Content Mastery Guide

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Why Enthusiastic Business Bloggers Lose Steam

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© BillionPhotos.com - Fotolia.com
© BillionPhotos.com – Fotolia.com

I love enthusiastic bloggers. They know they have knowledge to share, an inspiring story to tell, and passion to tap. They’ve discovered how easy and quick it can be to broadcast their new thoughts to the world via the blog on their business website.

That’s why it’s sad when I see them fall prey to these common missteps, which limit whether their blog posts will ever be read or shared. Feeling bewildered and ignored, I know that even the most spirited bloggers can quickly lose steam and stop posting.

If this sounds like your experience with business blogging, ask yourself these five questions now so you can avoid or bounce back from a blogging disappointment.

Are you being too cool?

There are a lot of interesting design elements you can apply to a website or blog today. Yet just because you can do something, doesn’t mean that you necessarily should. As cool as something may look to you, it might be detracting from delivering your message to its reader.

Watch for:

See: Is Your Blog Too Cool to Read?

Are you being too serious?

It’s tempting for business bloggers to take themselves way too seriously, sacrificing sleep, peace of mind, or other self-care to adhere to a rigid posting schedule.

While consistency is definitely a crucial ingredient of a successful blogging strategy, and one you should plan for, it is not a matter of life or death.

Watch for: The temptation to apologize and over-explain if a post is late or if you miss a week or two in between posts.

See: Five Things Not to Do When Restarting Your Blog.

Are you being too prideful?

Me, me, me, me, me, me, me. This is a familiar tune to many business bloggers, enamoured with the concept of chronicling their journey in life and business. Yet a business blog is not a diary, and shouldn’t be treated as one.

Other bloggers misuse this platform as simply another sales channel where they describe and promote their various products and services, announce sales and special events, or constantly write about how prospective customers could benefit from hiring them.

Blogging is a form of content marketing – the practice of sharing helpful information as a way of building relationships, demonstrating your expertise, and expressing your commitment to help, inspire, educate and entertain your readers.

Unlike the efforts of the early “web log” pioneers, and today’s passion bloggers and thought leaders, your business blog is not about you.

A third way business bloggers can be prideful is to assume a prior relationship with every reader, and expect them to be able to jump into the middle of a conversation without any context.

This is especially common once you’ve built up a readership and have confirmation that some readers are coming back.

Watch for: Can a reader always answer “What’s in it for me?” in your blog posts? Is what you’ve written more for them or for you?

See: What is Business Blogging?

Are you being too humble?

On the flip side, you may lack the confidence to really put yourself out there and share your work across a wider platform. Or you may simply lack the knowledge of how to do that effectively.

Watch for:

  • Your blog post byline is blank or says “Posted by admin.”
  • You’re not announcing or promoting your blog posts, expecting readers to check your site to see when something is new.
  • You don’t reply to or acknowledge people who share your posts on social media.

See: 10 Reasons to Share Your Post on Social Media.

Are you being too hasty?

While blogging is a quick and relatively simple way to broadcast your thoughts, there is a big difference between your initial draft and the polished marketing tool it can become.

Before rushing to hit that Publish button, take time to check all the boxes of effective publishing and promotion.

Watch for:

See: How to Streamline Your Blog Post Publishing and Promotion Tasks.

When you’re bubbling over with enthusiasm, it is possible to have too much of a good thing. If you’re a business blogger who’s jumped in with both feet, welcome to the blogosphere! Please don’t let these mistakes chase you away.

P.S. If you liked this post, you might enjoy the Blogging Tips newsletter, delivered weekly to your inbox! Sign up here.

How Blogging Gets Real Results for Your Business

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© evencake - Fotolia.com
© evencake – Fotolia.com

Time and money are both precious commodities in business. As much as I talk about the benefits of blogging, I know people are always looking for concrete evidence that blogging is worth the effort.

Janet Barclay recently shared a helpful explanation of the distinct ways blogging will grow your business, and I asked her to expand on her ideas here. Janet and I met online in 2012, and in person in 2013 at WordCamp Toronto. She is the owner of Organized Assistant®, where she specializes in helping professional organizers with their business blogging.

