I’ve written about this before… probably a few times actually. What should you be focusing on as your primary metric of success with your blogging strategy? Let me start with a simple question.
Is it better to focus on the quick and easy or the slow, meaningful big picture?
What does it mean when a customer finds you as a result of finding you via a search engine?
- That customer has little or no brand loyalty to you or your competitors in your industry.
- Your new customer is impressionable. From this point on your website appearance, checkout and fulfilment process, and customer service can either be your worst enemy or they can make very little impression at all. Referral experts will tell you that it is extremely difficult to create brand evangelists as a result of good customer experience. To make a real impression the service has to be exceptional. This is expensive. Most companies can’t afford it and it’s not exactly what I would call a scalable strategy.
I propose an alternative strategy.
- A more scalable approach is to make exceptional PRODUCTS which are much better at creating customer evangelists. Think Seth Godin’s Purple Cow.
- Create a blogging strategy that focuses on reaching out to thought leaders in your market. Make them pay attention to you and get some buzz going. Follow them on social networks. Comment on their blog posts and share their links on Twitter and Facebook.
- Blog regularly and encourage current customers to interact with you online, leave comments, and subscribe to your RSS feed so that you can continue building a relationship with you (that’s what some experts call building your brand).
- Blog ABOUT your best customers. Tell their stories. They’ll each tell 10 friends how cool you are.
Here’s the best part…
If you do all this you’ll win searches anyway!!!
So quit worrying about those people finding you via search and start building a brand that’s going to last beyond that first sale. Am I right?
You are right! The odds that someone finding your page/post via search are slim in the first place, but even slimmer that they’ll end up loyal followers. The strategy you mention is an investment rather than just a quick fix or gamble, and pays higher dividends no matter what kind of ROI you seek.
You are right! The odds that someone finding your page/post via search are slim in the first place, but even slimmer that they’ll end up loyal followers. The strategy you mention is an investment rather than just a quick fix or gamble, and pays higher dividends no matter what kind of ROI you seek.
You are right! The odds that someone finding your page/post via search are slim in the first place, but even slimmer that they’ll end up loyal followers. The strategy you mention is an investment rather than just a quick fix or gamble, and pays higher dividends no matter what kind of ROI you seek.