Friday, 7 September 2012

Powering Up Your Personal Word of Mouth with Best Blogging Practices

Power up your personal word of mouth with these blogging tips

It is true that word of mouth marketing has been with us for as long as commerce has existed. Interestingly, word of mouth marketing has dramatically changed in recent times, especially since the advent of the internet. Information technology has transformed word of mouth marketing into a new specialty in marketing that can be planned, is actionable and can be tracked just like other major forms of marketing. It has therefore come to be a general term to refer to several techniques that are used to energize and engage customers. It has come to include blogs, viral marketing, loyalty programs, social media, emails, discussion boards, mobile texting, and other strategies that get customers to talk to others about your products.

In particular, there are several ways in which you can harness the power of word of mouth marketing through blogging sites and other social media to significantly boost the exposure of your company. You can use blogs to give people and potential customers a reason to speak and talk about your products or services.

Word of Mouth through Blogging

Blogs can significantly contribute towards your word of mouth marketing in various ways. Firstly, blogging software like Wordpress and Blogger.com do not need you to have any special programming skills or knowledge. This means that even a technically challenged employee or business owner can easily post a blog and tap into the online market.

Secondly, due to the fact that blogs are meant to be regularly posted, they are very helpful in increasing a business's exposure through the provision of new and useful content for search engines to comb through.

Thirdly, blogging enables the company or business owner to have control over the content being marketed because the business owner or the company can choose which topics to post. As a business owner, you can start a blog that will elicit a discussion that is centered on a particular aspect of your products, and everyone will be discussing about your product in those angles through their posts. In addition, blogging is a good way to encourage customers to provide feedback by submitting their comments. The fact that the customers' comments can be viewed by everyone who visits the blog makes this a perfect word of mouth marketing technique that is worth pursuing for any business owner.

Just like blogging, you can harness the power of word of mouth marketing through discussion boards on certain blogs. Discussion boards are very helpful especially if you want to develop relationships between your business and your customers. By offering a forum for individuals with common interests to share their thoughts or their interests, discussion boards can be successfully used to create a sense of community. As a business owner, you can take advantage of this format by presenting an initial topic of discussion with relevant information that will encourage customers to post comments and even ask questions. This is a very effective word of mouth technique that will ensure your products or brands are discussed by thousands or even millions of customers and potential customers.

Some important Points to Note

One important step that you should consider when generating word of mouth marketing through blogs is to have a clear understanding of the blogs that are most likely to generate a significant impact on your target audience. Although the largest blogs will normally have the widest reach, you need to consider if they are the ones that will best relate with your target audience. You will need to work with bloggers who have between 100 and 1,000 people linked to them because according to experts, it is this category of bloggers that can enable PR individuals to successfully reach niche markets.

Nevertheless, you need to remember that bloggers will never be journalists, and they will not just publish your press releases. They will usually write stories with opinions, views, and angles, thus a plain, mass-targeted advertorial or press release will basically not cut it. It is not possible for you to tell the blogger his/her own opinions, but you can assist them by developing an informative and interesting story in a way that will relate to their target audience. You should keep in mind the fact that bloggers intend to publish stories and not a sales pitch.

Conclusion 

In conclusion, word of mouth marketing depends on customers sharing their views or opinions in an open public forum, and the internet has significantly boosted the exposure that businesses can gain by using this technique. Through the use of blogs and other internet resources, you can do several things to get more from blogs without actually blogging.

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