10 Ways Corporate Blogging Can Help Grow Your Business

One major tool for business growth every Nigerian should take advantage of in this internet age is blogs. Blogs are no longer just personal diaries as they use to be. The business case for blogging is compelling. Corporate Blogging refers to a company producing or supporting a blog that it uses to accomplish business objectives. Too many marketers focus on gaining initial visibility through advertising or attention-seeking stunts. If that tactic does not convert into instant sales, the budget and effort are wasted. With a blog you can hold prospects' interest for longer, winning customers round over time, and bringing them back to hear from you long after their first contact. No need for spammy, desperate-sounding sales messages.

What is a blog?

A Blog (short for Weblog) is a web page made up of usually short, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically-like a ‘what's new’ page or a journal. The term was coined by Jorn Barger in 1997.

Ideally, your blog can be on the same domain as your business website and integrated with it – or at least have a prominent link to your business website. There are different platforms where you can create a free blog e.g. wordpress.com, blogger.com (owned by Google), typepad.com etc.

I had written on how to create a free blog using blogger, I will be concentrating here on how you can use Blogs to grow your sales and profit.

Types of Blogs:

Blogs can be divided into two broad categories namely

Personal Blogs: a mixture of a personal diary, opinion posts and research links. Most Nigerians are already aware of personal blogs, some popular ones include that of Linda Ikeji

Business/Corporate Blogs: a corporate tool for communicating with customers or employees to share knowledge and expertise.

Below are what corporate blogging can do for you. It can help you to

1.  Build trust with your potential customers and clients. Today, trust is in ‘people like me’ rather than in large organizations. We choose to do business with people we know, like and trust. Your blog is an important way for people to get to know you. Trust is vital in making sales and important for encouraging visitors to opt into your lead-generation process. By starting with compelling information and resources, and by encouraging repeat communication, you build familiarity. Over time, this creates a strong bond of trust, making sales so much easier.
2. Build stronger better brands: This positive attention and these value-based, long-term experiences don’t just create trust. They help to create a stronger, better brand. This leads to word-of-mouth advertising, which is one of the best forms of promotion you can get.
3. Build an audience. One reason to start a blog - even before your business is properly up and running – is to start building an audience. Once you have niche community following, you will be able to find a way to sale to them later- by selling the products and service that fit with their interests.
4. Increase search engine visibility. Google and other search engines love blogs. This is because of the way search engine algorithms work. Google believes a site is more valuable if it has regularly updated content - which a well- maintained blog has. It also prefers site that other people link to- and people are more likely to link to specific blog posts than a static, brochure-style website. By writing about topical issues on your blog - such as the latest developments in your field or a conference you recently attended- you will be more findable because you will be writing about things people are likely to be searching for. And finally, the more blog posts you write, the more pages you create for Google to index. These things combine to improve your natural search engine rankings.
5. Drive traffic to your business. Every business needs traffic, whether this is foot traffic in a high street store or 'eyeballs' to an online store. A good blog not only generates traffic, but also helps retain that traffic, keeping people coming back and growing in loyalty. The search engine friendliness of blogs, combined with other ways you can market your blog, plus regularly updated, quality, topical content, will keep traffic coming to your blog.
6. Position yourself as an expert in your field. By writing insightful, quality posts, and providing useful information to your community, you can become seen as an expert in your niche – whether that is tax law, flower arranging, coarse fishing.
7. Reach a wider market. More people can find you in more ways if you have a blog.
8. Create value for your clients or customers by providing useful content. Talk of customer service that is available 24/7
9. Learn from your customers by inviting comments and feedback from them. A blog can be useful for doing ad hoc bits of market research, and helps to keep you closer to your market so that you’re more aware of what they want.
10. Create networking opportunities you never knew existed. It’s not just clients and customers who will find you via your blog but also potential partners. And if you successfully position yourself as an expert, you may even find that speaking, consulting and writing opportunities come your way.

You can either manage your blog or get a professional to market and manage your blog or both. Blogging will help grow that your business no matter how small, so start one today

Jude Oguta

C.E.O

Eloquent Touch Media
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Nine Reasons Every Nigeria Business should Have a Social Media Presence

Recent statistics show that:

• ·         Over 900 million people worldwide use Facebook. Half of them login every single day and spend 55 minutes on Facebook. It has been often said that if Facebook were a country it would be the third largest after China and India
• ·         21.8 billion videos are viewed on YouTube each month.
• ·         Facebook is the second most visited site in the world and the first in Nigeria

If you are doing business in Nigeria and do not have a social media presence then you are likely on your way out of business. Why? You see, this generation of ‘digital natives’ were born into a world of digital technology. In a few years they are going to be your customers, your clients, your staff. Many of them already are. You must learn how to be fluent in the digital language.
 

