Customer blogs are an interesting and useful part of your marketing arsenal. On one hand, they allow you to bring in new customers and put out information. On the other hand, they’re difficult to create and even harder to successfully maintain. If having a good customer blog is a must for your business, you’ll want to make sure that you follow the three basic strategies below to keep it running smoothly.
Know Your Audience
No matter how popular your blog, it’s only going to be viewed by a small portion of those on the internet. As such, it’s your goal to make sure it is viewed by the right people. For most business bloggers, the goal is then to find people who will read what you’ve written and spend money with you. It’s not always easy to find the right audience, but doing so is invaluable to the long-term health of your customer blog.
Do a little research about your average customer. How old is he or she? Where does he or she live? Where does he or she work, and how much does he or she make? These are all data points you can use to better craft your content for your readers. Once you know who is reading, you can start posting in a way that will make it more likely for them to come back.
Provide Useful Information
While you might think of your customer blog as a marketing tool, your customers come to the blog for a number of other reasons. One of the most common reasons to visit such a site is for information—and if you want your customers to stay, you’ll have to provide them with information that is actually useful. A good example of this is this outdoor hot tub blog.
It can be tough to balance the necessity of providing good information and the need to bring customers into your store, but it can be done. It’s often a good idea to provide your customers with all the information they need to come to the decision to spend money with you. Teach them why your products are used, how they can be used in an interesting way, and when they are most effective. No matter what else you add, it will always be your product or service front and center in the minds of the customer.
Make It Readable
Finally, you’ll want to make the process of reading your blog as painless as possible. There are a number of steps that you can take to make this happen, but they all come down to removing barriers. You want to make it easy for your readers to get information, so you’ll want to do as little as possible to stop them from doing so.
Start by making your blog easy to access, preferably from the first page of your main site. Then, make sure everyone can read it—setting up a system where you have to be signed in to read is a major problem. Finally, you’ll need to make sure the blog itself is as easy to read as possible. This means short paragraphs, a few good pictures, and a writing style that doesn’t scare off your target audience.
There’s nothing easy about running a customer blog, but it can pay off in the long run. If you know for whom you are writing and why you’ll be able to tailor your content better. If you make it easier for them to access your content, you will also make it easier for them to return. If you tailor your blog in the correct manner, you’ll bring in more readers and turn them into valuable paying customers.