Successful Blog

How a Blog Contributes to Your Business Model in Crucial Ways

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by
Alex Summers

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Why Blogs Are Necessary for Small Businesses

If you have a business, you should have a blog. Period. This is because you need a way to communicate with customers at all times. A blog allows you to communicate product updates, allow customers to suggest new products or features and have a way to be visible at all times. Visibility is important when you are a small business.

Here are crucial ways a blog contributes to a business model:

A Blog Improves Sales

Having a blog allows you to sell more goods. This is because you can link your blog to the section of your site that sells your products. Customers can even find your blog without you having to do anything to attract that customer. Optimizing content for search engines will improve sales by pushing your blog higher on search engine results. Most people will click on the first or second result that appears.

You can get sales training online from many sales and business professionals through a quick online search.

A Blog Allows You to Interact With Others In Your Niche

You can connect with other niche bloggers who are writing about the same topics you are. A company that sells sports memorabilia would want to connect with other businesses that sell sports memorabilia. Having those connections makes it easier to improve sales because there are other businesses who could refer their customers to you. You may have something that their shop may not.

Perhaps you are a better option because you are closer to where a particular customer is located. You don’t get that referral, if you don’t connect to other businesses.

A Blow Allows Customers to Communicate With You

A good conversation on your blog can be great for SEO. Remember that there are usually 100 people reading your forum for every person who actually comments. Your blog could be where people learn more about your products or services. Make sure that you are offering an interactive experience for your customers. Give them good recommendations in an attempt to drive sales of certain items. Customers will generally follow your advice if it is sound enough.

Every small business needs a blog in order to survive online. It will allow you to be found by more people. It can get your referrals from other businesses that you connect with. Your blog can also be a great way to influence customers to buy certain goods or services that your company offers. Make sure that you are taking advantage of this wonderful tool that is available to your company.

Author’s Bio:
Alex is a blogger, freelance writer and recent college graduate. She currently performs market research for an online marketing firm when she is not contributing her own thoughts and observations to the online community.

Thank you for adding to the conversation!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

6 Steps to a Business Blog that Attracts Customers

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How to Blog Series

by
Marya Jan

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Small Business Owners Can Make a Blog a Customer Magnet

Do you have a business blog?

Or, do you feel like rolling your eyes when people tell you to get one?

Who reads a business blog anyway? Aren’t they places where business owners talk about their star employees, new products in the pipeline, latest on advertising efforts, and publish other bits and pieces of information that nobody cares about.

In other words, they publish incredibly boring stuff.

Well … not necessarily.

And it doesn’t have to be that way for you either.
Your blog can be a customer magnet.
Don’t you want to bring more customers to you?

6 Steps to a Business Blog that Attracts Customers

Here are six small steps you can take right now to ensure that you never go down that path – path that leads to boredom and ultimately abandon of your site. These are six steps to a small business blog that draws customers closer to you.

#1 Publish non-promotional content

The first thing you can do is stop promoting your products and services on your blog. Really, trust me on this. Your blog is not the place to that. Your website is, your online catalogue is, not your blog.

People don’t sign up to hear from you if all they are going to hear about your fabulous products – which no doubt, they are. People sign up because you post some interesting and engaging content that they don’t want to risk missing any of it.

For instance, I subscribe to my son’s speech pathologist’s business blog. Yes, she has one, and a fantastic one at that. (My son has Asperger’s Syndrome so he needs help with social skills and pragmatics.)

I have signed up to her blog because she routinely publishes stuff about what’s new in the world of ASD therapies. She recommends great resources, and what’s happening around town. She highlights successes of her other clients (with permission, of course). She tells parents quick tips that we can follow at home.

What a great blog she has where she publishes such useful content that people who can’t even afford her services now, sign up. And they might eventually, in future.

#2 Offer a freebie for email opt-in

Speaking of signing up, the whole purpose of blogging is to capture first time visitors email addresses straightaway, before they leave your site and forget all about you.

It really helps if you offer them some incentive – an ethical bribe if you may. My son’s speechie has got a 7 page report on how to find the right speech therapist for your child and when to do it. Indirectly plugging her service? I don’t really care, the tips are solid.

Think about if, if you have a child who doesn’t speak at age 3, would you not opt-in for information from a credible source?

Offer a freebie, and turn your blog into a lead generation machine. Psst … that’s the why you are blogging anyway.

