If you want to find new customers on a limited budget it’s hard to find a better low-cost tool than business blogs. Or, a better investment. Unlike a Facebook page where you are a ‘renter’, with a blog, you own it and all of its content.
Business blogs make it easy for you to create an online reputation that matches your in person reputation as an expert.
Your blog helps you to find new customers in several ways.
- Show your expertise by answering your customers’ questions in a deeper way than your competition does
- Introduce new topics ahead of your competition
- Build an opt-in database of contacts more quickly than from your business website
- Make it easier for people you meet in person to get to know you and your services, products
You’ll avoid wasting time in launching a business blog if you decide in advance exactly how your blog will help you find prospective customers. If you spend the time upfront to determine how to add your business blog into your current business activities you’ll be more successful.
9 Steps to New Business Blogs
1. Write a job description for your business blog. The whole reason you’re setting up a blog is to increase the number of customers that contact you, try your products or services and buy from you. Here are some ideas.
This blog is responsible for:
- Encouraging customers to sign up for my email newsletter after reading my useful articles
- Collecting customer contact information. For example, in exchange for downloading a white paper, presentation, report or ebook
- Getting my experience well known with frequently published smart content and information
- Motivating customers to click through to my product/services web pages by giving valuable answers to their toughest questions
2. List the customer types that you’re looking to attract. These are the prospective customers that are ideal buyers for your products and services. You’ll want to publish different blog articles that appeal to each of the types of your ideal customers on a regular basis.
3. Conduct keyword research. Research keywords used by your prospective customers when they’re searching online for answers. Keywords are the terms/words/phrases that your specific customers type into Google when they’re looking for the kind of help you provide.
Finding the right keywords to use in your blog content is hugely important because customers type keywords into Google when they’re looking to make a purchase.
If you do not conduct your own research about the terms your prospective customers actually use when searching online, you risk basing your blog on random keywords.
If you follow the all-important step of getting familiar with keyword analysis tools, you’ll be miles ahead of most businesses that guess at their keywords.
You don’t want to rely only on your own knowledge of keywords or terms that your customers may use. After all, you’re an expert and use more ‘technical terms’ or ‘jargon’ than your customers use.
If you take time to learn how to use the free keyword analysis tools from Google and others, you’ll have a competitive advantage. Keep in mind that the Google Keyword Tool is just a starting point in your research. Not the end point. Here is the link:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
4. Check out other blogs and websites in your area of expertise. You’ll want to see what your competitors are doing on their blogs. Identify topics that are discussed too much and topics that are overlooked.
See which social media sites your customers are using. Are they on LinkedIn? What kinds of questions are they asking on LinkedIn’s ‘Answers’ section? Who are the most popular bloggers and information websites in your industry? This will be your ongoing competitive analysis to help guide your content decisions.
5. Develop a name for your blog. Your business blog’s name should be easy to remember and should relate to your business name, but doesn’t have to be exactly the same.
6. Prepare your blog content calendar. Decide how often you’ll create and publish articles on your blog. If you’re the only one creating content for the blog, you may decide to publish a new article once a week. Whatever your frequency decision is, you must be faithful to your schedule.
Just think, if you were to create blog articles two times each week in just six months you’d have 18 new pieces of customer-friendly content on your blog! Did you upload 18 new articles to your website in the last six months?
7. Decide if you’re going to attach your blog to your business website or establish a standalone blog. If you integrate your blog with your website and update your blog weekly, you’ll steadily increase the website visitors to your business. (WordPress rocks in this area. It can be used for your business website and have your blog integrated.)
8. Choose a blogging platform or program. You have tons of excellent blogging programs to choose from. You’ll want to research them. I’ve used TypePad and self-hosted WordPress (this blog). I love self-hosted WordPress because as a non-technical person, I can understand how to create articles, insert photos and other basics. Everyone I know who uses WordPress loves it.
The important point for you, if you’re not technical, is to choose a blogging program that you’re comfortable using. Using today’s blogging systems is much like using a word processing program. You just need to start and get accustomed to using business blogs.
9. Find a web developer to set up your blog. Now it’s time to work with a technical person. You want to first do the upfront work to plan what your blog will do, before you get it programmed.
I’ll be adding to these steps in upcoming posts. Have questions about these steps? You can ask them in the comments section below.
Photo: iStock
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