(Updated) You’ve invested a lot of time and money into your website or business blog.
Is your
investment paying off? If you’re happy with the number of referrals and clients your site is generating, consider yourself fortunate. If not, read on.
Begin by asking yourself this. What does your website or blog say to first time visitors?
Maybe they learned about you from a friend or a colleague. Or maybe they went to Google—doesn’t everyone? —and found your site. And they want to know more about you and the services you provide before contacting you.
What does your site tell them? Does the content let them know that you understand their problem? Does it say, “If you want help with blue strategies, you’ve come the right place”?
Online, Prospective Clients Look for Understanding First
Does your website content talk about you, you, you? Is it all about your services, your company, and your experience?
Or does your website content address their situations and the problems they face? Does it speak their language, describe their pain, and offer them hope? Does it provide easy-to-scan answers and solutions from their viewpoint, mind you, not yours?
Does your website content make them want to learn more about you? Does it make them interested in the services you provide?
5 Ways to Find More Clients Using Your Website or Business Blog
Update weekly.
Your Internet content—whether your website or business blog—has to be fresh. Place your most current understanding of your clients’ biggest problems right up front—on the home page, if possible. The most pressing issues your prospective clients face change from month to month. Sometimes from week to week. The only way to address those issues is to post frequently.
Add content management.
You can’t afford to wait for a programmer to update your website information and content. You have to be able to do it yourself. Website content management systems (CMS) are designed to be used by non-technical people. They make updating a website like using a word processing program. If you’re blogging, you have a CMS. If you don’t know how to use it, it’s time to learn. (WordPress is wonderful, easy to use web software that you can use to create a business blog or your company website. Check it out at www.wordpress.org.)
Create client-friendly content.
Make the majority of your website or blog articles instructive. Not selling. Turn your content into “how-to” articles, checklists and guides. You want prospective clients arriving at your site to think, “This person is helpful and generous with techniques and answers!”
Get published online.
Dun & Bradstreet tells businesses choosing an outside contractor or consultant to see where that person is published. Ask your clients, prospects, and partners about their most trusted information sources. Keep track of the publications and the industry leaders they trust to help them solve a problem. Find out where your competitors are published. Identify topics where your expertise fits and create articles for those websites.
Clarify your expertise.
Do not leave any doubt in your website visitors’ minds about your unique expertise. Prepare case studies. Update your past experiences into anonymous case studies if you can’t obtain your former clients’ permission to name them. Drill down and write, blog or video your approaches that have been used successfully by your clients.
What will your prospective clients see when they find your website?
Does your website content communicate—in seconds, not minutes—that you understand their problems? Does it present solutions they can use? Does it make you a credible source of insight and help? And finally, does it make them contact you. Because in the end, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?
photo: iStock
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