When it’s written in a sentence like the one above, you start to become a little leery. Nothing can be THAT good. Right?

Yet every week I meet with people that have heard me talk about blogging, and they always bring up the statement, “I want to use a blog so I can quit other forms of gaining leads”.

When I hear that statement, my next question is, “how quickly do you want your blog to work for you?” Because a blog is a great tool In fact, I can’t imagine my marketing plan to be without several at the moment. But I’ve also been using blogs for over eight years now.

Blogs are just like any other form of marketing.

• You have to use it regularly to make it work for you.
• In order to bring clients to your blog, you have to give out content that makes them want to come back again and again.
• Traffic will come from a variety of sources; you have to keep trying and do what works.
• People will sign up for and buy different things. You have to make more than one offer to gain clients.
• You have to be patient. A blog will only work after you’ve dedicated yourself to it for a while, and you have the traction of several things working together.
• You won’t be number one in Google immediately. Like everything else it takes time.

So let me ask you a question. Will you be in business five years from now? If so, then you have plenty of time to start up a blog, dedicate yourself to it as one of the best forms of marketing your business, and just do it.

This holiday season I’m seeing a lot of giveaways and specials built around the Christmas concept.

Last week in my One Great Idea feature I wrote about a photographer who’s giving her readers specials in her 25 days of Christmas promotion. Every day she’s releasing specials to her followers (on a limited basis of course) and allowing them to purchase right on the spot. Over 25 days, she could easily have one of her best December’s yet – all just by selling certificates and deals that will be used sometime in 2010.

Today I found an Appvent Calendar. Every day leading up to Christmas, you can head to the Appvent Calendar and receive one free download of a game directly to your iPhone. Presented by BlacksmithGames, their concept is to release 24 games, all avaialbe only the day it is released, requiring you come back every day for your new game, and to build your understanding of their products.

This is a great promotion to introduce a whole new set of app users to BlacksmithGames. In the technology world, this type of promotion can go viral quickly. People will only promote a new product if they really like it – and then it would only be in the form of a review. But a free giveaway is something to write about – and tweet about. Getting people back to your site again and again is key – and this will do just that.

Chances are it’s to communicate with prospects and customers. Which also means that you’re hoping to grow your list of prospects and customers down the road.

The problem with most bloggers is they rely on a person to find their blog, and come back to it again and again in order to keep in contact. Think about that for a minute. Do you go back and visit blogs on a regular basis? I’m sure you have your favorites. I have about six I visit several times per week just to see what’s new. But the vast majority I may have found an interesting article at, but rarely head back to visit. 

Your visitors are the same way. They may have found interest in your information, but after reading down the page, they found something else of interest, clicked around, and exited out of your blog.

How can you prevent that in the future?

Ask for people to sign up or subscribe to your list for future promotions. Not just at the top of the page, but throughout your blog, on different pages, and in different locations.

Let’s say you create a post “8 Tools For Busy Small Business Owners”. You provide reviews and links to great sites that can help out a business owner juggle the different aspects of running a business. At the end of the post, add another paragraph:

Liked these tips? Sign up and receive notification when we post more tips just like this one.

Your reader is already interested in what you’ve written. They’ve probably found value in it because they’ve read to the bottom. They may have missed the subscribe box at the top of the page – this gives them another opportunity when they may be even more committed to learning about you.

Don’t think of your blog as you would a traditional store. People won’t always come in at the top of your home page, look around, and enter out the same way they came in. They may come in through a reference in Google or from Twitter. They may enter a post that’s several months old. Always give them every opportunity to connect up with you, no matter how they find you and where they enter.

image source svilen001

During her interview, she revealed that business was slow a few months ago, so she decided to try gaining some exposure in the press. She did a great job – and landed on a major talk show. The DJ found her by seeing her on this major talk show. So for her, business has been pretty good the past couple of months.

But when I went to her site, I noticed that business could be even better for her if she implemented just a few things. She went after the press and the national exposure without having the marketing behind it to truly capture the attention of her visitors, and turn them into sales.

Here are 7 things she should be doing to grow her business even further.

Photographs
If you’re an artist, you need to showcase what you do. And not just with quick snapshots, with beautiful photographs. The true talent of an artist is in their art. But if you take pictures yourself, and you get flashback or washed out images, you’re not going to have good representation on your site. Invest in great photographs – it will make a difference.

Gallery
Having great photographs is necessary. So is having a wide selection of photographs to showcase your work. As an artist, your visitors want to see what you do before they invest in your artwork.

Stories
Art is personal. Tell stories of why you created each piece, what meaning it has, and how the buyer views it. If you land on a major talk show, showcase the whole thing with copy, photographs and video. People like stories, and they’re easily sold if they build up a relationship with you.

Copy
When I visited her site, she had her information on a blog. Which is fine as a platform. But it really doesn’t matter if you use a blog or a website, you have to have it filled with enough information to keep your readers active and wanting more. Three posts with just a few sentences each isn’t enough. We need details.

