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Should you write a blog for fun, and only concern yourself with your readers? Or should you write for the search engines, and use great keywords?

Actually a little of both.

You have to start with a great post that gets the attention of the search engines in order to have your post found, and ultimately read. If you’ve never played around with keyword tools, Google has a great one that gives you keywords, phrases and some statistics on search volume.

When you use this tool, type in small keywords that pertain to your industry. If I put in the word "pets", I find phrases like "pet clothes" "pet boutique" and "pet photography". You can use these keywords to create your title, and ultimately create the content of your post. Using "pet boutique", you may end up with a title, "How To Start Your Own Pet Boutique".

Now that you have a good keyword, and a great title, write your post for your reader. What does your reader want to hear? What do they want to learn? How can you be a resource to them?

I recently came across a blog in one of my niches. It was brand new - started in the last month - and had about a dozen posts. Everything about it was ranked high for the search engines, and the posts did come up several times on the first page for the search I was doing. But when I went over to read the posts, they were clearly written to impress the search engines - not the reader. None of the information was accurate, or made much sense to the reader. In reality, the blogs posts will never give people a reason to visit again. They were solely put up to capture a little bit of ad revenue.

By using the two together, you’ll end up with far more traffic overall, and a larger audience that comes back again and again.

The more choices you give, the more confused your customers will be.

It’s human nature to like to have a choice, but given too many choices, most of us simply shut down. If you have a child, you can remember that they loved to have a choice of whether to wear the red shirt or the blue one. But if you open up the closet and make everything available, well, let’s just say you may be in for a long battle.

The same goes with your marketing. People like choices. But if you give them too many, they will move onto another website - one that is more likely to tell them what to do.

Start with the basics. Get your clients into the "door". Then sell them as you develop a stronger relationship.

To start, ask them to sign up for your RSS feed, or for your free report or your ezine. Whichever you choose, make sure it’s obvious on your home page of your blog. You can even provide an article or copy elsewhere on your site explaining how and why to sign up. Don’t leave it to chance - ask for the signup.

Then sell your products/services subtly throughout your blog posts. Remember, each blog entry should be written to inform the reader, not sell. But as you are providing quality information, you can add a line or two about one of your offers. Think 80 percent information, 20 percent sales. If they find value in what you do, they’ll be more likely to follow you, and ultimately buy from you.

[Want step-by-step advice on how to blog for your business? Check out my latest video coaching series which walks you through what you need to do to succeed with your blog.]

If you are in a tiny niche, or a niche that isn’t Internet savvy, your prospects and customers may not even know they are reading a blog. They just simply like the information you are providing.

The important thing isn’t to make sure they know they are reading a blog; it’s to make sure they know how to follow you on a regular basis. Start by understanding RSS, and how it can work for you.

Understand RSS. RSS is still a relatively new concept – one that not all of your prospects and clients may understand. RSS (really simple syndication) provides an easy way for you to connect up and share information with your readers. There are a variety of ways to do this. In it’s easiest format, every blog comes with some type of RSS feed.

Highlight your feed, and tell your clients about it.

In Internet Explorer, when you click to subscribe, a new screen will appear that will ask you to subscribe to the feed.

When you click, it will open up a box. Here you can change the name it’s saved under, and assign it to folders within your feed favorites.

Now that you are subscribed, you can visit your feeds anytime you like. In Internet Explorer, you have a favorites button in the top left hand corner. You can store your Favorites, which are your favorite web addresses, or your Feeds from your favorite blog RSS feeds.

Then any time you click on your favorite Feeds, you can instantly see who has posted new entries to their blogs. Bold entries have new posts. No new entries if its not.

Other browsers work in similar manners.

This is the simplest way to begin getting followers. From there, you can get even more sophisticated, which we’ll follow up on in later posts.

The important thing is to understand it yourself, and request your prospects and clients follow you.

So you’ve started up your business blog, and you’re staring at a blank screen wondering what to right about. Let me give you some ideas.

1. When your prospective customers call, what’s the first thing they have a question about?

2. When someone makes a purchase, what questions do they have?

3. Do you have products or services that work well together? Cross promote and tell people how to use them together.

4. Who are your clients? When you take on a new client/customer, showcase their business. (Take a look at my Vision Client Family series for ideas.)

5. Who would make a good client for you? Put them into a case study.

6. Educate. Tell people about your services indirectly through a training article.

7. What’s coming up? An in-house training seminar? Specials only for preferred customers?

8. Do you have a new product coming to market? Talk all about it.

9. Who are your employees? Give them a post of their own.

10. Doing anything for charity? Give your readers the details. 

All week I’ve been blogging about the power of your online presence. And for the most part, every small business owner understands that they need to be online. What falls short is the follow through.

You may be thinking, "I want to have complete control over my image, and put up a site that is perfect."

