With the growing popularity of blogging, many business owners are focusing a great deal of time and effort to develop a blogging program whose primary goal is to drive traffic to their primary website. Search engine optimization experts agree that blogging is one of the tools that every online business owner should include in their efforts to improve overall search engine rankings, drive additional traffic to their website and increase conversion rates. Because of this, many blog readers are beginning to discover that a large percentage of today’s blogs were not created as a personal diary or testament – they were created to be the ultimate sales letter.
Business owners who are utilizing the blogging platform to increase the overall visibility of their website have recognized that the tone, voice and content contained within their blog posts needs to mimic a soft sell. A familiar voice breeds confidence in readers while sales pitches made as gentle nudges are often not recognized as a sales pitch by readers. A truly talented bloggers can create content that appears to be advice from a close friend or an informative piece when it is really a way to drive traffic to a website.
Today’s blog readers are fairly savvy when it comes to deciding what blogs are ‘real’ and which are thinly veiled sales pitches and many opt to stop reading blogs that have the feel of an advertisement. This makes it very important for bloggers to carefully consider the voice they use while writing a blog post. Some bloggers are opting to rely on an honesty code and point blank explain that they are trying to sell a product or service – often this works.
It is important to remember that while blogs can be used as a marketing tool, business owners should tread carefully. Being too pushy or too obvious will actually loose you readers and defeat the entire purpose of blogging.