3 Reasons Small Business Bloggers Need Marketing Automation

If you blog for a small business, there are so many hats you have to wear. Although you already know that. So, you are probably searching for ways to make your blog and business run a lot more efficiently so that you can take it to the next level.

• Marketing automation  is the solution as it allows you to market more successfully on multiple channels and automate more “repetitive” tasks (in other words scale up the marketing of your blog), with less effort on your part.

Let’s say a new reader comes to your small business blog and signs up for your newsletter. If you don’t have marketing automation technology, you will have to follow up with this person manually. This includes the “welcome” email for signing up, the newsletter each time, and any other messages you want to send to them.

Perhaps you have a promotion you want to tell them about, a whitepaper you would like to share, or a brand announcement — to reach them effectively and save you time, you need to be utilizing marketing automation.

Here are three reasons bloggers need marketing automation:

1. It is easier to be “present” across a variety of social media platforms.
Consistently blogging is already a time-consuming (slightly overwhelming) task for both new and experienced bloggers. Content is king, yet it still takes a lot of time to create something that stands out from the rest of what’s on the internet.

Not to mention, on top of the actual blog content, you also need to be consistently posting on the rest of your social media platforms. From Facebook to Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and Snapchat, there are plenty of places that you and your brand need to be. To be more competitive, you also need to be visible offline through various brand activation campaigns.

As any blogger knows, this is easier said than done. Luckily, marketing automation can massively assist in this regard.

By utilizing a marketing automation platform, you will be able to schedule posts or messages to be sent across several different networks at once. Instead of having to remember the most effective time for each platform and manually post content, simply set aside an hour a week to schedule all the content and the automation platform will do the rest of the work!

2. It helps you keep a personalized relationship with your readers.
As a blogger, it is essential that you sustain a personalized relationship with your readers. If you are incapable of doing this, then you are never going to be able to exert your influence or position your business as an authority. So, to maintain a personalized relationship and provide an excellent “follower” experience is to make your readers feel as though you are speaking directly to them.

How not to do it?

Make them feel as though they are just another email address signed up for your newsletter.

And, your email list is incredibly valuable.

First and foremost, every email that is sent to them should be addressed “Hey {name}.” Additionally, through your marketing automation platform, you have the opportunity to construct customer profiles to segment your audience.

These segments ensure you are communicating the appropriate messages to the right people. By sending timely personalized emails, you have a far higher likelihood of capturing your readers’ attention and inspiring them to communicate with you.

3. It helps to strengthen your personal brand.
Branding, branding, branding. Basically, that is what blogging is about. You need to demonstrate your authority on a subject and then reach the highest number of readers possible.

How do you get to reach all these readers and potential customers?

To effectively spread awareness of your blog on both online and offline channels, you need marketing automation, as this ensures that the push for recognition happens at periodic intervals. Through superior content and consistent efforts, you will be on your way to gaining the trust of more readers.

Depending on how much you’ve read about digital marketing (and, hopefully, as a blogger, you read regularly on the topic!), you may have been hearing about marketing automation benefits a lot recently. So if you are looking to take your small business blog to the next level and boost interaction with your readers, then consider reaching out to a marketing automation company to see how automation can work for you.

AUTHOR BIO

Tomi Saikkonen is the Vice President of Liana Technologies, Middle East. Just like you Tomi is fascinated by the possibilities of digital marketing and technology. He actively seeks out ways to help businesses and organizations across industries to improve their digital marketing ROI.