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How to Win Business with your Blog – Part 9: The Best Resources For Blogging

Posted by

Ian Brodie on August 17th, 2011.

Tools In my series of articles on How to Win Business with your Blog you'll have seen just how powerful a blog can be in winning you clients. And you've learned some of the key strategies to make blogging work for you.

But there's often a big gap between information, ideas, good intentions – and actual implementation.

Often it's tricky to know where to start, and you may be worried about running down a dead end or just wasting your time.

So here are my recommendations on key resources to help get you up and running quickly.

Getting Your Blog Up and Running

Firstly, I recommend that rather than hosting your blog on a free platform like blogger.com or wordpress.com, you host it on your own domain. It's not that tricky, and it means that the assets you build (for example, the links in to your site) are yours, rather than helping out the blogging platform. And you're not subject to the whims and policy changes of the platform providers.

To do this, you'll need to register a domain (or use one you already have – such as running it at www.mysite.com/blog) and then get hosting for the domain.

For domain registration I personally use godaddy.com as my primary registrar. They're easy to use with good customer support. And because they're big, no matter what you're trying to do (for example configure google apps) there'll be instructions on how to do it on godaddy.

My primary sites (including this one of course) are hosted on Lightningbase for high performance at great value. I can thoroughly recommend them. I also host other sites on Siteground which is a good, low cost alternative.

You can boost the performance of any site using a content delivery network. Cloudflare is a free one I use. It's a bit technical to set up but worth it.

Without question, the platform I'd recommend for your blog (and your website generally) is WordPress.

Sure, there are other free platforms like Drupal and Joomla. And other proprietary systems to run your blog.

But WordPress works. It's got by far the most available themes (to make your site look good) and plugins (to give it functionality like doing backups, adding social media icons, optimising the site for search engines, etc.). And almost everything is free.

It's well supported by website hosting companies, so you can install it and have it running with one press of a button.

And there's no shortage of people who can help you – either with advice, or to do the whole thing for you.

So head over to www.wordpress.org to check it out.

Themes and Plugins for WordPress

Your site needs to look professional – and the best basis for that it to tweak a WordPress premium theme.

On ianbrodie.com I use the Expert Marketer theme from Themeforest.

Studiopress is the home of some very high quality WordPress premium themes – many designed specifically as showcase sites for consultants and freelancers. My other favorites are the Executive Theme, Enterprise Theme, Agency Theme and Freelance Theme.

Optimizepress is the theme I use to run my membership sites. It's specially pre-configured to handle sales pages, “squeeze pages”, product launches and membership sites. Thoroughly recommended – this theme has saved my literally days of configuration.

For high converting landing pages on my own site where I don't want to send people to a different site, I use LeadPages. It's such a huge timesaver – you just select the basic template for optin forms or webinar registrations or sales pages, make a few adjustments to text and images and you've got a high converting page up and running in less than 5-10 minutes.

For optin forms on your normal blog pages and posts, I recommend Thrive leads. It has a “what you see is what you get” editor and templates that lets you create great looking optin forms for your sidebar, after blog posts etc.

If you've got a premium theme it probably has built in search engine optimisation features. But if not, you'll need the All in One SEO Plugin or Yoast's SEO plugin. I also recommend W3 Total Cache to boost the performance of your site. For all my sites I use Contact Form 7 as a way of creating quick, easy contact forms for people to get in touch with me.

I also use Tweetily to randomly tweet out links to my old blog posts.

For my social sharing icons I use the Social Warfare plugin – it's one of the few that properly counts Tweets these days.

For my podcasts I use the Blubrry Powerpress plugin. And I use Akismet to trap spam comments.

Most important of all: you need to take regular backups of your site in case of problems. There's a free database backup plugin for wordpress. This backs up your blog posts and pages. Many web hosting companies – especially the premium ones like Siteground – have a backup solution included in the hosting.