Anyway, without much a do, here are top 9 reasons why every 9ja business needs a social media presence

1. Facebook, Twitter, Nairaland, Youtube and blogger are all social media platforms and they are all in the ten top most visited sites in Nigeria according to Alexa ranking. Facebook alone has over 845m users worldwide ( February, 2012) and this number is constantly growing. Bottom line is your business need to be where your customers are
2. Only 14% of consumers trust advertising and all the hype made on telly, but 78% trust peer recommendations – and that’s what Social Media is – word of mouth advertising
3. Through social media, you can connect and maintain relationship with your existing customers through social media marketing. If you are not, your competitors who are will take them.
4. Since most Nigerian web surfer visit a social networking site daily, placing an advert on a social media platform can get new potential customers to connect with your business and get constant updates.
5. Maintain loyalty! Yes because you will stay on the top of your followers minds
6. Reduce your costs on traditional media advertising: a minute advert on Television is about 70k, that’s a huge some in running a social media advert campaign
7. Best Tool for customer Service: Listen to your customers, ask them questions, get answers, improve your services and product range
8. Reduce your printing costs – advertise your vouchers, sales, discounts, special offers , all through social media marketing
9. Use the viral aspect of social media to your business benefit: do you know that if your friend that has 1, 000 facebook friends like your page, his friends are most likely to see it and also like it. FREE ad for you

So what are you waiting for?

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Ways to Identify Online Scammers

Online scam is on the rise in Nigeria as the internet marketing business is on the increase a typical example of tars (weed) growing amidst the wheat. It's often difficult to tell if an email is legitimate. A friend of mine that travelled to the US recently sent a mail to his wife in Nigeria, in which he requested she pays Five Hundred Thousand Naira into an account he gave him. In less than five minutes, the lady received another mail (from hackers) using the husbands email address asking her to pay 1.5 million Naira into another account.  The only reason she smelt foul play was because that amount of money did not exist in the said account.

 Beware that the internet is not a safe playing ground and that scammers have become increasingly sophisticated in creating fraudulent emails and Web sites that look authentic. These emails and Web sites often appear to be from legitimate companies and include images and logos of these organizations. 

Following are some common characteristics of fraudulent emails and Web sites:

1.     1.  They have an urgent tone.

They often have a sense of urgency telling clients that if they fail to update, verify or confirm their personal or account information, access to their accounts will be suspended. One popular one supposedly from GTB reads

Dear Valued customer, 

GUARANTY TRUST BANK CUSTOMER DATA UPDATE EXERCISE


As part of our continuous efforts towards providing you with excellent customer service and ensuring efficiency in 
transaction processing, we request that you kindly update your records with the Bank by going to https://ebank.gtbank.com/ibank3/update/login.aspx 
This update will help us to prevent any unauthorised or illegal use of our customers identity and to confirm that you are 
truely the owner of the account you are operating. Failure to update your account now will lead to termination of your account and internet banking services for security reasons.
click here now for the update.

.

GTBank is committed to protect the identity of it's internet banking users. 
Help us to serve you better. It's all about your security. 
Thank you for choosing Guaranty Trust Bank Plc. 



© 2011 Guaranty Trust Bank. 


NOTE : THIS UPDATE MUST BE DONE IMMEDIATELY OR YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE DISABLED

2.       2. They request your information.

This is called phishing. If you click the above website link, it will direct you to a place they steal your personal account details. They typically ask for personal or account information such as:

·         Account numbers

·         Credit Card numbers

·         Online Banking sign on IDs and passwords

·         Mother's maiden name

·         Date of birth

·         Other sensitive information

3.   3.    They include links that appear legitimate.

