Blogging as a Marketing Tool for your Online Business

Marketing and Promoting

Blogging was developed from the writing of online diaries and was popularised in the late 1990s which coincides with the global Internet boom. LiveJournal was probably the most popular blogging platform at that time and along with Blogger played a pivotal role in bringing blogging into the mainstream.

Blogging has since become an integral part of online culture. People blog to share their personal life experiences and to distribute useful information. Blogs generate a genuine closeness between the bloggers and readers due to the element of personal touch and realness in the blog content, leading to the high viewership. The phenomenon of blogging has increased exponentially over the last 10 years and there are more than 100 millions unique blogs in the world and even more blog readers nowadays.

Astute businessmen have realised the huge potential of blogging as a form of effective advertising for their businesses. If managed appropriately, blogging can become a lucrative marketing tool to advertise your products and services online.

The increasing popularity of blogging as a marketing tool for an online business is due to its (1) low-start up cost, (2) easy access by the viewers and (3) instant publication of your information. Furthermore as the blogger, you have (4) much flexibility in determining the blog design and content plus (5) the millions of regular blog readers provide you a with a great global exposure to promote your products and services.

When planning your blog, you must first identify your target audience, understand their interest and create an original blog with content that appeals to them. Next, you will need to maintain your blog by updating your content with new and useful information regularly. The next step is to promote your blog on an on-going basis by maintaining and building up your audience. Once you have established a regular group of followers, you can then look for creative ways to generate profits from your blog.

(A) Plan Blog  → (B) Maintain Blog  →  (C) Promote Blog  →   (D) Monetize Blog