In the new digital world we live in, internet marketing has become the norm and an excellent (and extremely cost effective way!) of getting noticed in your field is to develop a blog for your company. Our advice from Mood is to develop a generic blog giving your potential market an expert insight into the industry or area your products or services serve.

There are bound to be within your company, some experts in your industry. Use their expertise and ask them to write columns on a weekly/monthly basis to boost your credibility and search engine rankings.

Here are some top tips for building the credibility of your blog:

1. Ensure it is easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site. Providing third-party references or source material for information you present, especially if you link to this evidence, adds credibility.
2. Show that there’s a real company (i.e. YOU) behind your site. Showing that your web site is for a legitimate organisation will boost the site’s credibility. List your address and contact details
3. Highlight the expertise in your company and in the content and services you provide. Are you an authority or do you have an authority on your team? How is the expert an expert? Be sure to give credentials. If you are affiliated with a respected industry organisation – Make that clear. On the other hand, don’t link to outside sites that are not credible. Your blog becomes less credible by association.
4. Show honesty and trustworthyness. Use case studies and examples. List biographies of the people who post that describe backgrounds and experience. Show they are ‘real’ people by including personal interests, e.g., family and outside interests.
5. Make it easy to contact you. A contact page with phone number, physical address, and email address.
6. Design your blog so it looks professional (or is appropriate for your purpose). Research found that people quickly evaluate a site by visual design alone. When designing your site, pay attention to layout, typography, images, consistency issues, and more. Critical for brand consistency and customer satusfaction.
7. Make your blog easy to use — and useful. Research shows that sites win credibility points by being both easy to use and useful. Avoid building the most fancy site if takes away from the material you want to present and ensure it is appropriate for your target market.
8. Update the content often. People may suscribe to your RSS feed and receive updates. If people see the blog being updated regularly then they are likely to give it more credibility.
9. Be careful with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers).If at all possible, avoid having ads on your site. If you must have ads, clearly distinguish the sponsored content from your own. Avoid pop-up ads, as these will annoy users and lose you credibility. As for writing style, try to be clear, direct, and sincere.
10. Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem. People will judge on spelling and grammar.

If you are interested in starting a company blog, Mood Marketing are highly skilled at developing WordPress and other blogs. Contact us for more information.

www.mood-marketing.co.uk

Some advice taken from Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility

Sometimes budgets just don’t stretch as far as you would like them to so we have to think of ways to promote ourselves and drive traffic to our website or increase the call to action rates for little or no money.

All is not lost though and there are ways you can generate interest in your product or service which only costs time and effort.

Try some of the following to get noticed

1. Start a referral scheme with your current customers. Offer them an incentive to introduce new customers to your product or service. For example, give them 15% off their next order if they introduce a new account – and encourage the new account to sign with you for 10% off their first order.

2. Become an expert in your field. Contact relevant industry magazines/publications/events etc. to see if you can become a regular columnist or feature presenter. Ensure you get a link on each of your features to your company website.

3. Start blogging! Done correctly, blogs are a fantastic way of getting good Google representation. Add news, events, tips and industry information – as often as possible.

4. Become a PR guru – every time you update your new blog – why not turn it into a press release? If you’ve got something to shout about – ensure everyone knows about it! The time consuming aspect comes from creating the editors list, but once you’re done – discover the creative writer in you! (Or you can always ask Mood to help you )

5. Get those testimonials rolling in! You’ve got all those happy customers? why not ask those customer to advocate your brand and services – then shout about it. Write case studies on how your product or service gave them the solution they needed. Ensure you focus on the Benefits and not the Features.

There you go, just a few simple ideas to help you market your company without the need for a hefty budget

www.mood-marketing.co.uk

We at Mood think that it’s not fair for us to hold onto all of the information! So we’ve started this blog to pass on little bits of wisdom to help you market your business or event better!

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