The DME market is flooded with contenders and pretenders. The industry has commoditized a bit over the years, and it seems like everyone has a store. What really stands out from this point on is the perception of credibility and industry expertise in the consumers mind. A blog is the perfect vehicle for building the reputation of your company and their credibility. Most organizations in the DME space are good at creating stores and driving traffic. When a company starts selling to larger organizations and grows to the point where they have a field sales team, reputation becomes an important aspect of closing deals and growing sales.
A blog is a platform to demonstrate your industry knowledge, being of service to your customers, while at the same time building a following. A blog is also a chance for you to interject and to some extent control your company and industry narrative. With every post you or your team write, you are creating an image and knowledge differential between you and your competitors. This comes more into play when you start to build a following. The more followers you have to your blog, the more it appears you have something to say, which in turn creates the vision in your readers minds that you are an expert within the industry. The blog creates a thought leadership and expert based perception marketing campaign. The blog itself becomes like a business card and mass advertising tool, where you as blogger, your company, and your product are onstage for a worldwide audience.
For the record many of the smaller DME companies do not dedicate time and resources to this, at least not yet. The larger organizations in the DME space definitively blog and realize the value of using social media for company and brand perception.
When entering the blogosphere you have to view it as part of your marketing budget, then dedicate resources and mindshare to getting it launched properly. You have to decide if you and your staff are going to write the blog or if you are if you are going to outsource to a blogging company. You also have to decide what kind of content you want to create and who you are going to target it at. You also want to segment your audience for different types of content creation and deployment. Finally, you have to drive traffic for readership and monitor topic and content success and failures. Social Media is the best way to advertise your blog. The attention to the different social media sites that can act as vehicles for your blog advertisement, is an important thing for you and your team to asses and analyze for your blog to be successful. With any luck, if you execute your marketing strategy properly, your blog should establish a wider brand identity and industry influence. This position and influence should hopefully convert into sales and better market position.
Blogging is that vehicle which can propel your brand from being a commodity to a value sell. At the end of the day since DME is becoming a crowded space, it pays to differentiate and become something more than just another store on the online block.
