Do This and Get More Customers

Have you been practicing your communication skills today?

Have you spent a good proportion of your day answering e-mails, calling people up, responding to blog comments and posting up comments of your own?

If the answer is no, it could be that you’ve become caught up in your business, wondering about how to enhance your products or services instead of keeping your customers happy.

The Fundamental Trait

While both sides of running an online business are important, communication is fundamental.

Without it, our customers begin to feel unloved, and you run the risk of them drifting away to another, more friendly, service provider.

From the day we are born, we hone and develop our communication skills, babies scream when they want to let parents know they need to be fed, and this initial noise gradually gets refined over time, if we’re lucky, until we learn the art of speech and gain the ability to articulate more specifically about how we think and feel.

Language is the main thing that sets us apart from other animals, and without it, the art of blogging would be lost to us.

Studies of child language acquisition show that babies all over the world, on every continent, share the same vocal structure, and their babbling doesn’t alter regardless of what continent they are raised on.

This shows me something fundamental – we all start from a common platform of wanting to communicate with each other, and we only learn our own language later, when our parents and people around us start to teach us to speak, read and write.

The Point Of Blogging

The whole point of blogging, then, is to open up a great communication channel between us and our existing or potential customers. Aside from all the SEO-related advantages of running a blog, there is something fundamental about its purpose.

As the internet grew in stature over the past couple of decades, people accessed a truly global market for the very first time. Someone like me, who works from home and runs a business remotely could suddenly attract and retain customers from all over Europe and the rest of the world, and it came as a surprise to the first entrepreneurs when they realised the potential of the World Wide Web.

Obviously, when something as huge as the web descended on business, there was an immediate need to find a way of representing business in a virtual way, mirroring the traditional shop front that we were accustomed to, and making communication possible.

We needed a new way of opening up conversations and dialogue with our customers.

Given that we can’t stop everything and jet off to the other side of the world to have a business meeting with someone and sell our services, blogging evolved as the next step in customer attraction and retention.

Customer Interaction Is Key

The potential of customer interaction with a blog is vast.

Online, you can show people who you are, develop your brand, and discuss what is important to you in your business.

In the same way, your customers can learn all about you and what you do, and ask the key questions which will sway them in to a positive purchasing decision.

So, the next time you push commenting or responding to people on your blog to the bottom of your things to do list, remember the huge power and importance of what it is you are trying to achieve.

We are all part of a global network of supply and demand, and your little blog is the best possible tool you have, to welcome people through the door of your virtual shop, and chew the fat with them until they decide to make a purchase.

Sit them down, make them a (virtual) coffee, and get to know one another for a firm and long-lasting two-way relationship.

So let me ask this again:

Have you been practicing your communication skills today?

Please share your views in the comments below.