As a full time blogger and because of my habit of evangelizing blogging, many business owners throw this question regularly at me – Can Blogging Help Me in Marketing or Improving My Business ? And my nod just increases their curiosity and makes them enthusiastic about knowing the secret. I would love to elaborate the points, in general which will explain that how blogging can help market any business on this earth!

1. Blogs help you connect with people : All business run because they solve some problem but If you can not connect with people then your business will fail. Blogs help you connect with people quickly and that of course will help you in pitching your services to them. John Kuraoka’s Ad blog is one of the success stories, he gets lots of new clients with the help of his blog as the interested people start to look at him as an authority in the subject.

2. Blogs are excellent way of knowing what customers want : With the help of various analytics tools you will come to know that what exactly customers are looking for. Comments on the blog posts will only help you in finding out what customers are actually interested in. You can always make appropriate changes in your product or find out if you are somehow going in wrong direction. These small things can really help you in becoming customer centric and that itself is a sign of an improved business. Dell Idea Storm is not exactly a blog, but it certainly is one of the ways (powered by new media) for Dell to know that what exactly customers want and they have proved that they listen to them by supplying laptops with Ubuntu as the operating system.

3. Blogs posts are viral : Blogs posts are viral and they can help you reach to thousands of people in no time and absolutely no marketing budget at all. Google’s blogs are one of the excellent example in this. Their every post gets lots of comments, lot of linkbacks and in no time at all, the whole Internet starts to speak about their new services. If you want to know how Blogs can get Viral then Brian Clark’s report will certainly help you. Another example, which I would like to mention, is of Classic Cookie Company, who literally saved their business with the help of blogging.

4. Blogs help in building brands : Blogs generally help in building communities as more and more people interested in a particular niche unite together and take time to leave comments and discuss the subject. Strong communities always help in spreading the name with the help of word of mouth. If your blog posts provide decent value to the users, then they will definitely keep coming back and will even spread the word around.

Mophie is an excellent example of how communities can help in building great brands and business. This iPod and iPhone accessories company creates products which are suggested by the community members. Community members provide the ideas, design and give feedback and that became the foundation of Mophie’s success.

5. Blogs can help in building reputation : Blogs are excellent way of expressing and sharing knowledge. However, there are many myths which float around and that can certainly harm the business. You can always use your blog to share the knowledge and increase the awareness amongst people with proper proof and that will only create positive aura for your business.

6. Blogs help in increasing the market : It may be possible that till this time you may be that frog of the well who thought the world is just that well only! As blogs can be read by anyone at any place in this world and they may show interest in choosing your services. Although, it really depends on the nature of your business which you are trying to promote. If not that, it can certainly help you in knowing that where exactly the bigger market is! Many analytics tools tell you that from where the visitors are coming on your blog and let you understand that where exactly your marketing campaign should be focused more.

Well, It’s just not me who believes that Blogging can be boon to any business. Here are some of the points which prominent bloggers have to say when I asked the same question to them –

Kevin Muldoon from BloggingTips.com –

“Many businesses, particularly those which sell a few items, do not have many pages for the search engines to spider, therefore a blog which is updated frequently will increase the number of pages the search engines can index and should bring more traffic to the site (which will hopefully convert to sales). A blog is also a great tool for communicating with customers as you can post the latest news about your product(s) and company.”

Chris Garrett from ChrisG.com –

Blogs are great for attracting visitors, building links, keeping content with current and potential customers, building trust (highly important for businesses), and pre-selling your products and services

Liz Staruss from Successful Blog & Author of The Secret to Writing a Successful and Outstanding Blog -

“The advantage of a blog is it’s unique form of relationship and customer-managed interactivity. A blog allows customers to enter a relationship with you at their own pace gathering information as they go — without feeling as if you are standing there waiting for them to make a choice. When I come to your blog as a customer, I can immediately begin to take in what you offer and how much you’ve made your business about me. The appropriateness of the design, the ease of navigation, the usefulness of the content, and the way you respond when I decide to interact all come together to help me decide whether you’re the one I want to trust with my business.The freedom to choose in my own time, in my own way is a powerful thing. A customer who decides to work with you based on what you offer on your blog and how you have responded to others there is a customer who already trusts what you do.”

This 8 minutes interview with Andy Beal is an excellent start for those business owners, who are interested in business blogging.