Blog vs. e-Newsletter
May 23, 2008
Blog vs e-Newsletter, which should your business use? The quick answer is both. The purpose of both blogs and e-newsletters is to keep connected with your customers. By bringing customers into the fold, they feel like they are a valuable part of your business. Both communication devices are valuable to promoting your business and therefore increasing sales, but there are significant differences between the two methods.
An e-newsletter that you send to your customers, clients, and potential clients is a great monthly or quarterly device. Always stick to a schedule when sending an e-newsletter (but that’s a new topic and a future blog). The best part of a newsletter is that it shows up in your readers’ email box. They take action, hopefully by reading it, but the information is there in front of them. With a newsletter you can offer advise, sales items, coupons, event notification, and a complete litany of information to your email list.
A blog is typically shorter, and for the writer, easier to produce. You write more often so it can stay very current. The disadvantage is that it is up to your customers to decide when and if they are going to bookmark your blog and read it. But the interested and involved customer will do this, for you are offering them something they want – professional information, social information, or simply price discounts. For the more technically savvy there is RSS, i.e. the customer can automatically put your new blog information on their My Yahoo, etc. but this is pertinent to only a small percentage of customers. The big upside to using blogs is that you don’t need an email address, therefore the entirety of the web world can find your blog.
Putting it together. Send out your e-newsletter. Tell them about your blog and why they should read it. On the other side, make sure you have the capability of collecting email addresses on your blog site / web site with an offer to send an informative newsletter. This is a great way to collect email addresses of interested parties. Therefore blogs and e-newsletters work in tandem, so there are no versus, only compliments.
Sam Handelman, Owner of SCS
What Belongs on a Home Page
May 20, 2008
A good looking website catches people’s attention. More important is the information you provide on your website. Your home page is like the window to a retail store – if people find it inviting, they will come in and shop. This is your chance to tell your story, become the expert in your field. As a general rule there are four content blocks to a home page:
- • Your mission statement – what is it that you do. The customer wants to know what your purpose is.
- • Your target market – who are you trying to attract. Describe your customer. Customers want to know if you are focused on them.
- • Your value proposition – why are you better. Personally, I like testimonials to tout my strengths.
- • Finally, your call-to-action – what do you expect your customer to do next. Be reasonable be honest.
With these four categories, you can build a home page that has both form (design) and function (content). From here search engine optimization techniques can fine tune your message for easier catagorization by Google, Yahoo, etc.
Sam Handelman, Owner of Search Consulting Service
