“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” – Benjamin Franklin
We have earlier discussed how vital content is for businesses and also that great content is amongst the essentials for fostering customer engagement. There are different kinds of content that businesses write or hire someone to write for them, and blogs have become extremely important from the perspective of SEO and also ensures that the company can share news, views and value-added information to drive customer engagement. Well written blogs ensure that your website and social media site ‘visitors’ remain riveted and spend more time on these ‘pages’ increasing your company’s chances of gaining more business. Great blogs ensure that customer engagement is sustained as they would repeatedly come back to your sites to gain information or get insights into your company and the industry in which either they operate or industries that they are aligned to.
Companies often make a fatal error of ignoring blogs on their websites sometimes simply because it is not an easy task. Creative and interesting blogs require time, passion and consistent effort and most companies do not have the talent. The companies that do see value in blogs and recognize the fact that blogs can drive customer engagement either hire someone in-house or outsource this task. Either way focused attention to this particular task yields good results. Effective blogging not only drive customer engagement, they also make your company and its offerings highly ‘visible’ and more attractive and able to stand out in the melee – and anyone running a business now understands the criticality of getting noticed and being ahead of others in the ‘game’.
Cumbersome and difficult as the art of writing content may be, there is no denying that blogs and other well-articulated content can truly drive customer engagement and ensure that the company remains in the spotlight. It is always great to be known for things over and above what your company stands for. Blogs and other content act as virtual brand ambassadors for a company, have the ability to draw focus to the company’s brand, raise awareness of the company’s products and services, educate customers and other readers on aspects other than the company’s offerings and ensure that even smaller companies and brands are able to gain visibility without much trouble.
The reason that blogs can drive customer engagement is that through regular and well-written ones, a company can establish their position as a subject (s) matter expert. For example – by writing regular blogs on customer service a company that is not essentially a service or hospitality company can still drive customer engagement and ensure that their website gets more ‘visitors’ and interest is generated for the company. Blogs written on a particular topic or a range of topics makes for interesting reads and provides your clients, customers and other readers a single platform to gain information and tips on their ‘favourite’ topics. There is no escaping that today’s highly competitive business world thrives on content since people must speak about themselves and create hype for their company if they wish to be noticed.
So what should your company do in order to make the content and blogs more effective and ensure that it is able to drive customer engagement? To start with it is imperative that your company refrains from writing blogs simply because competition is doing it. Each company has their own reasons for publishing blogs and so before you join in, it would be necessary to establish what you expect the blogs to achieve for you – that is what the long and short term goals expected to be reached. A company needs to understand whether they are willing to commit to this on-going task and the resources of time, energy, effort and money that would go in to keeping the blogs fresh, upbeat, informative, engaging and highly interesting. Your company should know what it is that it expects to achieve from the blogs and whether the blogs will achieve the desired result – that of being able to drive customer engagement. Given these thoughts, it is amply clear that blogging is not and should not be a one-off. It must be consistent, relentless and treated as an important part of your company’s strategy. Without such understanding, passion and knowledge your company and the content would appear directionless and lack-lustre.
True the main aim for any company is to drive customer engagement – loyal and profitable customers are the life-line for any company. Keeping in line with this aim, the blogs too must lead to attracting more customers and ensuring that they remain ‘glued’ to your company and its products. Blogs must be written to interest the reader – in our opinion they should be on subjects different from the company’s brand. The readers and visitors interests and preferences must take precedence when a company decides to publish blogs. Customers and other visitors can already see your company’s information and product details on the website – to give them that something more, blogs should provide them with meaningful content that anyone and any business can benefit from – as mentioned in the example – customer service is a subject that would interest anyone in business or wanting to start a business. The great part about blogs is that they can drive customer engagement irrespective of the topic – there would be something that would appeal to at least some part of the audience. So while your blogs might not be ‘pleasing’ all the audience and readers, it would still be reaching out to a significant number of people.
Blogs help a company to express its views on a range of subjects and customers tend to gravitate towards companies that are able to provide information on a number of topics rather than having a narrow perspective. Blogging can drive customer engagement by displaying the company’s commitment to providing value-added service and information to their customers and other visitors without any extra charge to them.
As mentioned, blogging once started must remain consistent. In order to ensure consistency, companies must seriously consider who would be responsible for writing the blogs for their company. There must be a schedule for the blogs and this schedule must be maintained. Most companies do not wish to take on added headcount and the overheads connected with extra headcount and hence hiring professional writers and freelancers to do this critical task is a great idea. They would be responsible to ensure that the content is spell-checked and proof-read before it is published. Although, finding the right fit for your company may take time, it is worth the effort when you do find the right persons to write blogs on various subjects. Not only does your company get consistent, unique and great content for a small sum -monthly, but this will ensure uniformity and new content daily – keeping your readers engaged and interested in what happens with your company.
Post the decision to write blogs consistently with the aim to drive customer engagement, ensure that you measure the success by way of readership and repeat visitors. Just like any other business strategy that requires regular monitoring and updating, the blogs too must be measured, monitored and kept regularly updated and fresh. Companies that write at least a blog daily are able to garner more interest not just from their customers but also from popular and highly effective search engines that would then drive ‘visitor traffic’ to the company’s website.
In addition, to putting in great content it is also important that the blogs have the option of ‘sharing’ – readers should be able to send the posts they find interesting to their friends, associates and others just with the click of a button. Not only does this increase readership, it also ensures that the company gets more views and more people are able to know about it and the products offered.
Building an audience and a loyal readership takes time. However, this is not an impossible task and well-written content and blogs will ensure that your company gains such an audience and is able to drive customer engagement for its other activities too.