Thanks for joining us, Janet! In your presentation for WordCamp Hamilton 2015 called “How to Write Blog Posts that Get Results,” you explained that blogging results fall into three categories:

Authority

Personal branding
Recognition
Expert status
Community building

Numbers

Website traffic
Email subscribers
RSS subscribers
Social media followers

Dollars and Cents

Product sales
Affiliate income
Client acquisition
Donations

Can you explain how these three areas work together to grow a business?

It’s improbable that someone will read one of your blog posts and immediately decide to do business with you. Even though your overall goal is to generate income, you first need to earn your reader’s trust by demonstrating your expertise. As you become recognized, you’ll grow your personal brand, build your online community, and increase the number of people who are visiting your website and reading your blog – and that will ultimately lead to increased sales.

Where do you see businesses putting most of their attention?

Many business bloggers make the mistake of focusing on getting the sale. They’ll write a very informative blog post, then close it off by asking the reader to buy something or contact them directly. That can be very off-putting – not unlike a pushy salesperson who follows you around the store and comments on everything you look at.

Furthermore, some people refuse to share posts that include that type of call to action, so you might actually miss a chance to reach potential readers by doing this.

Where do you recommend businesses put their attention?

Always think about whom you want to reach and what they need and want to read about. Write as if you were speaking directly to your ideal client. It’s unlikely that every post you write will appeal to everyone who reads your blog, and if you try to be too generic, you’ll find that instead of attracting a wider audience, you won’t resonate with anyone.

How do you recommend businesses measure each of these areas, and how often?

For authority you can look at number and quality of comments, or number of social shares, including retweets, Likes, Plus Ones and so on. For numbers you can look at new subscribers and followers. For dollars and cents you can look at actual sales.

You’re not necessarily going to know which of those things happened as a result of your blog post, but if you put “join our mailing list” as a call to action in a post and then there’s a sudden increase in new subscribers, that’s a pretty good indicator.

Google Analytics provides a wealth of information about the people who are visiting your website – not just as a whole, but individual pages and blog posts as well. So, if your goal is to generate traffic via the search engines, you can actually see how many people visited a particular page, the average length of time they spent on the page, and more.

If you have a target number in mind, you can easily see if you’ve reached it. If you’re aiming for an increase over your last blog post, or over this time last year, you can check for that as well. Google even has a Goals feature to help you measure how you’re doing with certain objectives.

Unless you have a full-time marketing team, it’s not practical to keep tabs on the performance of each and every blog post. Setting and tracking goals is most useful for posts that are connected to a short-term marketing campaign, such as promoting an upcoming webinar. Monthly monitoring is usually sufficient.

What do you think is the biggest misunderstanding when it comes to how blogging gets real business results?

Many people underestimate how the amount of time it takes to grow an audience. According to HubSpot, you’re not likely to see a lot of activity for the first six months.

Others are unprepared for the time and effort involved. You can’t just publish a few random posts and expect the phone to start ringing.

For example, if you’re a professional organizer and you want to attract consumers who need help organizing their closets, you won’t get far with a general post about closet organization. Instead, write multiple posts about organizing closets for women, men, children, teens, seniors, and so on.

Review various closet organizing products, and suggest alternatives for those with smaller budgets. Demonstrate that you know your subject matter inside out and backwards. And have a plan. Always have a plan.

Thanks so much to Janet Barclay for sharing these insights and suggestions. You can learn more about Janet on her website at http://organizedassistant.com.

P.S. As Janet reminds us, it’s important for business bloggers to have a plan. For help creating yours, download the free Four-Step Business Blogging Plan worksheet.

P.S.S. If you liked this post, you might enjoy the Blogging Tips newsletter, delivered weekly to your inbox! Sign up here.

Top 10 Blogging Tips for Professional Services

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© michaeljung - Fotolia.com
© michaeljung – Fotolia.com

When a prospective client is looking for the professional services you provide, they may not be ready to talk to you yet. Instead, they may browse your website to find out more about you.

While the other sections of your website can show that person who you are and what you do, your blog shows them just how much you know.

Reading your blog gives clients a non-threatening way to interview you at a distance. If they like what they see, it will give them the confidence to contact you directly and take the next step.

