Blog to your business success

I have been interested in setting up clients with blog sites for a few years now and I know they really help drive business to your website. Any way you can continue to let your potential clients know how knowledgeable you are on your profession is a bonus. Blogs also help bring your customers into the discussion and help them learn about what they are looking for before they contact you because you've put out the suggestions that they have been looking for. Anything that sparks creativity will expand the awareness around your business.

So today I received an email on blogging with an article called, "Build Your Online Blog And Get More Traffic" by Chery Schmidt for Healthy Wealthy -n Wise 

In Chery's article she went into valuable points for creating a blog and here is part of what she said:

"Blogging is a long term solution for any online entrepreneur looking to get results, more exposure and to get more traffic for your online business. If you start implementing the techniques I am sharing with you here, it will help launch your career.

The best part about having a blog is that you get to actually target the people that you want to work with. So you need to hone in on what you want to do with your blog. You want to think about how you are going to get people coming back to your blog on a regular basis. Don't try to be all things to all people. Be specific on who you want to work with.

Blogging To Get Leads

This will be your lead generating mechanism. You will want to find something to giveaway to your visitors to capture their contact information. Make this something that your target audience can not live without, give away the farm if that is what it takes. If you are serious abut making any money online you have to come up with something to giveaway for free. Find something that they really need, perhaps a step by step routine, an mp3, a video, entice them with an interview, and come up with something that gives massive value. Do whatever it takes to get their information.

You need to entice them to give you their contact information. Some people only ask for a name and e-mail, but I would also make it optional to give you their phone number. It has been my experience that people who give you their phone number are more serious and actually want a call from you to get more information. So don't forget to follow up and call them if they do give you a number.

You will have people who visit your site and don't opt in and this is OK, but the main reason you have a blog is to get leads. Now I have seen opt in forms where people say sign up to receive e-mail tips or get on my mailing list. People get way too many e-mails as it is, so just let them know what is in it for them. Don't go telling them they will be getting on your mailing list."

Key points I noted were, you get to target your audience, get leads, get more contact information, more serious clients inquire about your services, gives people the opportunity to read your information without joining another emailing list when they already have enough information coming their way. So these are all valuable to creating and seeding a broader base of clients for your business. The only draw back is finding the time to blog and it's a good practice to set aside that time when you can. Either once a week or a month, the more you can put out information the better. If you can find time once a day and have valuable information to share you'll get even better results from search engines that are seeing that kind of activity on your site too.

So blogging can be fun and interactive as well when your viewers all of the sudden become your best clients and they benefit from your skills as well as your knowledge of what you are providing for their benefit. At Freelock we are driven by helping our clients build there websites around content and managing that content. Setting up a blog area on your websites is a great place to capture what your customers are looking for and communicate with them about how you can help them meet their needs.

When you blog make sure to think about what your target audience goals may be and then write about it so that they will know you are out there and ready to serve their needs. Keep developing something that they need and want to use for their services or product and watch them come to you for to help them get it done.

Peter McKinnon
Account Manager at Freelock