Landing Pages

For Landing pages I use Thrive Architect. Thrive Architect is very marketing focused with lots of options for optin forms, testimonials, etc. And it has some great “out of the box” templates you can reuse.

Email Marketing

I highlighted the importance of Email Marketing for nurturing relationships with potential clients.

Personally, I use Active Campaign. It provides advanced email marketing with excellent integration with CRM systems, accounting systems and a whole host of others. And unlike Infusionsoft or Ontraport it starts off at the same pricing level as simple systems like Aweber or Mailchimp.

You can read my review of Active Campaign here.

For more basic options if you don't need the advanced automation, I recommend GetResponse.

That's it – these tools and services should be really helpfully to you. But most important of all – just get going. You'll learn as you go along.

Tom Peters recently said “No single thing in the last 15 years has been as important to my professional life as blogging…and it's the best damn marketing tool I've ever had by an order of magnitude”.

'nuff said.

* Some of these links are affiliate links. In other words, if you eventually sign up and buy these products via my link I'll get a commission. This has in no way influenced my recommendation. I use all these products myself as my primary tools (as you can see from the site and my emails).

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How To Win Business With Your Blog – Part 8: Where I Get My Traffic From

Posted by

Ian Brodie on July 30th, 2011.

(Please note this article was written in 2011 – my traffic sources change and right now the #1 source of traffic for me is from my regular emails. At other times it has been from paid advertising).

Most articles about winning business online start with how to get traffic – but I've left it until last.

And the reason is that so should you.

There's no point in getting a ton of traffic to your site if none of it turns into subscribers or clients. You first need to get your content right to get visitors engaged and your conversion right to get clients.

Once you're confident that the traffic you get will turn into something useful, then you can start ramping it up.

Sources of Traffic

There are a zillion sources of traffic for your blog. I can't hope to possibly do justice to all of them. So instead, I'm going to tell you where I get my traffic from (with a few additional recommendations).

Overall, I get roughly 10,000 unique visitors per month.

My #1 Traffic Source: Google

I get 52% of my traffic from search engines – 48% of it from google.

For me, search engine traffic is critical. Not just because there's so much of it – but because the traffic is from people searching for something. And if they find my site, it means that most of the time, they're searching for something I can help with.

There are really two main sorts of searches I get. There are what I call “problem” searches. This is where visitors (hopefully potential clients) are in the early stages of trying to address an issue and have come searching about the issue itself.

So the search could be something like “how to get more clients”, or “how to become a trusted advisor”.

The second type are “solution searches”. Where the visitor already has an idea of what they need – so they're searching for that. Things like “sales training” or “marketing consultant”.

Solution searches are from people who are closer to buying – so theoretically they're the best. The trouble is, they haven't built a relationship with me yet and I've got a short space of time to build up the trust and credibility needed for them to feel confident hiring me.

Problem searches are a longer sales cycle. But the advantage is that if they keep coming back to my site, or subscribe to my newsletter, then by the time they've figured out what they need, they'll already know and trust me (and my blog may have influenced what they decide they need).

Early on, I figured out what the important problem and solution searches would be for my services and I invested heavily in my own education on search engine optimisation (SEO) to make sure I knew how to make sure I ranked at the top of google for those phrases.

A few years later and it's paid off.

I thoroughly recommend you make a similar investment. Not in the technical details (unless you really want to). But in learning the key principles so you can make sure anyone who does SEO work for you is doing it right.

I'll be writing more on this topic soon.

My #2 Traffic Source: Direct visits

25% of my traffic is direct. These are visitors who've come to my site directly without clicking on a link on an earlier website or a search engine.

So they've either bookmarked my site and are coming back, or they're on my email newsletter list and are clicking on a link in their email program.

These are crucial visitors for me. They're my regular subscribers and repeat visitors. The people most likely to become clients.

But I can't directly control how much of this traffic I get. It's a function of how many people come from other sources and how well I do in converting them into subscribers/repeat visitors.

My #3 Traffic Source: Social media

11% of my traffic comes from social media: 6% from Twitter, 3% from Facebook, 2% from Linkedin.

