Chevy Tharp

Blogging is the first technology to enable a simple conversation to go instantly global; Link to your customers. –Naked Conversations

First, let’s clarify what a blog is, for anyone who may not be aware. Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, describes a blog as follows: “A Website usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material.”

Many blogs provide commentaries or news on a particular subject; others function as personal, online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images and links to other blogs, Websites or other media that may be related to the topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs, (photoblog), sketches (sketchblog) videos (vlog) music (MP3 Blog) and audio (podcasting), which are all part of a wider network of social media.

There is no denying it—there are millions of blog readers each day.

Blogs can have big impacts on businesses, with added customer value and SEO benefits. Research has shown that the most highly used and successful blogging occurs in the tourism industry. As we here in Maui thrive significantly on visitor spending and many of our visitors sit at home or in their office, browsing online, seeking and searching for good information on things to do and places to go while planning their big trip to the island, we should strongly consider incorporating one or more forms of blogging into our business marketing models.

Blogging is essentially free; there are no additional costs that should be incurred in set-up and maintenance, other than additional bandwidth costs, depending on content and traffic. Content is still king and it is a fantastic way to increase the size of your site and ultimately increase traffic, by improving your search engine ranking chances. This can be a much cheaper alternative to Pay-per-Click advertising campaigns.

Here are a few ways to maximize blogging for your business:

1. Keep it up to date.
2. Involve the community - leave room for customer feedback and interactions.
3. Informality - keep a real human-touch dialogue going on. People want to know that they are hearing from other real people with honest thoughts and feedback, and so should you, if you want to run your business at an optimal level. Blogs add customer value and ultimately bring additional customers.

This is wise business. As always, it is my sincere pleasure to give back to Maui through business education.

Chevy Tharp is regional vice president, Hawaiian Islands and Western U.S., for Meridian Business Brokers & Meridian Group Hawai‘i. Tharp is an international business consultant and business broker who specializes in helping people buy, sell and improve businesses. He welcomes you to contact him at chevy@mghawaii.com or (808) 268-6131.