2.1 An Overview of Marketing

Welcome to the Blogging for Business course. We’re excited to take you on this journey into the world of blogging and hopefully, help you kickstart your career in blogging or content marketing. 
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So let’s get started. You’re probably itching to get into the meat of blogging and learn how to write kick-ass blogs that make serious money buttttt….. For you to get there, you have to build a strong foundation. 

Just like you wouldn’t step into a game of professional cricket without learning how to hold the bat, or figuring out how the scoring system works. , or why you need to wear a crotch guard…. 

Or think about a house.  The first thing the builder will do is set a foundation and only once that is done do you even begin working on the rest of the house. 

A strong foundation is the first step to becoming an expert in any skill. Technically, you could start writing blogs tomorrow if you wanted to.  

But if you don’t understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, what the ultimate end goal is or how marketing even works as a whole,  you’ll probably find yourself in the same boat as most bloggers out there – scraping a living and painfully average.

Now, we don’t want that, do we?

So we won’t be getting into the nitty gritties (or) specifics of blogging for a bit, but let’s build that strong foundation together. 
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To start us off, here is some much needed context.
Different kinds of blogs try to achieve different things. Obviously.

There are personal blogs where people can either broadcast opinions and perspectives on everything under the sun or on specific topics like gardening, cinema, politics and so on. 

Then, there are blogs where the entire brand is built on blogging, like Mashable or BuzzFeed. 

You can also find informative blogs focused on conveying important information without any real business outcome. And finally, business-focused blogs that are used as a key marketing tool to build brand credibility, drive traffic to the website, and boost sales. 

Our focus with this course is the art of running a business or brand blog and to help you become a professional blogger. 

Now with that context in mind, let's begin setting the foundation for a business blog. ‍

First of all, what do we mean by the term “business blog”?
Well, a business blog is the function of running a blog for a business with the ultimate goal of helping them get more recognition and customers. 

Let’s take an example. 

Check these guys out -  https://www.aulitfinelinens.com/.

They sell sheets, linens, pillows, duvets and more. They’re an e-commerce store which means they sell exclusively online. That means you don’t need to walk into a physical shop to buy their products. 

Now when it comes to blogging, we tend to assume that it works better for service-based businesses that provide key information. 

Actually, that’s not quite right. Any business can run a blog as long as it adds value to the readers which is really the main point. 

So back to our example - These guys have a full fledged blog. And it covers a range of topics - how to sleep better, how to style your bedroom, you get the idea. They also have blogs that cover their latest product ranges and collections. 

As you’ll rapidly come to see, the ultimate goal with most of these blogs is to send traffic to the product pages so the reader takes the leap and makes a purchase. 

Pretty neat way to boost business, isn’t it? This brand understood that a blog is a great way to nudge their customer towards a purchase by adding value first. 

Let’s take another quick example. 

This is Kabbage. https://www.kabbage.com/ They’re a financial company that helps startups search for and apply for loans online. 

Their blog - https://www.kabbage.com/resource-center/ has tons and tons of resources that help small business owners run their businesses. From how to get incorporated, set up bank accounts all the way to getting sales and growing exponentially. 

These were some examples of what a small business blog is all about. 

In the next chapter, we’re going to go into understanding marketing as a whole and learn how blogging works as a marketing tool. 

See you there.