It's not a ton of traffic – but it's over 1,000 unique visitors so it's worth having.

I don't do a lot on social media. A few minutes every day on each of the big sites.

But I have a big Twitter following and I've implemented quite a bit of automation to make me more productive. I tweet each of my new blog posts a couple of times. I also have a plugin installed called “Tweet Old Posts” which randomly tweets one of my old blog posts every few hours – that doubled my twitter traffic when I installed it.

Most of my Facebook and Linked traffic comes from the “like buttons” I've got on the blog (via a plugin called Digg Digg). Readers click the like button for their preferred network and their followers, contacts and fans see a link to my blog posts.

Linkedin is particularly interesting. Despite getting less traffic than the other social media sites, I get over 5 times the sign-up rate from Linkedin traffic as from Facebook or Twitter. I assume because there's just a greater number of relevant people connected to me and my contacts on Linkedin.

Although none of the social media sites were so big when I started blogging nearly 4 years ago, I would definitely recommend it for people starting out.

I've helped a few people get their blogs up and running recently, and social media has been a big help.

It can take a long time to get a decent ranking in google for your key search terms – but with social media you can be up and running much quicker and generating relevant traffic. Especially if you have a pre-established network.

The downside is that you have to keep working at it.

With SEO, one you've worked to get a good ranking you have to put in much less effort to maintain it. With social media, you have to keep working just as hard forever.

The remainder: Other referring websites

The remaining 12% of traffic comes from people clicking links from other people's websites. This may be links from an article directory, a blogroll on another blog, or a specific blog post or article which mentions my site.

Exactly which sites I get this remaining traffic from changes each month – as does the “quality” of the click.

I get particularly high newsletter signup rates if I write a guest article for someone else's site or blog, or I'm interviewed by them or otherwise mentioned favourably. This is obviously particularly true if the other site is closely related to mine.

For example, a year or so ago, one of my articles on referrals was reprinted on the site of veteran sales trainer and motivational speaker Zig Ziglar.

I got a flood of traffic, and over 30% of the visitors subscribed to my newsletter.

I get subscription rates of 10%+ for other articles I've written. Whereas with less directly related links, there are often no subscribers or a very low percentage.

Joint Venture Traffic

I ought to say a few words about what's called Joint Venture Traffic.

A few blogs have managed to get huge amounts of traffic by being recommended in the email newsletters of other highly successful bloggers or internet marketers.

This is very similar to the quality of traffic you can get from links from your own articles or strong recommendations on other sites. But if the other blogger/marketer has a big following, the traffic and the quality can be even higher.

However, there's almost always a commercial relationship in this case. The new blogger may be a client or mentee of the other marketer. Or they may be sending traffic for a cut (usually at least 50%) of the revenues from a product the blogger is trying to sell.

For that reason, unless you're already well connected or have a proven product to sell, you're unlikely to get much joint venture traffic.

In fact it's worth being a little wary of so-called experts who talk about the rapid results they've got – when in fact they're really due to someone else sending them a ton of traffic. A strategy that you're unlikely to be able to reproduce yourself.

Good stuff if you can though.

Recommendations

So, based on my experiences, what do I recommend you do to get traffic?

As soon as you can, identify your problem and solution keywords and invest in search engine optimisation to drive traffic from google. It'll take a while to pay off though.
In the short term, use social media to get relevant visitors to your site. Tweet your new blog posts and share them on Linkedin and Facebook. Make sure you have prominent social sharing buttons on your site. If you're in the professions – pay particular attention to Linkedin. Build up your presence and contribution to relevant groups and occasionally link to some of your articles.
Get traffic (and help your SEO) by offering guest articles (sometimes even a minor rewrite of an existing article will do) to other sites in similar fields to yours.

Above all, keep putting out quality content. Eventually your initial small following will share your quality material with others and it will grow.

In the final article in this series I share some of the best resources to get you started blogging.