Structure
How easy is it to move around and gain more information? Obviously if you have just a handful of pages and text, its easy to move around. But it can also showcase what you don’t have on your site more than what you do. The goal of your site is to be a salesperson for your business. Make sure the structure of your site supports that goal.

Look and Feel
Do you have to spend a ton of money building a dynamic web presence? Definitely not. But you do have to make it professional. If you’re in business, you have to act like a business. It has to be professional, and give the impression you’re in business for a while. Otherwise why would I trust you with my business?

Completeness
In this day and age, having an “under construction” page should never happen. It’s easy to get content on to your site. Don’t release the page until you have it ready to go. Don’t be a perfectionist about it either – release the page and tweak it down the road.

Especially if you are gaining a ton of exposure, its important that you have the marketing materials to support the attention you are gaining. A customized blog is an easy way to grow your site quickly, and have access to building it along the way. Above all, think about your presentation before you move forward. Is it dynamic? Is it a good representation of your business? Are you proud to have people visit it?

If you are a blogger, you know what I’m talking about. Each day you sit down to write on a new subject that’s pertinent to today and to your market. But if you’ve ever searched back through your categories, chances are you’ll find something similar from several months before.

How can you use old information to help you gain clients today? 

Let’s look at three strategies.

1. Instead of sitting down with an entirely new idea, choose a category instead. Then click over to that category on your blog and start reading some of your posts from the past few months.

Are there any posts that would make an interesting topic today?

Are there several posts that you can combine together to make a new point?

Start writing your new post, linking back to the old posts as reference. It will give your old posts traction (people click through to read your point) and will help you dive deeper into a topic you have a lot of knowledge in.

2. Tweet your posts on Twitter. Sure you can set up your posts to automatically head to Twitter via RSS feed as you create them. But your old content is still valuable. Use a service like TweetLater.com to release your posts periodically. Choose posts that had great content, high comment ratio, or to provide support to other things you are Tweeting about.

3. Combine your blog posts into a whitepaper, ebook, or free report. When you start out blogging, you usually cover a broad range of topics. But over time, each category begins to become more complex. And in some cases, they can be merged together to tell a bigger story. This is a great way to gain a product quickly without a huge workload to get it into place.

You can even plan this over time. Create a category with an ebook in mind for a 6 month delivery time. Add one new post a week that fits into the outline. Your ebook will be written in your 6 month time frame.

In many cases it’s the images that accompanies the story.

Blogging tends to be all about writing up an article, and posting it to speak to different target audiences in your niche. But even if people do come to your blog for your content, adding graphics and photographs can actually make things more readable. And more memorable.

1. Add an image that complements the article.
This is probably the most common way of mixing images and text. After a post is written, the writer heads out to a stock photo site and  finds an image that fits the view of the story. There are a variety of ways to find photographs. For a small fee, you can use sites like IstockPhoto.com and ShutterStock.com. Or try one of the many free sites for stock photography – here’s a good list.

2. Add an image that has its own voice.
In  some cases you actually build your post around the image itself. On one of my other blogs, I have a series in which I find marketing examples from different photographers’ blogs. I start with a screen shot of their blog page, and write the post around why they have a great marketing idea. The concept is called One Great Idea, and its very detailed and provides my readers with one takeaway idea they can apply to their own businesses.  So the photograph becomes the purpose, or the overall center of the blog post.

3. Use an image as a training tool.
Some posts become step by step guide to getting something done. In that case, one, two, or even more photographs or screen shots may be used to teach people how to do something. Do this, then that. A great example is in my post Using A Blog To Get To The Top Of The Search Engines. Through a series of screen shots, I share with my readers how I  created a series of posts to capture a high ranking on Google, and then follow it up by showing screen shots of Google with the rankings in place. The graphics support the article, and help the reader to make more sense of the information.

If not, start asking immediately.

If you do, what are their answers?

In the land of brick and mortar, potential customers can find you simply by driving by. If you’re on a busy intersection, and someone drives by you ever day to and from work, they may eventually stop. 

You can help motivate people to stop by sending out coupons to the surrounding neighborhoods and office buildings. You can advertise in local papers. Or you can put an ad on a local radio station.

In short, there is a ton of ways to reach out to your local community.

The key here is you’re reaching out. You’re motivating people to take the next step, and come into your location.

Now lets talk about your blog. You can’t put it up and have drive by traffic instantly. It exists in cyberspace along with billions of other pages. And no one is going to notice it unless you make the effort to share it with others.

Your blog alone will not get you known. It won’t bring in customers. It won’t create sales. And its not going to keep you in business.

However, it is the channels you use around your blog that will get you known. They will bring in customers. And they will help your business profit over time.

Your channels are the different ways you reach out to prospective clients. It’s the ways you connect with people out in cyberspace. It’s the ability to find your blog and the content you create, and use it to connect up with customers.

1. Search engine traffic. A good portion of your traffic may ultimately come from search engines. With over 31 billion searches performed in Google ever month, it is a powerful way to grow your following. As I wrote in How To Write A Blog Post For Your Reader And The Search Engines, it’s important to write blog posts for specific portions of your business. The more content you write, the more you’ll show up in the search engines. And the better traction you’ll have overall.

