New Tools to Expand Your Marketing Reach

By Ricardo Harvin
E-mail questions for Tech Tools to rharvin@uschamber.com.

The first of two articles
Marketing is always a challenge and can be expensive-especially when you're trying to reach new customers. But there are new tools out there that can help you expand your audience for minimal cost.

This month's article gives an overview of blogs (short for weblogs), and next month's will look at RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds.

Blogs are online journals historically created and maintained by individuals but increasingly used by companies of all sizes to engage and inform their customers and others. At one time almost exclusively the domain of amateurs, many blogs today are written by professional, paid bloggers who write about topics such as politics, technology, and business-and often have a major impact in the areas they cover.

Over the past few years, several major news stories originated from blogs that had spread nationally (or globally) through the "blogosphere," a term used to describe the interconnected nature of blogs and how an entry posted on one blog can easily be picked up and distributed by other blogs and by mainstream media (and your customers). It's this grassroots, word-of-mouth power of blogs that has attracted so much attention and is driving companies to find ways to join the blogosphere.

Blogs are also popular because they are easy to create and maintain, allow for immediate page updates, are low cost (free to about $15 per month), and can help boost your Web site's ranking with search engines. Blogs can also deliver excellent marketing word of mouth because entries are easy to e-mail as links, easy to link to and from other Web sites, and can be distributed as RSS feeds.

Some downsides to having a blog are that they require regular updates (at least weekly; most commonly daily) and fairly good writing skills.

To actively engage your readers, you should allow reader comments on your blog. However,  be sure to monitor and respond to any negative feedback that's posted. You may be pleasantly surprised to find that your satisfied customers will also post their own positive comments in response to any negative entry.

Use your blog to give people insight into your business, offer tips and advice in your area of expertise, or share project success stories. You can even let your employees post entries, which can be especially effective since they are the people your customers probably interact with the most.

A good blog creates its own community, and you can use yours to spread your message and expand your base of loyal customers.

E-Sources

Three of the most widely used blog providers
Blogger - Free, owned by Google
TypePad - Low-cost service provider
WordPress -Free, with optional paid upgrades