I used to be a strong advocate of email newsletters, probably because of my publishing background, but also because I believed in them enough to create a list of 25 reasons to publish an e-newsletter. I came across that list the other day rummaging through a file. I laughed to myself at how much my thinking has changed in the last 4 years. But then as I read through the list, I realized most of those reasons translate to blogging! So below are the 18—count them, 18!—of the 25 reasons I used to use to support enewsletters and now offer up as reasons to blog.
Blogging can:
- Help your search engine rankings by putting useful, relevant content online
- Give prospects an easy way to learn more about you, and for clients past and present to keep up with you
- Strengthen your brand and market position
- Lead to referrals
- Drive traffic to your Web site
- Market without coming across as marketing
- Increase your credibility and that of your business
- Evolve and change in a way printed material can’t
- Offer cost effective testing and adapting
- Communicate quickly and efficiently
- Establish a dialog and enhance customer loyalty
- Educate your customers in new ways to use your products and services
- Generate leads
- Reinforce other marketing efforts, offline and online
- Cost the same, no matter how many people are reading it
- Lower costs compared to printed marketing
- Be tracked, showing you how many hits and where they come from
- Build an ongoing relationship with your target market
I still believe in marketing with enewsletters, because what I’ve been preaching for years is still true: it’s not just what you say but how you say it. Delivering the right marketing message with the wrong marketing medium doesn’t work. So use blogs when they’re right, and create newsletters when they are.
