Social Media Marketing | Online Marketing | Social Networking |Twitter Marketing | Blogging

Last week I began a series of articles on why blogs are often a better solution for businesses than static websites.

A few of the reasons for this are:

A blog can be set up faster and cheaper than most static websites. Blogs are usually set up using a template from sources like Blogger or Wordpress, which are free and come with a great deal of applications that can be used to customize the blog.
The biggest delay and headache many businesses face when setting up their new site is creating and uploading content. With a blog, the content is added a bit at a time. (Note: This is also the drawback of a blog, new content must be added regularly in order to keep the site current).
Because active blogs are updated regularly, search engines like Google LOVE them and reward them with higher rankings.
As a result, business blogs get an average of 55% more traffic than sites without blogs.

To illustrate some of these points, below is a reprint of an article I wrote last year about a small business that gets most of its business from its blog:

A Sign Company Uses Storytelling to Build Their Brand

I just read a really great article by John Jantsch in his "Duct Tape Marketing" blog that shows how storytelling can be used to promote even the most unlikely of products.

The article, which is called Blogging Customer Stories, is about a New Hampshire Sign Making company named Lincoln Sign Company.

What Lincoln Signs does that is unique is they blog about the process of creating custom signs for their customers. As they put it, "we are using our blog to sell the EXPERIENCE of getting a sign.” As they blog about a customer's sign, they are, of course, giving the customer additional exposure, but they are also creating a case study about the sign and the details of making it.

For Lincoln Sign Company, they benefit because they create web content, get traffic from search engines, and enhance to value of their signs. Here are some more quotes from Lincoln Sign Company's blog:

"It has been said that the best marketing one can have is for a customer to want to tell your story to someone else. We want to provide a tool to help people tell a story about your business."

“At the end , you get more than a sign, you get a sign, AND the story of how that sign was made.”

"Telling the story of these signs being made educates a potential customer about the process and care that is taken in presenting their "brand" to the world. There are days we wish we could give anyone thinking about purchasing a sign a tour of our shop, and this weblog is our opportunity to do just that."

What this story demonstrates is just how versatile a blog can be. Lincoln Signs not only tells the story of how it creates its signs, it also humanizes the business.

Moreover, Lincoln Signs uses its blog to demonstrate a creative process and its quality control standards.

If your business has a commitment to quality, a blog, with pictures or videos, may be the ideal way to spotlight it. Customers enjoy peaking behind the curtain to see how the magic is performed. When you show them how you do what you do, how you are unyielding when it comes to quality, a blog allows them to look over your shoulder.