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How to Win Business with your Blog – Part 7: From Subscribers to Clients

Posted by

Ian Brodie on July 27th, 2011.

I hope you enjoyed Derek Halpern's critique of my site in the last post on Conversion Optimization. There were lots of tips in there that will absolutely raise your conversion rate – you'll see me implement many of them in the next few weeks.

Of course, converting visitors to subscribers is great – but it's just the first step. Next you need to convert subscribers into clients.

In truth, I feel this is the area where the accumulated wisdom in online marketing for consultants and coaches is at its thinnest. What I'm going to talk about is based primarily on my own experience, because I've not seen an awful lot of codified best practice out there.

Now there are really two ways to to win high paying consulting or coaching clients online from your blog.

The first is to keep turning out really valuable content for your blog and email newsleter. Content that convinces your readers of your credibility and your ability to get things done. Over time, this ongoing drip-feed will eventually tip over many potential clients from uncertainty into deciding that they should be working with you.

Or sometimes, a problem or opportunity will hit them in your area. And if you've done your job, you'll be the first person they call.

For me, this is what provides the core, steady flow of clients into my business. my visitor and subscriber levels are high enough that I can rely on this to fill my pipeline.

The other method of converting subscribers into clients is more proactive.

This involves promoting your services more visibly to your visitors and subscribers.

It could be very subtle. A short PS at the end of your email newsletter. An in-passing mention in a blog post covering a related topic.

Or it could be more overt. An email to subscribers offering a free coaching session, for example.

Personally, I've found that overt promotion works better for specific, time-limited products and programs than it does for your regular services. An email promoting your normal everyday coaching or consulting services falls down on two counts. Firstly, it doesn't offer anything new, any value over and above what they could find on your website services page. It's all about you wanting to sell. Secondly, you risk sending the message that you're struggling – you're not busy and are sending an email out in desperation.

An email sent out to promote a specific new or time-limited product or service is different though.

It's new information. Something readers can't find every day on your site. And often a new product or service launch comes complete with extra free content as a preview.

And because it's new or only available for a limited time, there's a logical reason why you're contacting them to promote it. You can often generate a degree of buzz around the new product or service with other sites or bloggers linking to the new free content associated with it.

Think about having an entry-level service too. For people who've built their relationship with you online without ever meeting you face to face, it's a big step to hire you for a large conslting project or long-term coaching program. So make sure they can take baby-steps to build up their confidence and experience of you. Perhaps a short diagnostic assessment, or a group coaching program or paid membership site they can join.

Once they've built up conficence via your lower-level service, they'll take much less persuading to hire you for the big stuff.

There's a fine line with overt promotion between effective showcasing of your service and your emails becoming seen as purely promotional – and hence likely to end up in the trash folder. Always make sure you're balancing giving value with the promotional side. Overall your emails and blog posts should be 80-90% content, and at most 10-20% promotional.

Having said that, while many in the internet world over-promote – the reverse is usually true of consultants and coaches. Our natural aversion to being seen as salesy means that most of us don't promote our services enough – me included if I was honest. We like to think that our wonderfulness will shine through and clients will drop in our lap without having to actively promote.

That may happen to some. But for most of us it's a surefire route to the poorhouse.

We need to grit our teeth, plan out how we can actively (yet gently) promote our services through our blog and our newsletter – then do it.

The next article looks at the best sources of traffic for a blog.

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Conversion Optimization: Derek Halpern Reviews ianbrodie.com

Posted by

Ian Brodie on July 20th, 2011.

In my last post on Winning Business with your Blog, I talked about the importance of converting website visitors to email subscribers.

Once you have permission to keep in touch, you can build credibility and trust with your potential clients over time. It's THE most powerful way to win clients online for consultants and coaches.

For such an important topic, I thought it was time to wheel in the “big guns”.

And while I like to think I'm pretty hot on online marketing for consultants and coaches – when it comes to conversion optimization, there's one guy all the “superstars” call.

