With my upcoming trip to China and seeing as that I am an international management major, I have put a lot of thought into how a business could blog for international purposes.

The U.S population is currently totaled at 303.57 million individuals, with a net gain of one person every 13 seconds.  In the overall global environment, the U.S population is almost 4 percent of the total global population.  As a company, you would be missing out on 96 percent of the world population by not addressing the questions:

  • Do we go global? 
  • Do we wish to attract business from foreign companies? 
  • Are we confused about the business environment in other countries that could potentially benefit from your product?

All of these questions will need to be answered at some point or another.  The move from domestic markets to foreign markets isn't a walk in the park when your company can’t apply standardized marketing techniques.  On top of that, it is expensive to hire consultants to conduct in-depth analysis of some markets.  What if you aren’t sure that this market is right for you?

There is a way, however, to save money and time on researching the market of a foreign market: Try searching business blogs.  Furthermore, blog about you company with the intention on attracting foreign business.

Creating a blog solely intended to target foreign business is not a bad idea.  In other words, could it hurt? The answer is no, it can’t hurt.  Paying for a blog service is cheaper than investing millions in marketing campaigns.  If a marketing campaign were to flop, your company incurs large sums of costs; blogs acknowledge the risk in investing.  The reasons being:

  • Blogging is cheap
  • Blogging increases SEO
  • Blogging is effective
  • Blogging is fun

For an example of this, let say your company sells high quality widgets in the U.S. You start blogging in order to expand sales to China.  Targeting keywords in your blog, such as: U.S Widgets, U.S Widget Company, Widgets United States, U.S and Chinese Widgets, High Quality Widgets, and Quality U.S Widgets will allow you to win over the most relevant and specific keywords for your strategy.  Blog at it every day for three months and your U.S widget company will be visible to anyone with an internet connection looking to buy your widgets.

On the other side of this, blogs about global issues and regional issues are great resources for information.  If your company is worried about a region in which you are invested, it is important to know the facts.  International Herald Tribune is a great site that contains blog posts about all regions of the world.  It could be helpful to read some of these articles if you are currently or planning on doing business abroad.  This site shows the power of international business blogging.