A few months back, we explained why it’s important for retailers and restaurant operators to blog just as we at pcAmerica do. We hope you took our advice! Now it’s time to look at a few ways to prevent your blog from becoming stale and, as a result, losing some of its following. Here are three strategies to start with; see our next installment for more ideas.

1.    Get the picture. Photographs are not only a great way to make your posts easier to read (they break up the text); they also give readers an enhanced understanding of whatever it is you’re discussing, whether a new product or entire product line that’s now available in your store, a special menu item or even a renovation or expansion. Images also help to draw in and maintain the interest of potential and existing customers who may be so intrigued by what they see that they don’t stop at reading the entire entry, but rather, scroll back to view previous posts and of course, pay a visit to your establishment.

2.    Put in the “pull”—pull quotes, that is. Publications use pull quotes to highlight small nuggets of text to emphasize specific points or “tease” people into reading an article or editorial from start to finish. Like images, they also break up big blocks of text, making blog posts easier to digest. Adding pull quotes to a blog isn’t at all difficult. Bloggers who use WordPress have access to a few plugins they can download to incorporate pull quotes; these include Simple Pull Quote and Graceful Pull-Quotes to help you take advantage of these elements.  You can also create pull quotes in Photoshop and incorporate them into your blog in image form.

3.    Sew up the comments. Many bloggers set up their blogs so that readers can leave “threaded comments”. In a “threaded comment” scenario, readers can reply directly to a specific comment/commenter and see their response displayed directly beneath that comment. This makes for a stronger, livelier dialogue among readers and keeps them coming back to the blog because it is easier for them to check out whatever input others have left in response to what they’ve written. WordPress offers the WordPress Thread Comment plugin to help users convert to the “threaded comments” format.

Blogging is just one way to enter the realm of social marketing to improve repeat business and build repoire. pcAmerica offers solutions that can get you started with social marketing with solutions from behind the counter. To learn more about pcAmerica and social marketing tools visit, www.pcamerica.com/socialmarketing.