Everyone knows that a blog is a great way to provide information to customers and prospective customers. We live in a society that is using the online world to research products prior to purchasing – most of this research is done through search engines, however social networking is becoming an effective means to deliver information. If you can connect with both you will find your traffic and and sales improving.
One effective and underutilized uses for blogs is as a sharing portal for products users. As an example, you may sell a variety of digital cameras. If you have created pages or posts on each model of camera available, you can open your comments for buyers to enter in hints and tips for using that particular model.
I have seen websites run competitions on the best ‘hint and tip’ for items that they sell. These are later collated into a page of their own. Blogs are ideally placed as they take on some of the features of static web pages and the interaction of forums.
Once you start to get feedback and useful hints and tips you can start to invite your social networks to add in their hints and tips. Eventually you will have a mass of user generated content that turns a simple blog into an authority site – a site that can answer all the questions on a particular product.
What is interesting is that buyers are now looking for feedback from other buyers before making their final decision on which product to buy. If you can provide a mass of user generated feedback on your products then buyers are going to be far more willing to buy from you rather your opposition whose only information is what they provide. These days, particularly online, there is little trust between buyer and seller until that first sale has been made.
Capitalize on what your buyers can do for your business. Propagate that information throughout the social networks and you will reap the benefits.