Here are 10 blogging tips for attracting new clients for your professional service business:

  1. Plan first. A blogging plan is the best way to build confidence in your ability as a blogger, and in blogging’s effectiveness to grow your business. Outline why you’re blogging, your goals, and how you will achieve them. Detail when and how you will write, polish, publish and promote your posts, and define your blog’s key categories.
  2. Commit to a set of core topics. Hone in on 5-7 themes that intersect between your areas of expertise and the interests and concerns of your readers and prospective customers. Do not publish anything that doesn’t fit precisely into one of those categories. (You can add categories later, but think carefully first.) Blog categories focus your efforts and make it easier for both you and the reader to return week after week, knowing exactly what you’re doing there.
  3. Tap into a team. If a topic is outside your immediate scope, but important to your audience, you can still include that category. Simply create a list of people you can invite to write a guest post or be interviewed. Consider partnering with other professionals to share your resources. Decide who can best help you plan, produce and promote your blog posts.
  4. Ask and listen. You don’t have to guess about the topics your target audience is interested in, you can ask them! From a formal questionnaire to a casual question in passing, find out what’s on their minds in relation to your business. You can also listen in the background by searching for key phrases on social media platforms and reading comments and questions about your topics.
  5. Be a beginner. You’re an expert. That’s why people hire you. Yet it took years for you to build up your knowledge base and the collection of experiences you draw on every day to help your clients. Be sure your writing is accessible to someone who is brand new to your topic and your industry. Don’t use jargon or acronyms, or if you do, include a clear explanation that any novice can understand. Constantly put yourself in the shoes of a beginner and review what you’ve written from that perspective.
  6. Make your blog posts easy to read. Treat your readers like clients and give them a good experience of being with you. This can mirror the positive way you’ll treat them when you work together. Include plenty of white space on the page, by keeping paragraphs short, using sub-headings and/or lists. Include a compelling title and an eye-catching photo that help your reader connect to the topic on an emotional level.
  7. Proofread and pause. Walk away from your writing for a few minutes (at least) or a few days (ideally). You’ll be amazed at how many improvements you’ll find by giving yourself this space. Read your post out loud to catch errors your brain will skim over when you’re reading onscreen.
  8. Promote and repurpose your posts. As much as you’d like to think people are visiting your blog every morning to see what’s new, that’s highly unlikely. If you want them to see a new post, you must let them know it’s there. Use email newsletters (manual or RSS, social media updates, your email signature, and individual messages to people who would benefit the most. Schedule additional social media messages for the future. You never know when someone new will come along who needs to hear the exact message you just wrote. When you write posts on related topics (which you will, since you’re following my suggestion in #2), link back to this post to keep it alive.
  9. Monitor your responses and results. Janet Barclay of Organized Assistant® says there are three ways blogging gets business results: authority (i.e., recognition as an expert in your field), numbers (email subscribers, website traffic, social media followers, etc.) and dollars and cents (new clients, product sales). Be clear about the results you’re looking for, so you can track what’s working well and keep doing it.
  10. Keep blogging. Blogging only works if you do it consistently. While blog posts can and will draw new readers and results for years, when you stop blogging or blog only sporadically, it can raise questions about your professionalism and dependability. No one is perfect, myself included, so if you DO fall off the wagon, just jump back on as soon as you can.

If your business offers a professional service, blogging can tell prospective clients a lot about you. They will see how much you know, how generous you are with that knowledge, and how skilled you are at using your knowledge to help people just like them.

Use these 10 guidelines to make the most of this powerful marketing opportunity that is accessible 24/7 from your website, not to mention from any device connected to the internet.

P.S. If you liked this post, you might enjoy the Blogging Tips newsletter, delivered weekly to your inbox! Sign up here.

How Blogging Can Be Like a Day at the Spa

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© lenetsnikolai - Fotolia.com
© lenetsnikolai – Fotolia.com

To celebrate our summer birthdays (mine is August 11th if you want to send a card), last weekend my mother, sister and I spent the day together at a spa. We used to see a movie, but last year we upgraded and declared this as our new annual tradition.

If blogging still intimidates you, or feels like a beast demanding to be fed, use these short summer months as an opportunity to lighten your approach and even find some joy in the process.

