Many businesses stay away from Blogging, they see it as simply for professional opinion leaders. They don’t often realise it provides businesses a sales tool in itself, an easy way to develop your businesses image and reputation offering extended communication with existing and potential customers.
Looking for a quick way to communicate with all your customers? In the garment decoration game, your customers come from all sorts of backgrounds from the single order customer looking for personalised goods to sports teams/clubs and businesses across every sector. Communicating with specific customers proves a challenge. The audience is vast, so how do create content for all these potential customers? The Answers simple: Blogging.
Small businesses may consider it a burden or a waste of precious time but it adds value to your business and it presents the easiest way to keep in touch with both your sector and your customers. Blogging is Marketing’s worst kept secret with successful businesses from all backgrounds engaging in the art. Your businesses blog provides an extension of Social Media, a personality, a voice for your businesses brand. There is only so much you can say in 140 characters!
Blogging presents businesses, especially in our industry the chance to build a following and enhance your businesses reputation and brand. Sharing content, industry opinions and be topical presents creates and establishes a sense of authority along professionalism which can only affect sales positively. (eTrader Tip: You can blog about anything that is relevant to what you do. The key is to do it in a balanced way and be honest and thought provoking; just venting opinions on a blog is seen as bad PR practice and often deters customers).
Staying one step ahead of customers is the aim of the game; a blog presents the opportunity to do just that. Reach customers in ways you could not have imagined by simply using a blog, if done well your businesses blog should collaborate with others and encourage networking and conversation with those interested in you and your products. It generates ‘Leads’ you possibly would never have stumbled across before.
Blogs also provide your business a great opportunity to improve your businesses SEO and online performance. Blogs are an easy way to generate traffic towards your website in an organic way (which bodes well with Google). Naturally building in key words and terms associated with your business can only affect your rankings in one way - Positively! The art of Blogging provides a double sided approach to sales, generate both real and online needs for you and your business and it could not be easier.
Blogging isn’t difficult; as long as you know what you are talking about people will sit back and listen. Customers and other people in the industry often seek online advice, so why not get it from you? For garment decorators, it is easy take pictures of your latest work, showcase your businesses latest customers and products. Be inspired by the work you do and write about it!
Build up a simple blog, talk about what you love and develop a crowd and the sales look after themselves. Just give it a little TLC on top of your weekly Marketing duties and make the leap of faith, join the Blogging revolution!
For more on how to make the most of Blogging on your eTrader website, don’t hesitate to get in touch at info@etraderwebsites.co.uk
For many small businesses in our industry, social media presents huge opportunities. However, these are often met with equally huge reservations. In reality, the potential is endless for small businesses like ours. Social media is a free and universal advertising tool that allows our businesses to reach wider audiences than any of our traditional marketing activities. It’s a no brainer right?!
Social Media & Our Sector…
Looking at social media in our sector, some businesses fully immerse themselves while others watch from the side, unwilling to jump in. Businesses are utilising social media in a wide range of ways; major industry players are being proactive (as they should be!) and truly using social media to their own advantage. At the other end of the spectrum, the everyday print & garment decoration company is mainly inactive; their presence in the social media world is dangerously quiet. In our industry, businesses are predominantly reactive with most merely using social media simply for the sake of it. Many small business owners simply deem it a distraction to core business. However, if used correctly social media represents a fantastic range of potential opportunities for small businesses to reach customers further than ever before.
But the question on every business owner’s mind is: how do we best utilise social media?
Time is precious when you’re managing a small business. There simply isn't time to be sat a computer all day mulling over Twitter Feeds, Facebook Posts & the Latest Pins on Pinterest. The trick to being successful on social media is to be savvy; find a balance between using a successful strategy and being completely spontaneous.
In this technologically shrewd world, there really isn't any excuse for business owners. With free software all over the internet to help any small business out, managing social media has never been easier saving your business time and importantly money! Traditional business owners (especially in our industry!) are reluctant to accept that social media isn’t a chore, a waste of time or a necessity. Social media is standard practice in most current businesses sectors but our industries yet to catch up! Businesses are even going as far as hiring people specifically for all things social. We’re not saying go out and hire a techy graduate who knows all things Social Media, but just embrace it and understand it’s a part of the business landscape for the foreseeable future.
Our Top Tips for Social Media Success:
- Pick Your Platform: Not all platforms will be ideally suited to your business, so select carefully what social sites give your business the best opportunity to stand out.
- Be Creative & Engaging: Invite customer participation, play around with ideas. Social media doesn’t have to be taken too seriously, just have fun with it!
- Give Your Business A Personality: Let your customer see you as not just as a service but as a ‘friend’. Build up your online voice; develop an online personality and use your sense of humour to engage with your current and potential customers.
- Social NOT Sales: Use social media as a subtle sales tool. Don’t overwhelm your customers with constant sales posts. Focus more on building up your businesses image and following.
- Run Special Promotions: Give your potential customers a reason to follow you; offer unique discounts and special promotions just for followers.
- Create a Realistic Plan: Use free Social Media planning tools to plan a week’s worth of content at once. Don’t set yourself unrealistic targets, use whatever time you have smartly.