Derek Halpern of Social Triggers has done website reviews for folks like social media legend Chris Brogan and internet marketing superstars David Risley and Pat Flynn. So I thought it was high time he did one for little old me.

In this video, Derek will reveal some of his “underground” strategies for getting people to opt in to your mailing list. I've been doing this stuff for years and thought I'd seen it all, but a couple of the things Derek talked about were completely new for me.

And, of course, the idea is not just to see how my site can be improved – but to apply those ideas to your own site. Both the things I'm doing well, and the areas where I could do better.

Enjoy…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l33dt6-Nh00

If you'd like to get access to Derek's private newsletter where he shares more detailed tips on improving the conversion of your website – then head over to:

http://www.socialtriggers.com/ib

The next article looks at the next step: how to convert subscribers into paying clients.

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How to Win Business with your Blog – part 6: Conversion

Posted by

Ian Brodie on July 20th, 2011.

Conversion: actually turning website visitors into paying clients is where the rubber hits the road.

I'm sure you know the old saying: Turnover is vanity, Profit is sanity.

It's the same thing for websites: Visitors are vanity, Conversions are sanity.

Now, if you're a consultant or coach wanting to convert visitors to clients – you need to think of two stages of conversion.

You see, you're never going to convert a first time visitor into a paying client in one visit. Not for the kind of intangible, high value, high impact services you deliver.

Even if they come to your website desperate for help, they'll need to build up confidence in your capabilities and trust that they can work with you. That's not going to happen instantly – they'll need to interact with you repeatedly.

Unfortunately, the chances are that even if your content is brilliant, most visitors won't be back. They'll make a mental note to come back. Maybe even bookmark your site. But then the real world will take over and they'll forget you.

If you want to be successful, you must take this process of regular interaction into your own hands.

You must get them to “connect” with you somehow. Give you permission to proactively communicate with them.

Then you can keep in touch, build credibility and establish your trustworthiness without relying on them remembering to come back to your site.

Connecting on Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin can help with this.

But by far the best way for someone writing a blog is to get visitors to subscribe to receive regular communications from you via email.

People still pay more attention to emails (as long as they're not considered spam) than social media. You might chat to a friend on Facebook or tweet some gossip. But if you want a serious 1-1 discussion online, you want to send an important document, or make a complex point: you use email.

Many businesses have an email newsletter. But usually it's awful. Full of me, me, me information about them, what they're doing, their products. Nothing of value to the subscriber.

In fact “newsletter” is a bad name for it. You shouldn't be sharing news. You should be sending information of value. Like the blog posts, but even better. Personally, I refer to mine as an “Insider Strategies email”.

So although your long term goal should be to convert visitors to clients. Your interim goal should be to convert visitors to subscribers.

Because subscribers are the people who are more likely than any others to eventually become clients.

You'll see on this site that I give many opportunities for people to sign up to my regular communications. There's a box in the header, in the sidebar and at the end of every post.

And I have a “bribe” to encourage people to sign up. Subscribers get free access to my Client Breakthrough training videos and detailed report on how to attract and win more clients.

But the key is that I stay in contact with weekly emails that to the best of my ability are both entertaining and provide valuable information. So that over time my credibility and likeability grows.

Only a small percentage will ever become clients, of course. To everyone else the emails and blog posts are a gift.

But get enough subscribers, keep in touch with great content, and your client base will grow.

Next time…some advanced conversion tips from online marketing expert Derek Halpern as he reviews my site live on video (gulp)…

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How to Win Business with your Blog – Part 5: Finding your Voice

Posted by

Ian Brodie on July 20th, 2011.

Finding your voice? It all sounds terribly pretentious doesn't it?

All I really mean is finding a style to write your blog in that suits you and your audience. That gets your character across in a way that you'd like to be perceived.

Why is this important?