#3 Publish content regularly

This is a topic of hot debate. But before you start freaking out, understand that your business blog is different from those huge blogs that everybody on the planet seems to follow.

Often, they have teams producing content for them, and either they are news sites masquerading as blogs, or blogs who grew big over a period of time. The owner usually monetizes them by placing advertising on them do they need an infinite number of visitors and hits to their site. Hence, they often update multiple times a day.

Your blog is different; you can get away with updating once a week. That is what I do and it works for me.

#4 Make yourself human & position yourself as an expert

Are you a huge company or a small business? I am thinking the latter.

While you may not have a really corporate voice on your website, it will still pay to come across as a living, breathing human on your blog.

You get to engage with your readers, who could possibly be so impressed with you that they will eventually buy from you.

Even if you don’t, isn’t it a good feeling to show your human face and just chill?

Like Sonia Simone of Copyblogger says, create Know, Like and Trust on your site. Get people to know and like you by being approachable and talking about your company’s mission. Post content that will get them to trust you.

And let’s not forget that we only buy from people we know, like and trust.

#5 Give your blog an audit

If you already have a business blog, give it a cold, hard look. If this blog was written by somebody else, would you subscribe?

Is it easy to navigate or feel cluttered? Does it look professional in its appearance?

Think about what sort of content are you publishing. Think about the frequency and length. Really think about the headlines. Which brings us to our final point; writing to earn people’s attention.

#6 Write like an A-list blogger

And lastly, do you know why most business blogs stink?

It’s because they person doing blogging has no clue how to blog in the first place. Blogging is a genre in itself, and in order for you to get people interested in your content, you must do as the Romans do.

Make your posts screen friendly and easy to read. Make them scannable using subheadings, bullets, bold and numbered lists, in the body of the post. Refrain from using long paragraphs. Make them short to really break up the text.

Keep your posts short – aim for a length of 500 words. You can write that in an hour. Think of this time as an investment in your business. Or, if you can’t spare a single minute, hire a freelance blogger.

Author’s Bio:
Marya Jan is a proud content creator for Open Colleges, (an education provider with awesome business and writing courses. When she is not busy blogging for them, she can be found helping small business owners revamp their blog content at Writing Happiness.

Sun Tzu and the Art of Strategic Blogging

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Mark Blasini

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As any content creator knows, creating and maintaining a successful, engaging blog is a huge challenge. Bloggers are constantly plagued by the question: “How do I attract more readers and keep them coming back?” The answer to this question may lie in a two thousand year old text on military strategy — The Art of War, by the ancient military general Sun Tzu.

Sun Tzu and the Art of Strategic Blogging

Most people are familiar with Sun Tzu and his principles of deception and strategy. Many leaders, from Napoleon to Patton to top CEO’s in the country, use his wisdom to create successful empires. However, what most people don’t know is that these same principles lend great insights into how to create and maintain a successful blog. These principles make up what I call “strategic blogging.” I list them as follows:

  1. Follow your Way. For Sun Tzu, a strong general inspires his troops by leading them towards a single mission or vision — a spiritual goal that makes the fighting and hardships they must endure meaningful. This vision is what Sun Tzu calls “the Way.” Likewise, as a strategic blogger, you too must have a unique vision for your blog. What is it specifically that you want to accomplish with your readers? Do you want to inspire them? Educate them? Change their thinking or lifestyle? Whatever your vision is, the Way of your blog should always be geared towards helping readers create a better life for themselves.
  2. Know your audience and yourself. Sun Tzu writes: “Know your enemy and yourself and victory will be certain.” As a strategic blogger, you need to know who your audience is, what their needs are, and how you can best serve them. Are you writing for artists? Other bloggers? Entrepreneurs? Marketers? What information are they specifically looking for? What writing style are you strongest at (informative, personal, funny, reflective, etc.)? Find your natural style, find topics that your readers will be interested in, and go blog. Simple, yet direct.
  3. Avoid the strong, attack the weak. Sun Tzu says: “Just as the flow of water avoids high ground and rushes to the lowest point, so on the path to victory avoid the enemy’s strong points and strike where he is weak.” As a blogger, your content should be directed at hitting the audience where they are weakest — their uncertainty. In other words, it’s pointless to try to make someone aware of something that he or she already accepts as true — just as it’s equally pointless to try to convince someone of something he or she is dead against. Your best bet is to focus your message on what your audience is uncertain or neutral about.
    For example, let’s say you’re an environmentalist blogger and you want to blog about different ways and reasons for going green. While most people agree that going green is good for the environment, they aren’t willing to disrupt their lives in order to do so. So providing information from the standpoint of how going green will “save” the environment will most likely not be effective. Instead, you must strike where people are weak: their self-interest. Most people know that going green is good, but what they don’t know is how going green will benefit them. Fortunately, going green is more a matter not of what you do, but of what you don’t do, or stop doing. The focus of the blog, then, could be showing people ways in which eliminating pollution-creating behavior (e.g. using the car, running the electricity, etc.) actually saves them money. This fulfills your goal of educating people while giving your audience a clear, strong benefit.
  4. Use deception. Let’s face it: your goals and your audience’s goals, at some point, diverge. Your audience wants to be either educated or entertained. You want more subscribers (or e-book sales, or speaking opportunities, etc.). Thus, in order to achieve your goals, you have to practice deception. As Sun Tzu tells us, “Deception is the Way of warfare.” Deception doesn’t mean “lying.” As a blogger, you should always be honest with your followers. This is how you build trust, rapport, and long-term relationships. Deception simply means hiding your objectives in such a way that you lure your target to help you achieve them.
    For example, in the content marketing world, we use the 80/20 rule when it comes to providing content vs. selling: you should do 80% content, 20% selling. This means that only after you have provided valuable content should you provide a message concerning how your audience, by subscribing/purchasing/contacting, can better be helped. At the end of relevant posts, you should include a italicized message stating how you can help your audience further: “Want to know better ways to save money by going green? Purchase my new e-book…” Remember, though: only sell if you’ve provided valuable content. Your content is what is going to lure your audience — not your selling.

While these principles are by no means the end-all, be-all of strategic blogging, if you follow them consistently, I promise you will achieve incredible results. Now go out and establish your blogging empire!

Author’s Bio:
Mark Blasini writes about music, art, and creativity at www.DarkLion.com. He is the author of the free e-book Light the Fire: Six Simple Principles for Creating Art That Inspires, downloadable if you subscribe to his site. You can find him on Twitter as @TheProfMusic.

Blog Branding versus Blog Marketing

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Blogging is all about being personal.

It may sound too simple that anyone will understand it not more than a personal online diary. Hence, let me just explain a little bit for you to understand from another perspective.

I may not be the expert to give you an educational answer about branding and marketing. But in my opinion, if anyone can understand the difference between branding and marketing, that person will definitely understand the true meaning of being personal.

Both marketing and branding have different goals. Let me just explain to you in my own understanding after working for a while in the society.

What is blog marketing?

Marketing aims to effect an eventual sales transaction. Hence, it gives the person an instant gratification as he/she tries to tell the world who he or she is. It is very similar to a person who is devoting himself/herself to be extremely sales-driven. He or she will go out there to tell the world through Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, LinkedIn or any other social media that he/she can reach.

What is blog branding?

Branding aims to communicate by means of “impressing” what this blogger stands for. It is not so much about looking out for maximum exposure. But rather, it leaves an impression to anyone who notices him/her.

This blogger will usually focus a lot on building quality contents, beautifying his or her blog design, and making sure that everybody perceives him/her as who he or she really “is.” Isn’t blog branding about “being personal”?

Marketing versus branding

Some experts believe that perception is everything. Branding — which shapes perception — leads everything!

Some believe that marketing is the key to business viability, especially when it involves product development, market development, channel development, sales force management, etc. Thus, it is more directly impacting revenue.

Both marketing and branding aim to affect higher profitability. In general, marketing has a wider effect but lesser depth (volume, sales, etc). Branding on the other hand usually tries to enable clients to pay a “premium.”

Mix and match your marketing and branding

Both are really important in its own way. While marketing is pretty straight-forward and is more like a how-to strategy, I wish to emphasize on this phrase “blogging is all about being personal.”

Author’s Bio: This post was written by Charles. He has been an Internet reviewer since June 2007. He pours his passion for Internet marketing and Internet branding into his Twitter account actively at @charleslau.

5 Simple Ways to Deliver Irresistible Content and Lower Your Bounce Rate

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Be Irresisible!

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If you’ve been developing a business online in the last few years, you’ve probably heard statics regarding the brief amount of time we have to get and keep the attention of first-time visitors. What was almost 20 seconds in 2005 now is being described as something between 8 seconds and 10.

