Every business naturally wants to see more visitors on their website, obviously.
How do people get to your site:
- If they are familiar with the business, they will type it into the address bar or google search the business. The issue is that they aren't new customers, you aren't building any new clientele.
- Purchasing advertisements is an option, although it may be expensive. The issue here is that when you don't have the funding, the additional traffic will probably stop.
So, how can you get traffic to your site?
Lets discuss, how many pages there are on the average companies website. There probably is not very many, right? I am thinking company history, products, contact information, about us, and I am sure there are some that I am missing. Next, when is the last time a company went through and updated the entire site, most likely it has been awhile, right? Well, blogging can actually solve both of those problems.Every blog that you writes enables the possibility of more visitors to your site. Blogging also helps you get discovered via social media. Every time you write a blog post, you're creating content that people can share on social media such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest. This obviously helps expose your business to a new audience that may not know of the business.
Creating a User Account
Initial Creation
The blog platform I used is Blogger.com. The site is extremely easy when it comes to initial start up. Most people have a gmail account and that is all you need to login and create your account. The customization comes into play next as you get to choose a background and theme for the blog. You get a screen that gives you a couple options (Awesome, inc or whatever it was called is the coolest of the choices). However, you do have the option to change the background and theme if you choose to do so.
Familiarity of Operation
Now that you have created your blog you are ready to go. Dead center of the page gives you the option to create your very first blog posting. You click on the link and you move to the page where you actually write your post. Notice, everything on the toolbar looks familiar. Font size, font type, bold, italics, underlines, etc. Does this sound familiar? Well because its basically the same toolbar as Microsoft applications or if you have Google Docs, then you will be even more familiar with the way this page works. The ability for Blogger to be this user friendly truly lends itself to gaining more users due to the simplicity and familiarity with the options.
Features (Not a secret anymore!)
Adsense
Computer.howstuffworks.com gave me a little insight on a really interesting feature within blogger that is noted below:
From the Blogger admin page, you'll find a tab on the left called "Earnings." This lets you link your blog to your Google AdSense account. AdSense automatically detects the subject matter of your blog posts and displays relevant ads to the reader. You then can earn money (usually a few cents) per click or ad impression.You can customize where AdSense ads appear on your blog, change the font and colors of text ads, and restrict some ad categories from appearing on your blog. Once you're signed up and your ads have been active for a few days, you'll see statistics -- including how much you've earned -- in the "Earnings" tab. As a business, how cool is that? You can earn money using other advertisements or even promote yourself on the topics at hand, automatically.
Overall Experience
Personal
I think that Blogger does a phenomenal job of making it easier on the user and that is of utmost importance. If a social media site is too difficult to use or is frustrating, there are others out there and people will find them.
Business Use
In an article I recently read from FastCompany, 80% of companies now have social media teams, but still cannot effectively reach customers. Blogger can be utilized to keep potential customers updated on new products, promotions, events, etc.It can also be used to drive internet traffic to your site, and even promote advertisements by simply linking AdSense.
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