Well, for two reasons:

Firstly, if you're not writing in an interesting, engaging style then reading your blog will be hard going and you'll lose people. Remember – visitors are reading your stuff online. it's not the ideal reading medium, and there are plenty of other distractions.
Secondly, before someone hires you – as we said in the first part of this Win Business with your Blog series – they need to feel that not only do you know your stuff, but that they'll be able to work with you. Eventually you'll need to speak to them over the phone or face to face to fully establish that. But you can go a long way down the track with the way you write.

How do you create this good impression?

First, you have to know what impression you want to create. In my post on creating your backstory I talked about how you can focus on and emphasise certain parts of your experience and personality that give you credibility for the type of work you're looking to be hired for.

It's a bit like the way when you see a comedian on stage, the persona you're seeing is almost always them – but it's a certain part of them, emphasised for effect.

This should also influence your writing. If you're positioning yourself as a mad professor, write like one. If you're the people's champion, write like one. If you're the power behind the throne, write like you are.

Generally speaking, I prefer personas which allow you to be seen as the “likeable expert” in your field. That's the guy people want to work with.

No matter what your persona, there are certain rules and best practices when it comes to writing a blog.

Most importantly: make it easy to read.

Write in short sentences and short paragraphs. Much shorter than if you were writing something for paper.

And use short words too. Simple (though not dumbed down) language that's easy to understand and sounds “real”.

Write like you speak.

In fact, speaking to yourself as you write a blog post is a good habit to get into.

Many people advise short blog posts – and they've got a point.

I struggle with this. My blog posts are typically longer. But I figure I've got a very smart readership and if you're interested you'll have the stamina to make it through a few extra hundred words.

Read lots. Read good bloggers. Seth Godin, Tom Peters, Chris Brogan.

Get a feel for how they write. Don't copy, But watch what impact they can have with their words and how they construct sentences, paragraphs and entire posts.

After you've written your blog post – read it out loud. Does it sound like you or someone else?

(I found in my early days, my blog posts had great content – but they sounded like they'd been written by a stuck-up history professor).

Write lots. Write at least a blog post a week for a year and you'll see what a huge difference practice can make.

The next post in the series is about converting website visitors into subscribers.

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How to Win Business with your Blog – Part 4: Content that Wins Clients

Posted by

Ian Brodie on July 15th, 2011.

Here's something that made a huge difference to the number of enquires I was getting from potential clients once I figured it out.

You see, like most people, it wasn't long into my time online that I heard the immortal advice: “content is king”. That you must create useful, valuable content for your blog. And I absolutely followed that advice.

I tried to create the best, most insightful content I could.

But I discovered that useful, valuable content is not enough.

It must be useful, valuable content that wins you clients.

And there's a difference. There are certain things you can write about. Certain topics and certain ways of covering them that will lead some of your readers to believe that you're the right person to hire to help them.

Are these secret topics and magic words known only to insiders – the top echelon of bloggers?

Thankfully no.

In fact, the content that wins you clients is actually unique to you.

The things that you should write about that will win you clients are different to the things I should write about to win me clients. Because they're dependent on what your potential clients and my potential clients need to believe before they're ready to hire us.

And those things are specific to our target clients and what we have to offer them.

So how do you figure out what it is that your potential clients need to hear from you?

Well, the thing I've found that works the very best is simply to get out a blank sheet of paper and visualise my ideal target client. If you've downloaded my free Pain Free Marketing course, you'll know I like to create little pen pictures of my ideal clients so that I can put myself in their shoes and think from their perspective.

In this case the thing I think through is “what do they need to know and feel before they'll be ready to hire me?”. I write down as much as I can on that.

I also test my ideas as much as possible. Get feedback from my mastermind group and, of course, clients themselves.

So, for example, let's say you're a leadership coach. Before clients are ready to hire you, they probably need to know you've coached other leaders who've become successful. Maybe even been a successful leader yourself.

They probably need to know that improving their leadership will pay off for them and their organisation. They probably will need to feel they can work with you – that they like you enough for the relationship to work. And they probably need to have enough confidence in their own capabilities that they'll be “coachable”.

