SIT DOWN, QUIT YOUR CRYING AND BLOG - A BLOG ABOUT BLOGS

SIT DOWN, QUIT YOUR CRYING AND BLOG - A BLOG ABOUT BLOGS

I live in Minnesota, where neighbors judge your “manliness” not by the car you drive, or by the clothes you wear, but by the size of your snow blower. So what does this have to do about blogs, I’ll explain.

We suffered through a massive 120+” of snow in 2011 and I had a cheap/value based snow blower that couldn’t blow out my driveway, much less throw the snow over our 8’ drifts. My driveway shrank with each snowfall to the point a 2 car driveway looked more like a sidewalk. I made a decision to buy a new one for the winter of 2012….a beast….maybe something with a few adjustments could be “street legal”.

I went to the usual places, Home Depot, Lowes, Ace Hardware, etc., and looked at all these “mouthwatering models” and made a decision to buy a brand that was made in Wisconsin. I knew this brand, grew up with it and assumed it would do the job. It was a beast.

I was hooked and wanted to buy. My wife convinced me to wait, until she “did her research”. Yep, she reads “blogs”, consumer reviews  (mini-blogs) and a lot more. Guess what, everyone said it was non-reliable, broke down a lot and rated it as a DO NOT BUY. We didn’t buy it. Instead we “ordered” the model that had rave reviews and it had an electric start to boot…It was awesome, and I only got to use it twice in 2012…go figure

We did what consumers are doing every minute of every day. They are researching information, reading reviews, getting new ideas, learning, listening and engaging…on-line

Blogs are essentially articles that people write. The difference is that anyone can write a blog and be published on the internet for millions of consumers to have access to. Once powerful newspapers and magazines,( where consumers used to get their information and ideas), are quickly becoming irrelevant. It used to be, in the old media, you would have one writer write about the home; now you have thousands and they can be found with simple searches on the internet.

Before you completely ignore or skip this article, think about how you are marketing your business - you know, to get “leads” that will hopefully turn into sales? Most retailers “blast” their messages via TV, Radio, Print, e-blasts and more in the HOPE that consumers will absorb the message and act on it.  That is defined as “Outbound Marketing” and is the traditional way of reaching consumers. 

The internet has changed everything, and as I’ve “lectured”, consumers will FIND YOU, Whenthey want to, Where they want to and How they want to. The consumer is in control and they are finding content that is “relevant to them”, not what you may think is relevant to them.

This transformation is defined as “Inbound Marketing” and blogs lead the way. One reason may be that inbound marketing costs 61% LESS per lead than traditional marketing. Now we all know what it costs to get the consumer through the door….61% is a lot of savings.
 
 So, let’s start out with a couple of facts that you may not be aware of about blogs:

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read the rest of this rant here