I'm giving a talk next week, June 4th at 8:00 am, on blogging for your business, sponsored by the San Antonio chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA).  It's free to members and only $25 for non-members.

Here's the skinny on what I'll be talking about...

Even in a floundering economy, internet marketing is experiencing tremendous growth.  After years of hesitancy by some, it is finally being embraced by mainstream marketers as an extremely high-value, low-cost channel for engaging our target markets.

One facet of internet marketing that any business, large or small, can easily employ is blogging.  There are many ways that blogging can benefit your business:

• Establish Credibility.  It positions you as the expert in your industry or on a specific topic relevant to your market.
• Increase your SEO.  Search Engine marketing provides a phenomenal opportunity to get in front of potential customers who are actually out searching for you!  (Much different from traditional advertising.)  Strategic blogging can help you capture more of that traffic.
• Build a Community.  A blog gives your company the chance to share your knowledge and perspectives with a large audience and to captivate individuals who share the same viewpoints.
• Know your Market.  Reading and writing blogs, and engaging in the blog community, gives you a better opportunity to understand your customer and what it is that really makes them tick so that you can better address them with your products and/or services.
• Low Cost.  Many blogging platforms are free and all it costs you to maintain a blog is time.  Compared to traditional advertising methods this is an extremely low cost with the potential for a much higher return on your investment.

In this one-hour class, we will learn:

• How to get started.  We’ll explore blog services and what you’ll need to know to easily launch your blog.
• Who should write your posts.  We’ll talk about who the best person is to write your posts, what “voice” they should use and how to develop a following.
• What to write about.  Now that the blog is launched, what do you write about?  We’ll talk about how to come up with post ideas and keep the ideas flowing.
• How to get traffic to your blog.  There are many tricks-of-the-trade that we’ll share on how to promote your blog and boost your traffic.

If you're interested, you can RSVP by emailing rsvp@sa-ama.org by Monday, June 1st by 5 pm.  Hope to see you there!

by Tracy Marlowe