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Published by: Judy Cobb 06-11-2013  |  POSTED IN: Traffic Tuesdays

Words Blog 25: Use What You Know - Your Industry, Business, Products & Services

 
Last week's blog talked about how to incorporate your customer's viewpoint into your blogs via case studies, answers to questions, testimonials and guest blogs. This week's blog will suggest ways to blog about your industry, business, products and services with the customer's viewpoint in mind.
 
Your Industry
Technological and other changes within an industry happen every day. Various news media and other sources of information race to report the latest facts or fictions of new technologies as well as any business or industry.  
 
Your current or potential customers have probably read or heard a wide range of information about trends, new products and the future of your industry. What they think they know may or may not be accurate. This is particularly true if there have been stories about advances in your industry, scandals and law breaking by leaders of your industry or some action directed at your industry by a state or the Federal government.
 
Your blog is a good place to bring up these news stories and explain what they really mean and how they are likely to affect you and your customers. You can fairly easily find information about industry topics that might be useful on your blog. Here are some suggestions about how to do that.
 
Corporate and industry websites - Regularly check the corporate websites of the manufacturers of products you sell and related businesses. If you are in a service industry, monitor the professional organizations and other credible websites for your industry. Pay particular attention to press releases.
 
Check the websites of competitors as well. They may have posted articles or information that you will want to counter or discuss yourself.
 
Topics that are currently trending - Check Google and Yahoo to find out what news stories are currently trending. Using Google Trends or checking the upper right side of the Yahoo home page, is a great way of staying on top of trending news topics.
 
You may find stories that are related to your industry or that you can use in writing about your industry. For example, various automobile manufacturers issue recalls with some frequency. If you are a car dealer or car repair service, your blog could talk about current recalls. If you are an attorney that specializes in personal injury cases or automobile safety and liability, your blog might discuss the recalls from a legal standpoint.
 
Simple searches on various search engines - Simple searches on Google and other search engines will usually bring up current news as well as a range of other postings that relate to your business. Make a list of reliable key words and use them regularly. That way, your search will bring up websites that have moved up in the rankings or that are new.
 
Your Business, Products and Services
It is always useful to write about new features of your products or expanded services of your business. That said, remember to write about those new products or services in terms that the customer can relate to. 
 
A customer does not necessarily want to know that a computer product or iPhone has a greater capacity than the current product. He or she wants to know how that feature will improve the use of that product. The customer also wants to know what the new feature is going to cost, not just in dollars but in time and other costs.
 
Most customers also want to know the trade-offs of moving to a new version of a technology. They are used to their current product and want to understand before moving to a newer version how the new product's operation is going to differ from their current product.  
 
The same applies when you make specific changes to your business. For example, if you have extended your service hours, the benefits might seem obvious. However, it's a good idea to describe how the extended hours make a customer's life easier or solve a problem. 
 
This principle applies with promotions as well. Don't assume that a banner on the home page is necessarily enough to draw a customer in. Use you blog to talk about particular features of a promotion or the long-term benefits if someone takes advantage of a promotion.
 
For example, many law firms offer a first meeting or consultation for free. A useful blog might discuss what type of information a lawyer might want you to provide in that free meeting as well as a description of what information the lawyer might provide to you.
 
Blogs can become a powerful tool in building followers for your website and promoting your business. At the same time, a blog needs to provide reliable information and be interesting to people who visit your website. 
 
You can achieve those goals in many ways, depending on your interests, business and expectations for your website. Regularly keeping people informed about your industry and business, and blogging with accurate and timely information, are two strategies that will help you establish and maintain the value of your blog for your website visitors.
 
 
As always, you can help us assure that every blog post in this series provides you with tangible suggestions and ideas for building or improving your website. Please share your ideas, comments, questions and suggestions with us. Feel free to leave comments below or email Judy at [email protected].
 
Judy Cobb is an independent writer and business writing coach whose clients have included Parsons Engineering, Mattel Toys, The Los Angeles Times and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She has specialized in developing training materials for instructor-led courses as well as interactive online courses and websites. She holds advanced degrees from Columbia University and Stanford as well as an MBA from UCLA's Anderson Graduate School of Management.
Thanks for reading. Jason.
P.S. Don't forget to subscribe below to this blog.
 
About Jason Ciment
Formerly an attorney and CPA, Jason has been working online since 1997. His columns on affiliate marketing can still be found on www.Clickz.com and his book on search engine optimization can be found at www.seotimetable.com.

This blog is published 4x per week and covers website design and SEO tips as well as a wide range of tips and advice for working and living online more efficiently and enjoyably.
 

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