They often include links that include a legitimate company's name or Web address. When you click on the link above you will see the difference. Below is the genuine GTB website

THIS IS WHAT THE REAL WEBSITE LOOKS LIKE.(Click to Enlarge)

NOTE: 

1.THE WEBSITE ADDRESS IS FTTP AND NOT FTP
HTTP MEANS Hypertext Transfer Protocol WHILE FTP MEANS file transfer protocol

2. THE WEBSITE IS ALSO VERIFIED WHICH YOU CAN CONFIRM FROM THE ADDRESS BAR (VERIFIED BY VERISIGN) A FTP CAN NEVER BE VERIFIED

3. THEN THE THIRD ONE WHICH IS MORE OF AN OVERSIGHT BECAUSE IT'S EASY TO ADD IS THE TIME AND DATE ON THE ORIGINAL WEBSITE.

NOW COMPARE THAT TO THIS ONE,(Click to Enlarge)

THIS IS THE WEBSITE YOU'LL BE DIRECTED TO FROM THE LINK YOU GET IN THE EMAIL. ITS A FTP THAT COLLECTS YOUR DETAILS IN A DATABASE LIKE A FORM DATA COLLECTION SYSTEM. SO BE VIGILANT, BESIDES A BANK WILL NOT ASK YOU TO UPDATE YOUR DETAILS ONLINE. YOU SHOULD RATHER DO THAT AT THE BANKING HALL WHERE YOU CAN GO BACK TO HOLD SOMEONE RESPONSIBLE IF ANYTHING GOES WRONG.

TIP: Always type Web addresses into your browser instead of clicking on links.

4.     4.  They often have incorrect grammar.

The emails and pop-up Web sites may include misspelled words and incorrect grammar.

Here are  things to look out for in doing an online transaction, especially in Nigeria

1. Look for a physical address.

A real address that you can ship things too — like letters from your lawyer — and not a P.O. Box. If you have somebody staying in that area ask him/her to check it out

2. Do a search on scam.com’s forums for the company name.

This is another great internet resource. Essentially Scam.com is a huge forum full of people complaining about companies that have scammed them. Will 100% of those complaints be legitimate? Of course not. Imagine a competitor to your business signing up just to create a fictitious story about terrible customer service. (Remember, the internet isn’t a safe playground.)

3. Google “[Company Name] Scam”

Going back to doing research, this is a great first step. Never heard of the company? A quick Google search for the company’s name and the word scam will provide you with an up to date list of people that are unhappy with the firm for whatever reason. Some of these complaints will be unfounded, but if you get a ton of quality results full of complaints, that’s a red flag.

You can also just do a basic Google search for the company’s name and see if anything negative pops up.

  

Hopefully this post will help at least one person avoid getting scammed. Good luck out there.

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How to Drive Visitors to Your Website/ Blog

As the internet business is booming in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, many people are beginning to realize the need for a website. But most Nigerians hastily constructed their website and then promptly forgot about it; One of their most valuable marketing assets, now relegated to the back burner, becomes just another business disbursement.

Remember: the more popular your website is, the more benefits you get. 

Driving traffic to your site requires a combination of both online and offline measures. Here’s a list of steps you can take to drive traffic to your site:

• Include your web address on your printed materials. This means all your business cards, stationary, invoices, letterhead, newspaper and magazine ads, direct mail, corporate gift items like T-shirts, Mugs, etc. if your company has a branded car, ensure the web address is printed boldly on it. This way, people can research details about your company while on traffic. You never can tell, your next customer may just be driving right behind you.

• Submit your website to search engines, directories, and industry specific directories. Your website benefits from quality incoming links, therefore ensure that search engines(especially Google) knows about your website. There are hundreds of paid and unpaid directories online. Popular ones in Nigeria are Nigeria Galleria, VConnect, etc. also submit it to directories that are specific to your industry. This will increase your SEO as well

• Optimize your site for search engines. Don’t just give your website to a web designer, look for a web developer; a designer may just be interested in the look and feel of your website but a developer is both interested in both the design, content, navigation, loading etc. Having a website that can be discovered by search engines involves using relevant keywords on your pages and in your meta tags.

• Have a social Media Presence. Social Media like Facebook, Twitter, Blog, BB etc are one of the most visited sites online in Nigeria. You need a Facebook page for your business and to. Facebook for instance is one of the top three most visited sites in Nigeria. Make sure you broadcast relevant information to your audience on these media platforms

 • Use paid advertising. You may have heard of Pay-Per-Click Advertising, popularly called PPC. They are those adverts you see on the right side of your Facebook pages or Google search result pages. Base your pay-per-click ads on relevant keywords related to your business. Consider advertising on sites most Nigerians visit, especially visitors that include your target market. If you are into entertainment, beauty etc; a good place to place your advert will be a place like Linda Ikeji Blog. Also consider advertising on the online version of Nigerian newspapers.