Here are three ways that blogging can be like a day at the spa:

  1. The planning is one of the best parts.

A 2010 research study revealed that planning and anticipating a vacation can be just as enjoyable – if not more – than the trip itself. I know I had been looking forward to the day since last summer, and even though I wasn’t feeling my best, I still had a wonderful time that was cumulative through all those months of planning.

Planning your business blogging focuses both you and your blog posts, gives you motivation and confidence to keep up with your blogging, and allows you to consistently deliver the kind of helpful content that will attract people to your business.

  1. The options are endless.

There were so many tempting spa services to choose from, I think I was more relaxed after just reading their descriptions.

On your business blog, you may think you have to write a detailed, wordy article every week because that’s what some marketing gurus advise, but you don’t.

Luckily, there are many different styles of blog posts, and you can mix and match them to find a balance that’s easiest for you and provides an interesting variety for your readers.

  1. It’s even better with others.

I used to take regular spa days as vacations, and while I always felt relaxed and rejuvenated, sharing the experience with my loved ones definitely amplified my enjoyment.

Your business blog can be a team effort, taking some of the work off your shoulders and creating more value for your audience. Your blogging team may include:

  • Guest contributors – related experts in your industry, vendors, or customers with interesting stories
  • Regular bloggers – staff members, contractors, or other partners can have their own weekly or monthly column about their particular area of expertise
  • People who assist you with writing, editing, and publishing and promotion

I know that blogging may still feel more like a trip to the dentist than a trip to the spa, but I hope you’ll give some of these ideas a chance. After all, your customers are already online, waiting to discover your wisdom!

P.S. If you liked this post, you might enjoy the Blogging Tips newsletter, delivered weekly to your inbox! Sign up here.

6 Ways Blogging Helps Customers Choose Your Service

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© Sergey Nivens - Fotolia.com
© Sergey Nivens – Fotolia.com

How do you choose service providers for your business?

You may start with a Google search. You’ll likely ask friends, family and trusted colleagues for referrals. You may also scroll through your Rolodex of contacts and connections, including the things they’ve posted or shared on social media.

The ideal scenario is when the same name pops up in several of these places – definitely a sign to move forward. Next you’ll probably visit the company’s website to get a sense of who they are and what they offer.

Now what if a business owner is looking for your professional service, whether that’s coaching, consulting, marketing, design, website development, training accounting or bookkeeping? What will they find when they arrive at your website?

If there is a blog (and you’ve been posting consistently), they’ll find evidence of your expertise, experience and professionalism, and your genuine desire to help and connect.

Here are six ways that a blog helps customers choose your professional service:

  1. Boosts their confidence in you. When you write helpful blog posts that share information, tips and guidance about their most pressing concerns, your prospective customers see that you know your stuff. When you blog and post regularly on social media, they see that you’re a reliable and dedicated professional.
  2. Boosts their confidence in themselves. When people try out the tips and suggestions in your blog posts and achieve some success, they feel good! And you made them feel that way. When it’s time to recruit some professional assistance, they’ll feel good about choosing you as that expert.
  3. Helps them get to know you. There may be other people who do what you do, but no one who does it exactly the same way. You have a unique combination of experience and expertise. When you bring both into your writing, along with your one-of-a-kind personality, you will attract the people who are perfectly suited to you. And just as importantly, you will repel the people who aren’t a good fit.
  4. Helps you get to know them. As you grow your audience of readers – including current and prospective customers, referral sources, friends and fans – you can learn from their responses (and just as much from their lack of response). If people open, like, share, and respond to what you’ve posted, you’re on the right track and you can keep doing what you’re doing. If not, that’s an invitation to do some blog planning.
  5. Gives a sample of your services. By writing about your prospective customers’ problems and suggesting solutions, you’re demonstrating some of the ways you can help. Readers will see firsthand the wealth of knowledge that you bring to the table.
  6. Gives a sample of your service. When you treat readers as customers, you can show them that you’re quick to respond to feedback and questions, you care about the quality of your work, and that you’re consistent with your follow through.

In a crowded marketplace, blogging can show prospective customers exactly what you know, who you are, and how you care.

P.S. If you liked this post, you might enjoy the Blogging Tips newsletter, delivered weekly to your inbox! Sign up here.