I was having a meeting with a prospect yesterday and we were discussing the possibility of adding a blog and an email newsletter to his Internet marketing mix. He was (admittedly) not too experienced with the Web, and didn’t even do much surfing. Although he got excited about e-newsletters and blogs, he asked me a lot of intelligent questions regarding how they could help him succeed.

To paraphrase, I said they both had advantages, and would best be used together.

The email newsletter is helpful because it allows you to keep the conversation with your visitors going, long after they’ve left your site. If your Web site is engaging and helpful enough, it can convince a visitor to sign up for your email newsletter, allowing you to continue marketing to them months or years down the line. However, unless you archive your newsletters on your site, it can’t help you with any search engines, as the content is only available in subscribers’ mailboxes, not on the Web.

The blog is powerful because it can help attract people who have never heard of you or your business. As you blog (regularly) your posts get picked up by the search engines, sometimes very quickly. By creating a lot of links to your Web site from within your blog, you transfer traffic and some of your blog’s popularity (PageRank) to your site.

Keep in mind that with both these solutions you need to write. A newsletter should come out regularly: once a month, once every other week, whatever. A blog should get fresh posts a couple-three times a week if possible. Don’t despair! Blog posts can be short. Mine are long, but if you know me, you know you can’t get me to shut up.

You can leverage the power of the Web to establish yourself as an expert. Both the email newsletter and the business blog can help you achieve this goal.

Rich Brooks
Email Marketing and Business Blogger