Why a Blog is a Great Idea for Natural Business Owners

There is no question that blogs are great for business.  When you blog, you can connect with your target market and promote your product or service.  But primarily, a blog is a relationship building tool. It allows your prospective customers to get to know you as a person.

There are a couple of free, easy to use blogging platforms. Two of them are Wordpress and Blogger.  Using them is a very effective way to market your business. There are a couple of things you should know however. A blog is not as effective when used for blatant promotion. A subtle style is better. Here are a few tips on blogging for business.

1. Create posts that explain the features and benefits of your product in a subtle way.  For instance, if you have an information product on growing organic tomatoes, create posts that give a tidbit of helpful information.  At the end of the post you can add “for even more tips and tricks on growing beautiful organic tomatoes, click <insert landing page link> here”.
   
   If you have a physical product, you can create similar posts, giving people reasons to buy your product.  If you happen to sell all natural skin care or aromatherapy products, write an informative post about the benefits of using natural ingredients, or the dangers of synthetics (that should keep you busy for a long time!). You can add pictures of your product to your post and include a link to the page where your readers can buy. 
   
2. Blogs serve as a great communication tool.  You can keep your readers up to date with any changes you have made to your site, provide information on new products you are going to be introducing, and receive feedback on the types of products your customers wish you would develop.
   
   Another way to communicate with your target market and position yourself as an expert is to establish a “question of the week” feature to your blog.  Simply have your readers send in their questions, and then, one day each week, choose one of the questions to answer.  Your readers will look forward to this interactivity and will take note to visit each week to see if their question was chosen.
   
   One of the nicest benefits of a blog is that it allows your customer to see the real you. Let your personality show through in your blog posts. People buy from people they know and like.
   
3. You can use a blog to grow your mailing list by adding a sign up form to your newsletter or autoresponder.  Once people are subscribed to your newsletter, you can continue to market to them.
   
4. Adding links back to your website on your blog will also help your website gain search engine traffic.  The search engines crawl the Internet, and when a site has a lot of links coming into it, the search engines take notice.  This can help your website rise in the results pages when someone performs a search using one of the keywords on your page. Interestingly, people are more likely to link to your blog than your site. Visit other blogs that your target market may read and leave helpful comments (don't spam!) for even more one way links to your site. You can also ask other bloggers to link to your blog.

These are just a few of the reasons why a blog is valuable for marketing purposes.  As you get more familiar with blogging, you can add an RSS feed to your blog, which will notify your readers that you have created a new post.  This will keep your readers coming back regularly, and further help your marketing efforts.

Carrie Lauth is a mom of 4 and creator of the http://www.NaturalMomBusinessGuide.com It's the Internet's only complete tutorial for people who want to earn a full time living in the natural family life market. Visit today for more rock solid advice for marketing your online business.