. • Create a blog. Your Blog is The Online PRO Of Your Company. Start a corporate blog where you write about your products and services. Even if you don’t have time to write, contract it to professional blog writing companies, that will remove all the head ache from you and ensure your blog and website is regularly updated

• Link to non-competing industry sites.  Encourage them to link back to your site. You gain search engine visibility if you have quality incoming links. Eloquent TouchMedia for instance is a website design, development and promotion company; we can decide to link to a hosting company that does not do all we do and ask them to link back to us.

• Add your signature file to all electronic correspondence. Every time you send an outgoing e-mail, ensure your signature file is included which should contain your web address. Also try to use your corporate mail to send letters. Mail address like jude@eloquenttouchmedia.com is more professional and links people to what you do than jude@yahoo.com

Try these basic steps and be sure to get results. Your website can attract that lead, phone calls, emails you need to make sales by following these steps.

Jude Oguta

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How to Create a FREE Blog using Blogspot

Many Nigerians are lookimg for avenues to share their knowledge online. Blogging provides you that platform. Here is how you can create a FREE blog on Blogspot, Blogger's hosting service.

The first step is to create a gmail account.
Then go to www.blogger.com and log in using your gmail account login details  

Once you've logged into blogger.com, click New blog next to your list of blogs:

1. 
   Click on the orange arrow that says "create your blog now."
2. On the "Create a Google Account" screen enter in the information required, namely:
   1. Enter your personal gmail email address, which should be the one that you want to use to be paired with your blog that you are going to create [must not be your official education one. You'll have to retype your email address in the second box.
   2. Enter password (it's a good idea to write this down somewhere safe -- or email it to yourself and then save the email so you can refer to it later if you forget it). You have to retype the password in the second box.
   3. Enter a display name
   4. Choose a user name. If you prefer people not to know who you actually are, then choose a fictitious name. e.g. 2tech4me
   5. Accept the terms (it is safe to do and won't generate junk mail).
   6. Word verification: type the letters that appear as a graphic above the verification box. This is there to ensure that the blog is being created by a person and not automatically being generated by a computer.
   7. Click on the "Continue" arrow
3. On the "Name your blog" screen:
   1. Enter title: This is the title that will appear at the top of your blog page and will also be the default name that will appear in users' browsers when they bookmark/add to favorites you blog, so choose something that will give readers a clear idea of what your blog is about
   2. Blog address: pick something that you'll remember easily and that is easy to type.
   3. Click on the "Continue" arrow
4. On the "Choose a template" screen:
   1. Scroll through the selections and click on the little radio button next to the name of the template that you choose. e.g. I chose the snapshot template. Note: you can change the template later if you decide you don't like the one you have selected, so don't spend too much time at this point worrying what will look best!
   2. Click on the "Continue" arrow
5. On the "Your blog has just been created!" screen:
   1. Click on the "Start Blogging" arrow
6. A window will appear that looks much like a word processing window. Start typing, and use the formatting bar at the top to help you format your entry. e.g. You can change font size, type of font, color, justification, create links and so on. Experiment with these to see what they do.
   1. When finished, click on "Publish Post"
7. Once you have posted an entry, a screen will appear telling you "Your blog post published successfully!"
   1. To see the results, click on the link to "View Blog."
8. To get back to your blog so that you can add a new entry or edit the existing blog, click on the little orange "B" next to the search field at the top left of your browser window. If you are already logged in, this will take you to your blog Dashboard. If you aren't logged in, then you will first need to log in (using the user name and password that you set up when you created your blog -- that's why it's important to write down what these are when you first create your blog).
9. From the dashboard you can:
   • create a new post (a new blog entry): click on the "NEW POST" button
   • change your blog settings (don't worry about this now, but do explore later)
   • edit your existing posts: to do this, click on "Edit Posts" --> this takes you to a screen that gives you the option of creating a new post or editing your entries. To edit entry, click on the "Edit" link next to the entry. This opens the blog in editing mode, and you can go ahead and edit
   • to post blog once you are done editing, click on the orange "Publish Post" button (which takes you to "Your blog post published successfully!" window, and from there, click to "View Blog").

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