Online, there is no such thing as perfect. I follow the 80-20 rule when it comes to being online. I get my new site/profile/page/salesletter etc to the 80 percent mark, and put it online and test it. Does it get signups? Are people buying what I’m offering? If not, I tweak it. And it works the other way too - even if they are signing up and buying, I still tweak it.

You may be thinking, "My advertising in the yellow pages and trade publication has always worked; I’ll stick with that."

Have you really been tracking where your clients come from? Keep a tracking sheet by your phone and your computer. Every time a client or prospect emails you or phones you, ask where they found you. I’m willing to bet you’ll find more and more people are finding you from online sources. (It is good to keep your name in many places - just track that you really are getting your money’s worth from expensive advertising sources.)

You may be thinking, "I just don’t have the time to spend getting connections online.

Too bad. Let me ask you a question. How long are you planning on being in business? Let’s say your goal is to retire 10 years from now. That means you must keep marketing for the next 10 years to sustain your lifestyle.

If you buy into a one year contract with a magazine, you’ll spend four or five figures over the course of that one year period. And then what? The magazine disappears, doing you no good. You either buy another year, or find another way to gain clients.

But let’s say you spend one hour creating a profile on a place like LinkedIn. LinkedIn is free (you can upgrade, but that’s another article) so any information you put out there today will still be there a year from now, two years from now, etc.

Now let’s say you move over to Facebook and create a profile there. Another hour of time. Another free resource. And the opportunity to connect with people for the next 10 years.

Of course you can’t just spend one hour putting up a profile and expecting it to work for 10 years. You have to add content, share your knowledge, and take the time to work the system. But you can get more than enough business by working this systems.

You just have to do it.

Just read an article in one of my latest editions of Promo magazine by G.A. Andy Marken.

According to his article, Technorati now tracks 70 million blogs, up from 35 million less than a year ago. And according to the latest research, 22 of the 100 most popular websites in Q4 of last year were blogs.

More and more, people are relying on blogs to gain valuable information. Why? Because it’s the easiest and most effective way to share information quickly with your readers and with the search engines.

When I do research for articles, I’m usually looking for statistics or for current figures and ratios in online trends. Things change quickly online. Facts that were valid in 2006 for the most part no longer apply today in 2008. So I need information posted within the past few days - weeks at the most.  Blogs and blog directories are a great way for me to find the information I need.

By searching in blog directories like Technorati, they provide search results based on the date is was posted; not just by keyword. So I can find information that was posted just minutes before - not just the highest ranking keyword related site.

So as a business owner, if you’re writing on current issues, and you’re hitting on keywords that people are searching for, you have a higher chance of “being found” because your information will be at the top of the search results.

1. Write blog posts frequently and concentrate on writing about things of interest to customers and media.

2. Write appropriate titles that will capture the attention of readers. Don’t create titles for SEO purposes - make sure they attract the attention of your reader first, SEO second.

3. The more you write, the easier it is to find you. You can become an authority in your niche fairly quickly - just start writing.

Education or persuasion?

How do you reach out to your prospects?

In today’s information-driven world, people learn all they can before they make a purchase. The more money a product or service costs, the more time they spend making an informed decision.

When information wasn’t so readily available, it was easier to persuade someone into a purchase. The used car salesman could very easily tell his prospect that the car simply won’t be there tomorrow - make your decision now.

But with the Internet, anyone can hop online and learn all they can about what they are looking for before they try and find a business that offers what they want. And in the world of eBay, if it’s not in your town, buy it from wherever it is (my neighbor just bought a Porsche from Florida).

Now it’s all about education. The more you learn about something, the more one business or one person proves their expertise, the more you trust them to provide you with the products and services you desire.

What can you do?

1. Look at your blog as an education tool. Provide your readers with the details of what is possible. Don’t provide the detailed steps of how to achieve everything you provide in your services - just tell them what’s possible.

2. Set yourself up as the expert. The more you’re willing to share, the more you’ll prove your knowledge base. And the more you share information throughout the Internet, the more your name will come up again and again, through the various searches your prospect performs.

When you designed your traditional website, you may have included a variety of testimonials on a separate page, or possibly down one of the sides of your site pages. In either case, testimonials were used as support to get people to take action.

With your blog, you have even more power in using testimonials, or case studies.

When a prospect reads your copy and your sales letters, they may be attracted to your ideas. But there might not be anything that pushes them over the top. Case studies can do that. They

1. They provide the true benefits you provide to your client base.

2. It adds a sense of reality to your business, giving your prospects the ability to see your products and services in action.

You can provide as much or as little information as you desire - anything from how they found you, to the results of what you offered. You can provide photos, videos - really the sky is the limit. Why not have your client create a video with your product or service in action?

And with a blog, you can add these again and again. And you can continually build rapport because of the comment section attached to each post.

Your own raving fan section - free with your blog.

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