July 31, 2008

Attracting the Offline Customer: Why Do You Promote Your Blog Offline?

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 3:47 pm

by Scott McIntyre

Scott McIntyre — The Avid Blog Reader Without a Blog

Last week, I suggested a few practical methods and communication channels that you might use to promote your blog offline. I was pleased to read in your comments that many of you are trying these technques to achieve great results for your online businesses.

As a number of you are already finding, promotional activities such as talking to local organizations, advertising in offline media, and the use of Press Releases and branded goods can effectively contribute to getting your message in front of the offline customer.

But why would you consider doing this in the first place?

Today, I would like to explore several reasons why it can be of great benefit to build an awareness of your blog in the offline marketplace.

Building Awareness of Your Blog Offline: What are the Benefits?

There are two direct benefits that can be realized by extending the reach of your blog beyond the blogosphere: 1) to enhance your own personal reputation within your niche industry and 2) to increase the visibility of your blog’s brand to the wider offline community.

Both of these positive benefits can be achieved through promoting your blog offline.

Brand Building Through Offline Promotion

  • Building your personal brand

    It can be a highly profitable business aim to develop a strong name for yourself offline within your specific industry sector.

    Having a presence online provides a valuable launchpad from which to gain publicity for yourself offline. It is an effective means of making a respected name for yourself amongst your peers, and to seize the opportunities that exist from tapping into the offline customer base.

    I can guess that not all of your competitors have a blog or website yet. If you do, then you are already ahead of them when it comes to attracting your target audience. You have somewhere to bring them back to in order to win them over to your products or services.

    To build your personal brand offline, it is necessary to get people talking about you in a manner which is in line with your business strategy. Ideally, you want to be seen as the ‘go to’ person in your niche.

    By offering first-class advice and by providing useful information and resources to the offline audience, they are likely to view you as the authority figure within your industry. When you achieve this position, you are well placed to leverage it to capture their attention and interest in your blog.

    Personal branding through offline promotion, however, may not be right for every blogger. You may have opted to write under a pseudonym or else prefer to maintain a degree of anonymity.

    There are many reasons why this is a valid approach. If this applies to you, it would be great to hear your views in the comments section.

  • Building your blog brand

    You can work on developing your own personal brand offline safe in the knowledge that you have a quality blog waiting ‘back home’.

    A quality blog can mean many things. Valuable content is crucial, as is having a good design, ease of use and accessibility. All of these factors contribute to whether your efforts to build a brand for your blog offline will be a success.

    If you can foster a sense of trust and respect for your blog’s offering through your offline promotional activities, it will lead to customers being willing to use your products or services.

    Blogs provide a tremendous opportunity to interact with your audience. A blog can help to create mutually beneficial relationships between you and your customers. Satisfied customers indulge in positive word-of-mouth recommendations, and this inevitably leads to a buzz about your business offline.

    A blog which does not aim to be a quality offering will likely not impress or enhance its reputation with these potential customers.

    When offline personal reputation building is combined with that of developing your blog’s brand, the benefits can be immense for your online business as a whole. The skill is to effectively engage in promotional activities which achieve each separate goal while, at the same time, are supportive of each other’s aims.

Next week, I will be considering some of the ways in which you can use the increasingly popular social media and social networking sites as valuable channels to engage with the offline customer.

If you’re a blogger, leave a comment to let me know of your experiences in promoting both yourself and your blog offline. What results have you achieved? If you’re a blogger who isn’t yet engaged in offline promotion, what questions do you have regarding how to go about it?

If you’re a non-blogger, tell them what they can do to attract your interest in both them and their blog.

–Scott McIntyre

Related
Week 1: Connecting with the Offline Customer: A Non-Blogger’s Perspective
Week 2: Targeting the Offline Customer: Do You Blog for Non-Bloggers?
Week 3: Reaching the Offline Customer: Do You Promote Your Blog Offline?


Filed under Customer Think, Successful Blog |



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9 Comments to “Attracting the Offline Customer: Why Do You Promote Your Blog Offline?”

  1. July 31st, 2008 at 4:54 pm
    Don said

    Branding your blog is just like branding your business. Consistency is the key! I love your article! Thank you!

  2. July 31st, 2008 at 7:10 pm
    Shilpan | successsoul.com said

    Scott -

    Building a successful online presence has many of the same nuances that one has to consider while building a brick and mortar business.

    1) You have to create a uniqueness that relates to your blog and connects your blog with your audience. That is like a “bridge” that connects two sides.

    2) You have to offer something of a value to the readers. That means content that is not just better but much better than the rest of the blogs around in your niche.

    3) You have to market your content by developing relationships that can spread the words for you. This is as important or more important for a blogger as to develop utmost quality content.

    4) Maintain consistency all the time as great brands are based on the highest standard of service or products and consistency.

    –Shilpan

  3. July 31st, 2008 at 9:25 pm
    Kurt Henninger said

    I have promoted my blog off-line, but just by word of mouth. However when I let word out that I have a blog that I write to, it spread like wildfire with the people that I know. I got TONS of hits from my local area (i am sure from my friends and family). They in turn passed on the word of my blog without me even asking them to.

  4. July 31st, 2008 at 10:39 pm
    Patrick Johnson said

    I always promote blogging online and off. However sometimes I have found that there is benefit to describing blogs in a way other than the term “blogging.”

    I have come across some who are not so tech savy, and to describe it as an article repository gets them interested enough to read it and get a better understanding of the benefits of blogging.

  5. August 1st, 2008 at 9:45 am
    Shilpan | successsoul.com said

    Scott -

    All of these tips are excellent to create a loyal customer base using “off-line” marketing strategies that you’ve suggested.

    After blogging for about five months now, I’m cultivating “off-line” relationship with other hoteliers for entirely different business niche, the hospitality business. I’m getting many serious investors interested in partnering with me for a new hotel project partly due to the credibility that I’ve established with my personal development blog. I never thought that a blog created in entirely different niche can influence in such a positive way.

    –Shilpan

  6. August 1st, 2008 at 4:17 pm
    Scott McIntyre said

    Hi Don,

    Thank you- I’m delighted that you enjoyed the article.

    Consistency in the branding of both you and your blog is certainly a key factor to success. The variety of messages you convey should, ideally, all be tied together with a central theme that you have chosen.

    Hi Shilpan,

    You make excellent points about branding. I’m glad to hear that your efforts are having real spin-off benefits for business. I’m sure these opportunities will continue to grow for you.

    Hi Kurt,

    It’s great to hear that your blog is creating a buzz offline. Positive word-of-mouth recommendation is one of the most effective forms of advertising… generate it and you’re on to a winner!

    Hi Patrick,

    I agree with you that it can be a little difficult to describe fully what a blog is to a person who has never come across one.

    On a more general level, the overuse of blog ‘jargon’ might also prove to be a barrier to effective communication with offline customers.

    I’ll be discussing this issue in a few weeks’ time- I look forward hearing more of your views then, as well.

  7. August 7th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
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    [...] week, I discussed the main benefits of building awareness for your blog offline- namely to enhance your own personal reputation within your niche industry, and to increase the [...]

  8. August 21st, 2008 at 12:15 pm
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  9. August 28th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
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