What would happen if you were to stop blogging primarily about yourself and your services, and instead blog about topics that meet the interests of your target market – even if those topics weren’t conflict resolution?
I stumbled across a terrific example of this approach recently, when Eric Raymond of Oakley Signs & Graphics contacted me about referencing one of my articles on their blog, Free Help for Real Estate Agents.
Oakley’s blog isn’t about real estate signs, though that’s what they make and sell. Their blog is about helping their market, realtors, do their job better. In our email exchange, Eric told me why they chose this approach:
Last year, we decided that spending money on advertising didn’t build any equity in relationships. If all customer/client relationships lived and died in the transaction, it placed an unreasonable burden on the purchasing experience, which even in its best form is still somewhat adversarial.
If we allocated advertising dollars towards creating a free resource for agents to become better at their job, we would not only build more valuable relationships, but we would also be engaged in the only thing that can create demand for real estate signs: helping agents become better at their job. You don’t need signs if you’re not selling homes.
Now that’s simply smart marketing – relationship oriented and resource based. Judging by the traffic their article brought to my own blog, they have a healthy, vibrant readership.
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