(Normally you'd get a bit more detailed than this – pulling out examples specific to your target clients and the type of coaching you do – but not being a leadership coach myself I've kept it fairly generic).

Could you write blog posts which help potential clients know and feel these things about you?

Absolutely.

You have to make them informative and insightful too – rather than just “hey, I've coached other leaders”. But rather than just writing a “how to” post about an aspect of leadership, use some examples from leaders you've worked with.

Your readers will learn from the post – but subtly and subconsciously they'll also remember that you work with leaders who've successfully improved their skills.

Do a video or two, or a few light-hearted posts, and especially ones where you share your own feelings and insecurities – and they'll begin to feel they know you as a person and begin to feel they could work with you.

Share a case study of how one leader used his new leadership capabilities to transform his organisation, and in particular, what it was worth to him and that organisation to do so – and you'll be building the business case in their minds for working with you.

Talk about some of the common fears leaders have, their insecurities and issues and how it's possible to overcome them – and they'll begin to feel that they too could improve.

Keep working at that list. Maybe not every post. But regularly (and repeatedly as not everyone will read everything every time). And pretty soon, you'll have established yourself as being the sort of person they could hire.

And like I did, you'll find yourself getting more enquiries and more clients.

The next post in the series is about finding the right “voice” for your blog to engage with visitors.

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How to Win Business with your Blog – Part 3: Content

Posted by

Ian Brodie on July 14th, 2011.

OK, so we understand how a blog can build your credibility and establish your personality. And we've figured out what we're going to focus on.

But what on earth do we write about? Where do all the ideas come from?

Well, when you start up your blog, it should be no problem. If you're not initially bursting with ideas in the area you've decided to focus on, then you've picked the wrong area.

That doesn't mean you can just write about anything in that area though. Early on, concentrate on creating your “core content”. Core Content is the central set of ideas, principles, beliefs and insights that you have about your subject area. It's your best stuff that you teach your clients.

Later on, it's OK to do lighter, fluffier posts. Say something controversial. Riff on something off-topic.

But initially you need to establish your reputation with your very best material.

It could be a set of “how to” guides for the key topics in your area of focus. Or it could be a series of posts going into depth in one subect like this series I'm doing on blogs.

But get your good stuff out there quickly.

When those initial ideas dry up – and they will if you blog for any length of time – you need to get more disciplined about creating content.

Keep a notebook or voice recorder with you to capture ideas as they happen. Believe me, if you don't you'll forget them.

Get into the habit of observing life from the viewpoint of your blog. If you write a blog about leadership, for example, then when you're watching sports, or the TV, or kids playing, or a cat stalking a bird or whatever – think about how you could learn something about leadership from that example.

Bring in stories from your daily life, and your history. Your readers will find stories and anecdotes that illustrate a point rather more entertaining and engaging than straight “you should do this” all the time.

Block out time in your calendar to work on content. Set up an editorial calendar (there's a wordpress plugin for that, of course) and stick to it.

The more content you create, the better and faster you'll get at creating it. And don't argue that you're too busy – Chris Brogan and Seth Godin both post almost daily. And they're busy guys too.

The next post in the series is my very best tip on creating content that wins you clients…

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How to Win Business with your Blog – Part 2: Focus

Posted by

Ian Brodie on July 9th, 2011.

Blogs can be powerful tools to establish your expertise, position you as an authority in your field, and showcase what it would be like to work with you to clients.

Sadly, few live up to this. Most are dull, full of mediocre content and rarely updated.

As a result, they end up abandoned – discarded like a broken child's doll tossed from a car window on a motorway as the family heads off to other things.

So, of course, it doesn't win any business for you at all.

The first thing you need to to do to avoid this is to pick the right topic for your blog.

Blogs that win business for consultants, coaches and other professionals are, of course, almost always focused on a business topic that the professional covers as part of their services.

But what specific topic to choose?

