How-To: Launching Blogs to Increase Sales
5 Tips from Ice.com's Pinny Gniwisch
Blogs can be a powerful tool for online companies to form relationships with customers. Pinny Gniwisch, founder and EVP of marketing for online jewelry retailer Ice.com, knew his customers sometimes had questions they couldn't get answered on the site, such as, "My daughter's going to prom. What should she wear with her dress?"
Pinny created a blog called JustAskLeslie.com that would answer customer questions and offer other jewelry advice. Now, with a total of four blogs related to Ice.com, he offers his five tips on making blogs work.
Tip #1. When enthusiasm wanes, hire it out
At first, Pinny's staff was excited about doing the blogs, but after awhile, interest waned. Rather than risk having fewer posts, and posts that were less than stellar, Pinny hired a freelancer to write and manage all of the blogs.
Tip #2. Useful content
The blogs are not sales tools for Ice.com, and they never offer overt sales pitches. Rather, they are fashion blogs that talk about jewelry. If a particular piece of jewelry is mentioned, it is hotlinked to the product page on Ice.com, but the company is not mentioned. However, Ice.com does have a link in a list of links on each blog.
Tip #3. Tagging
Blogs are a good way to get listed organically on search engines. Pinny makes sure that all pertinent words for each post are tagged, which helps the search engines pick up the individual postings and list them in organic results.
Tip #4. When appropriate, conduct PR
By announcing your blog to the appropriate press, it may be possible to generate coverage, which helps spread the word and drive traffic to the blog. Ice.com, because they were one of the first companies to use a blog as a marketing strategy, researched the people who wrote about technology for top publications and sent a short email announcing the blog.
They managed to get coverage in the New York Times, Business Week, and the Washington Post, among other places.
Tip #5. Post often
To keep interest high, Pinny makes sure his blogger posts at least two to three new entries per week, per blog.
Finally, says Pinny, seek out other blogs and ask for mutual links. "That's a win-win situation for everybody," he says.
More about Pinny:
Comments
One of the important factors to increase sales of blogs is the bloggers feedback. It creates interest among readers when you get a reply to your comments and querries and above all a mutual understanding which is very important when the bloggers for some or the other reason may not be able to post more.
Posted by Natalie Jost on 08/14/06