Last week I blogged on blogs as marketing tools...again. And I got a great comment from reader Jan:
"Don't get me wrong I love blogging but you still need to drive people to your blog similar to a web site. Your client needs to have a thriving blog with lots of visitors before they could all find her info and hop on over to try the sweets. How have you built your audience?"
Jan was responding to a blog about my friend Harpreet and how she could use blogs as marketing tools to marketing her Indian restaurant Pnjab Sweets. Jan's right. People have to go to the blog to read about Diwali and be enticed to buy sweets.
Blogs can have different purposes: SEO, thought leadership, replacing a Web site, etc. In Harpreet's case, I'd encourage her to do two things with her blog: use keywords for searches she'd like to win, and engage with her audience. She has so much she can talk about: Indian culture, food and holidays; running a small, family-owned business; being a vegetarian; how her restaurant makes everything from scratch...even how rarely she gets to wear her fine Indian clothes. She's also gorgeous and the sweets made by her Indian restaurant are picturesque, meaning her blog can be visually appealing too.
Here's what I'd suggest to Harpreet, to answer Jan's question:
"Don't get me wrong I love blogging but you still need to drive people to your blog similar to a web site. Your client needs to have a thriving blog with lots of visitors before they could all find her info and hop on over to try the sweets. How have you built your audience?"
Jan was responding to a blog about my friend Harpreet and how she could use blogs as marketing tools to marketing her Indian restaurant Pnjab Sweets. Jan's right. People have to go to the blog to read about Diwali and be enticed to buy sweets.
Blogs can have different purposes: SEO, thought leadership, replacing a Web site, etc. In Harpreet's case, I'd encourage her to do two things with her blog: use keywords for searches she'd like to win, and engage with her audience. She has so much she can talk about: Indian culture, food and holidays; running a small, family-owned business; being a vegetarian; how her restaurant makes everything from scratch...even how rarely she gets to wear her fine Indian clothes. She's also gorgeous and the sweets made by her Indian restaurant are picturesque, meaning her blog can be visually appealing too.
Here's what I'd suggest to Harpreet, to answer Jan's question:
- Determine which keywords she could win and use those regularly in her blogs
- Include the link to her blog in her ads and in articles that get written about her Kent restaurant (she's a popular subject!)
- Include a link to her blog in her email signature
- Put it on her business cards and all the gorgeous packaging her restaurant has
- Link to it prominently from her Web site
Using blogs as marketing tools is more organic than pay-per-click advertising, that's for sure. It takes time to biuld an audience and to get indexed in the search engines (the latter goes faster than with a regular Web site, however!). But done consistently and correctly, blogs as marketing tools make a lot of sense for a small Indian restaurant like Punjab Sweets.
Powered by Compendium
Comments for Small business blogging--Driving traffic to the small business blog