Rather like the way you choose a niche to focus in for your business as a whole, your blog's primary topic needs to meet three criteria:

You need to have genuine expertise in the area. The web is far too full of mediocre, generic information – it doesn't need another blog giving out more of the same.
You need to have a passion for that area. To have an effective blog you need to update it at least weekly – that means lots of content. You need passion to keep cranking that out week in, week out.
There needs to be a market for the topic. It needs to be in an area where establishing your expertise will bring you clients. And the more valuable your blog is to potential clients, the higher value you'll get.

My advice is to go narrow. Pick a broad topic like marketing or finance and you'll end up producing bland, generic posts that try to cover everything. And there'll be too much competition for anyone to ever find your blog.

Instead, pick the one aspect of that topic that you find fascinating. For me it was marketing and sales for professionals – and consultants and coaches in particular. When I first started out, there were just a handful of blogs in the area so this allowed me to establish myself quite quickly.

A lot of folks have jumped on the bandwagon since – but I've managed to maintain and grow my popularity.

If you're into marketing, maybe it's copywriting or ad design, or long term nurturing you find the most interesting. Write on that and you'll produce in-depth, insightful material that will attract visitors and potential clients.

I'll write more on how to get visitors and potential clients to your site shortly. But the first step is to have quality, in-depth content so that when they do arrive they stick around. And it builds your credibility so they're ready to buy from you.

You need to hit the right tone too. An academic paper or treatise on the latest trends in your specialty may mark you as an expert to your peers – but it's not going to impress potential clients much. What they're looking for are tips, ideas and practical suggestions on how they can improve their business or lives in the areas you focus in.

And you don't need to be the world's leading expert either. You can be the guy that makes complex concepts simple and practical. Or the guy who's blog is insightful and also entertaining. Or the guy who's the expert is a particular geographic area.

The next article in the series looks at creating valuable content for your blog.

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Get Clients Online

How to Win Business with your Blog – Part 1

Posted by

Ian Brodie on July 2nd, 2011.

I've been blogging regularly since 2007 and one of the questions I get asked most often by people considering blogging themselves is “is it worth it?”.

In other words, “can you win business with a blog?”

Well, not only can you win business with a blog, it's been the main driver of my business for a couple of years now.

Now when many people think of making money from a blog, they think of showing adverts, or maybe selling products. And while nowadays my business is primarily product focused, for many years as a consultant/coach, I made the majority of my money from people buying my services.

Chances are, this will be the case for you too. If you think of how much you'd normally earn from running a training course, it would be in the thousands. For a small consulting project – 5 figures – potentially much more.

You have to sell a huge amount of advertising or products to earn the equivalent.

So for most people reading this – your primary goal for your blog should be to use it to win clients – not to earn money from advertising or products.

How do you win clients through a blog?

Well, think about what a client needs to know and feel before they're ready to hire you.

1. They have to have a problem that needs solving or an aspiration or goal they need to achieve. And they have to believe it's worth addressing.

2. They have to believe you fully understand that problem or aspiration.

3. They have to believe you have the capabilities to help them succeed.

4. They have to trust you, and believe they can work with you effectively.

Can a blog help clients with this?

Well, if your blog talks about the problems or aspirations they might have and describes the benefits others have seen from addressing those issues – you've ticked box number one.

If your blog shows deep insights into those problems and aspirations, you've ticked box number two.

Write how-to guides, share case studies from your experience, give your very best thinking on client issues and you've ticked box number three.

Write informally. Share stories about you and your clients. Use video and audio. Open up and share what's important to you and some of your successes and failures in the past. Then you'll tick box number four.

Now this isn't going to happen overnight. You need traffic to your site. And not just any traffic – you need potential clients looking for the sort of things you'll be writing.

And you need them to come back. It takes multiple interactions before people believe in your expertise and come to trust you. That's why I like to encourage people to sign up for regular communications via my regular client winning tips emails.

But if you can do all this – then you can win business from a blog.

Lots of business.

The next article looks at how to focus your blog in the right area to win business.

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