One Way to Enhance Business Blogging

Part of my reason for taking Digital Marketing was to gain exposure to how businesses, particularly small companies, can create an online presence and effectively reach and communicate to their respective target audiences.  One clear way companies do this is through blogging and trying to improve their online “status” so that they can be seen as an influencer or expert in their field.  If done well, their content should rise closer to the top of Google searches and more people should click on their information.

 

One small way to enhance the chances that you or your company will get noticed is by attaching your picture to the content that you create.  The way you do that is through Google Author Markup, a system that is a part of Google Authorship that links your Google+ profile to whatever it is that you create online.  It appears that Google likes “seeing” people’s faces.  It brings credibility to what you produce by simply being a real person and not a robot, and it also benefits Google’s users by showing them what they feel are better quality search results.

 

This tactic can bring a number of benefits to you or your company.  According to entrepreneur.com, attaching your picture results in 1) higher click-through rates, 2) content protection and brand building, 3) more page views, and 4) a larger social following.  These benefits will ultimately help build your customer base and hopefully drive more activity to your business.

 

Despite these positives, however, I think there could be a couple of potential challenges and risks.  Firstly, I am not sure how easy it is for someone to use your likeness for his or her own (potentially harmful) purposes, which could weaken your standing online.  Secondly, depending on how quickly this strategy catches on, if at all, the competitive advantage can diminish fairly rapidly and your online growth could slow.

 

Nevertheless, it seems like it could be a good strategy to use at least in the short-run.  For more information, please see http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/228399.