Getting folks to arrive is the first step, of course. In that, an attention-grabbing, killer headline is everything.


Click image to access complete podcast at The Onion.

Whether it is something completely original and novel, ultra-specific and geared towards a niche, or just incredibly compelling, good headlines on the Web always win.

They always win, except when they don’t.

If a headline delivers traffic, but the traffic immediately bounces away, can you say the headline wins?

A killer headline will get traffic, but what keeps folks reading?
We have to deliver great content to give that headline legs or that traffic will bounce away.

5 Ways to Deliver Irresistible Content and Lower Your Bounce Rate

Strong businesses are built on strong relationships. What transforms a headline clicker into someone who hangs around? What turns first-time visitors into people who want to stick around? What makes them stay and already thinking about their return? Here are five things you can do to make it more likely they get what they came for.

Five Ways to Deliver to the Clickers Who Follow a Headline to Your Blog …

  1. Deliver content that your headline promises.
  2. Deliver content in short paragraphs using subheads surrounded by lots of white space so that people have room to think and breathe. Add a picture that supports the text and illustrates the content. First impressions count.
  3. Deliver it without making folks jump over ads or through hoops to get to the prize that the headline promises. Decide whether you want me to stay … there are other ways to get me to buy.
  4. Deliver it by responding to the people who take time to comment.
  5. Deliver it by making it easy to find more of what brought people to your site.

It’s not the visitor who never came that’s a loss. It’s the visitor who comes to find that we’re not what he or she thought. A great headline followed by something less doesn’t win. It doesn’t even finish.

The most important thing is deliver — do what we say we’re going to do.


Click image to see complete article from The Onion.

If the content you deliver is easy to access, faster to enjoy or employ, and adds value and meaning to a visitor’s life, you can bet that visitors will be glad they came and ready to come back. Easier, faster, more meaningful is irresistible. That’s a fact.

Great headline, lame blog post — who wants to deal with that? You’ve been there. What’s your response when you end up on one of those?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Construct Your Post or Presentation Like a Three-Course Meal

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How to blog series

The Key is Know What You Want to Say

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Recently someone told me that he’s been trying to write a a blog post for almost a week now and every time he tired he ended deleting it.

“Everything I write sounds like a valley girl talking to alien first grader. Nothing makes sense. It’s all over the place.”

“What is it that you want to say?”

He started at me and then admitted, “I don’t know.”

It’s hard to write clearly if you don’t know what you want to say.

Try constructing an idea like a three-course meal.

Construct Your Post or Presentation Like a Three-Course Meal

If you think of an article or a presentation as a fine meal, the middle is the main course. That’s where the fine dining is. It’s the centerpiece. The entree takes the longest time and the most care. The executive chef is the one who plans it and prepares it. Put your best effort there–where it counts.

So decide what you’ll be serving as the key part of the meal first thing.

  • Is it something you’ve just learned, observed, or read about that’s set you thinking?
  • Is it a pattern of behavior that keeps appearing that you want highlight and encourage or discourage?
  • Could it be your view about an event you’re about to be attending?
  • Have noticed something in another industry that seems to apply to the one that you work in?
  • Have you found a solution to a common problem or a problem with a commonly promoted solution?

Gather the thoughts and proofs that will make the message of your post or presentation delicious to take in. Once you’ve got that underway, you can choose the appetizer and the dessert.

Maybe you’ll whet the audience’s appetite with a story that brings them to the problem you’re solving or a question that you’ll answer fully in a very satisfying ending. Take the time to see how the beginning and end compliment each other to tie all together.

In this manner …

  • Course 1: Give readers a taste of your topic. This gives you a chance to capture their attention and focus their minds on your ideas. You can draw them in and prepare them for what you are about to say. By starting in the middle you already know what that is. So writing this part is much easier.
  • Course 2: Serve up your ideas with facts and details to support them. By starting in the middle, you can spend your time polishing the finer points and placing your brand in the best light for readers to discover its value on their own.
  • Course 3: Leave your audience satisfied with tidbits of why your ideas are important to them or give them reason to reflect back on what you said. Show that you fulfilled your promise. Let your audience savor the fact that your article was a service to them, and they’ll understand why coming back to see you is a good idea.

There’s added value in presenting your information as a three-course article. Starting in the middle establishes a clear structure that’s easy to follow. It frees your audience to concentrate on the information that reveals your story and shows your expertise.

How do you structure your blog posts and your presentations?

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!