How blogging works for Solopress – Guest blog – Greg Ralph

May 16, 2009
by Thibaut Pfeiffer

Greg Ralph is Managing Director at Solopress. Latitude advises Solopress on all aspects of SEO and social media.

When we developed our new website in spring 2008, we thought about how to make the customer experience and navigation better. An important part of this was creating open lines of communication giving visitors a voice, so we added a button offering live help on our website. We also wanted visitors to hear our voice and keep them up-to-date with Solopress news. This is when Latitude suggested a blog.

Admittedly, it did not seem a terribly ingenious idea; after all many companies have started their own company blogs, and the media are regurgitating news reports of social media success and web 2.0 – so it was an easy decision – we were up for the idea. The first steps were tough, as we were busy putting our new website together, the blog stayed on the backburner. But after a slow start with irregular posts, this year we have renewed efforts and it has paid off!

Clients have reacted well to our blogs, especially this post about the American Psycho business card scene which struck a chord with many visitors.

The printing industry is in many respects still very offline focused so instead of comments on the blog we were surprised to receive telephone calls about the posts. The amazing thing was these were not established customers calling, but a new fan-base who had never heard of Solopress before! They stumbled across the website online and read the blog. The blog gave them insight into what we are about and helped them relate to us, which in turn resulted in increased sales for us.
We must be doing something right…

It’s not always easy to write exciting articles about the print industry and you have to be creative, but taking time writing an educational or entertaining post will result in increased interest. The quality of writing and information provided is essential to creating successful posts. Latitude helped us in the beginning by providing a writing guide for blogs and some initial ideas for subjects outside our direct business expertise.

In addition to the blog, with some guidance from Latitude, we have now started tweeting. We have even added our Twitter page to our e-mail signature so that partners and customers know that we are on Twitter. The blog and our blog posts give us something to tweet about every week, which not only builds buzz and helps us connect with our customers, but also creates more brand awareness and acts as a reminder to them that we are here. In the last few weeks we have had hundreds of visitors coming through to our blog from Twitter.

As a result both our customers and random visitors now know when we release a new product, or when we have a special offer on. Our blog also educates visitors on print related subjects (like this post about the difference between digital printing and lithographic printing), but also helps us entertain visitors and show our less serious side (like this post about Japanese business card etiquette).

Our blog is still young, but the positive response that we have experienced makes us believe that it has a bright future ahead. Hopefully, with the continued assistance from Latitude and their expertise our blog will gain in popularity and will continue building a solid reader base that will link to our blog, sending more people our way, which will result in even wider exposure for the Solopress brand and therefore increased sales.