories for hundreds of thousands of years. There is more to be gained in telling your potential customers a story, holding onto their Attention, and gaining their trust through a narrative than there is flashing an image in front of them in an ad.  When someone reads your blogs, they become invested in your product. If you give them the best information you can provide, you gain their trust, you gain their patronage. When someone learns something you have not only given them a reason to think of your company, but you have also provided to them a service. And all it cost them was a couple clicks of the mouse.

You have established a community between you and the client. You aren’t like those other companies that just want to take. You are also here to give something back.  And why not? When you help out the customer, they come back, they tell their friends and family members about you. About the goods and services you provide. They become invested. When they do a websearch and your blog comes up, rather than some click-bait article that was hastily penned from some unreliable source, in what barely passes for English, they will stick around. They see the time you took to use proper grammar, diction, and if you can believe it: spelling.

Something as simple and basic to written communication such as spelling and grammar is still important. When you blog, you can be informal if you like. You can write in such a way that reminds people more of talking to their mother or maybe even their doctor.  Someone who has no reason to lie to them about things. An authority on information they can trust. Intelligence is indicated by how well someone uses the tools they are provided to do the job. Blogging is no different.

When you blog on your corporate site, something else happens. The more solid your blog, the more reliable the information, and the clarity of the language you use, the more hits your site will get. This will give your company a boost in Search Engine Optimization, or SEO content, which will eventually just snowball, building your name, building your exposure, as well as the worth of your company. Taking time to tell a story, to expound on the narrative, and reach an audience of new customers is exactly what you need to do.

A drawback to blogging, however is the ability to capture and hold your reader’s attention.  Due to social media, the limit of information people are able to process and retain is quickly approaching 140 characters. There are several ways to work with this.

Here are six simple ways to hold your audience’s attention:

• Bulleted lists!
• Enticing titles that keep them clicking!
• Promises that you won’t believe what you are about to see next!
• Entertaining content and hilarious stuff!
• Bite sized tidbits that keep them hungry for more!
• Or tell a good story that takes them with you for the long haul, because people would rather have something of substance than something of flash.

The heart of blogging, when it began, was a journal-like narrative that shared the author’s deepest thoughts and experiences with other people. The interaction with the writer and the audience was very personal. Bloggers gained followers who thought of them as their friends. They shared experiences. They carried on an interactive conversation with the author in commentaries, giving their own feedback in the process.

Instant gratification is the junk-food of click-bait journalism and the sensationalism of “You wouldn’t believe what the cameraman caught!” titles that capture someone attention just long enough to get a few clicks out of the experience.  Blogging, taken to a higher level, with personality, useful information, a credible Voice, humanity and compassion is going to put your searches at the top of the list when the results come up.

Before you know it, your blog will become a resource and not just some forgettable bunch of information compiled by a data filter and regurgitated into the internet.  Your business will have the look and feel of a culture, instead of a camp.  It will have substance, character, and a look of professionalism that surmounts the 140 characters that people have settled for.  Blogging will help your company, as well as your clients.  You can tell a much better story too and leave something for others that they can use.

If you want to be remembered, contact me to see how blogging can work for you.

Make your dot com interesting! Make it memorable!

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