My last few posts have focused on building better relationships. Most of the points I made are common sense: in order to build a great relationship, you have to start a conversation, provide help and assistance along the way, and make it easy for the person to further the relationship with you.
So how, exactly, is all of this possible with blogging? It's easier than you may have thought. In fact, I'm going to go back to the list I used a few days days ago in my "Blogging helps you start a great conversation" post and break out each point one at a time over the next few days.
First things first: In order to start a great relationship, or a great conversation, you have to:
Make it easy for someone to find you. Your organization can do that by being present in the search engines when someone is looking for you. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Now is the time to blog for SEO!
Business blogs are the perfect interceptor because they are naturally built for search engine optimization. All of the things that search engines take into consideration: page title, recency of content, frequency of content, linking, and age, are inherent in blogs. These are huge benefits that you do not need to work all that hard to maximize. (Of course I'll throw in that blogging software like Compendium makes it all the easier).
The truth is, hardly anyone is typing your URL into Google and showing up to your site directly. They are not looking for you in the yellow pages. They are searching online, and you must get in front of them while they are looking for you in order to have a shot at building a great relationship. That's step one: be there.
So what happens after they've found you? It's all about tone and conversation, which I'll tackle in my next post.