2. Social media traffic. You can’t look anywhere now and not see the buzz on social networking. Twitter and Facebook are just two of the many sites people are utilizing every day. But keep in mind its more than a specific social site that will bring you business. You have to be where your customers are. And you have to grow a list of great potential customers. Having 24 followers on Twitter won’t get you anything. It takes growing power, and the ability to reach out to thousands in the hopes a few will convert into clientele.

3. List building. It’s great to have 500 followers on Twitter, and 1000 on Facebook. But what will you do in 2 years when Twitter is no longer the hot site, and its something else? Do you really want to start building again from scratch? Yes, it’s important to have lists of followers on your different social sites. But don’t forget about your own list as well. Give away free information in exchange for an email list. Your own internal list will be you key to success over time.

With traditional marketing, you always think numbers. It’s no different online.

If it takes 1000 postcards to bring in 10 clients, you know instantly about how many postcards to create and send.

Look at your online strategies the same way. With 1000 friends/followers, you gain one new client a month.

However the one good thing about being online is you can connect with those 1000 friends again and again, every day through your posts and tweets. More may convert down the road.

Twitter is taking the Internet by storm. 

It seems everything in the media is about social networking, and how you can use it either in your personal or professional life. Just this past weekend I found stories about Twitter in 3 mainstream magazines, and “What The Tweet Are We Doing?” was a full page article in Sunday’s The Denver Post.

So with the sudden rage that’s exploding all around us, its natural for everyone to wonder what Facebook and Twitter are, and how they can use them.

But does it REALLY matter how to use Facebook and Twitter? Or is the more important question, “How is this technology going to impact me in the future?”

I have been speaking throughout Denver to PTCO groups on security issues for teens. And at the middle school level, a large amount of parents have no concept of Facebook, social networking, or what any of today’s top technology tools do.

Yet technology will have a huge impact on our children’s lives. And without the support of parents, many children today will become lost in the possibilities. Or worse, lost in the “wild west” and getting into all kinds of trouble.

Right now, the amount of new technical information is doubling every two years. So for students starting out today in a four year technical degree, by the time they hit their junior year, half of the information they’ve learned will be out of date and no longer apply.

It’s not important the specifics of what you’re learning today, so much as it’s important to learn why the technology exists and how to utilize it.

When we started out online in the early 90’s with a website, it wasn’t the website that was important. It was the ability to learn how to use the website as a marketing tool.

And with Facebook and Twitter at their heights, it’s not important to learn and become an expert at Facebook and Twitter. It’s important to learn how to use them as tools to get what you want. Whether it’s keeping in touch with friends, marketing a business, or finding a new restaurant for Saturday night.

When Facebook and Twitter have come and gone (or morphed into something else) what will be important is the reasoning why they grew so fast:

1. instantly communicating with multiple people at once
2. joining with like minded people
3. sharing ideas and opinions
4. using technology in many formats

And when the new rage surfaces, you can bet it will take these concepts, and put them on steroids. You’ll take everything you learned from these tools, and use them quicker, faster, and more effectively then ever before.

But what motivates them to want to become faithful readers?

Content
People usually find you because of your content. They may even stay around awhile if you have enough to look at. But the only thing that will bring them back is quality. If they know they can look to you as a resource – as an expert – they will come back.

What makes you different?
I have a ton of blogs in my RSS feed reader. Some I click on and read more faithfully then others. Ultimately it comes down to what they offer. If I know I can read through their material and gain “aha” moments, I’ll be back regularly.

What do you have of value?
Five to ten years ago, many websites made an offer to sign up for a free ezine, or newsletter. That worked well then – not any more. I’m on a ton of ezine lists now, and not a lot of time to go through them day after day. What matters now is relevant information. If you offer something that people can use and process immediately, they’ll be back.

Personality
People still love doing business with people. They like to build up a relationship and give their business to people they feel comfortable with. While that doesn’t mean someone you can have a one-to-one with anymore, it is important that you get a flare of their personality. Showcase your personal photographs. Talk about your vacation. Share your weekend adventures. Everything in moderation. But it is important for people to see the personal side of you.

Today I happened to head back out to Google to do some research – and as of today, the Growing Pink Roses In Colorado post is number one, and the Using A Blog To Get To The Top Of The Search Engines is number three.

Once again, this proves the power of blogging, and how you can easily rank and capture attention quicker than you ever could with a website.

Creating a blog post provides you the ability to choose your keywords, use them in your blog title, and throughout the content. You can also choose your tags based on your keywords, giving your blog post the most search engine friendly information possible.

In the past, people have used SEO for each page on their websites in order to optimize it and make it noticeable to the search engines. But with a blog, you can do it all yourself – without hiring a firm to run the SEO for you. Saving you time and money.

Is SEO completely dead? No, not yet. But with so many tools easily accessible to you a small business owner, why not use everything you can to get recognized by your prospects and clients?