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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. 

How many different things do you do? How many different sites do you have?

If you’ve been in business or online for any length of time, you may be doing a lot more than your clients know about.

For instance, one of my clients found my VisionOfSuccess.com website through a friend. After viewing several of my ezines, he decided to contact me about producing a website for his business.

When he called me, we chatted about his site. He’s a photographer, and wanted a gallery system to be able to upload his photographs. Because he had only followed me for a couple of months, he wasn’t aware of my photography background. He hadn’t visited my VirtualPhotographyStudio.com site, and didn’t know of all my services specifically for photographers. When I told him about being a professional photographer, he signed up on the spot.

We’ve developed his website, and I’ve also coached him and his business partner for a number of months on building up their wedding business.

Occasionally in your marketing [your ezines, an email, your blog] mention your other businesses and your other services. You never know when you might pick up a new client.

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.

For me, it’s all about being online. I get up in the morning, check email, check Twitter and send a few posts, write up a few blog posts, check a few of my social networks and reply - and then start in with my regular day.

That seems like a normal day to me. I’m always online, and look forward to using and trying out as many new resources as I can.

Doesn’t everyone?

Nope. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that I’m way ahead of the curve on the Internet. I was talking with a bunch of other mom’s yesterday at a softball game, and they’re still stumped with Facebook - Twitter, what’s that?

The Internet is still in its infancy. People are still growing accustomed to building a website for their businesses - blogging for business is still a brand new concept.

Which means there is a world of opportunity for you. You just have to do it.

3 Things To Do Now To Bring Your Business Online

1. Start building your blog. Everyone has to start with the first step. Don’t worry if it’s not perfect, or doesn’t have a lot of content. The important thing is to start with your first post.

2. Create a plan. What do you expect from your blog? What will you blog about? The more defined you make your blog, the more success you’ll ultimately have with it. There are a huge amount of resources online to help you develop your own content, and to follow to make your job easier. I’ll provide you with a ton of resources along the way - and follow other people as well. Why reinvent the wheel?

3. Don’t be intimidated by all of the buzz words. It’s easy to get swept up in too many ideas, and end up not trying anything. If someone invites you to LinkedIn, spend some time there learning all you can. Don’t jump into a half dozen sites - start with one and learn what you can. The more you learn now, the easier it becomes as new sites and tools pop online.

Take your first step today.

photo source redsd

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.

I surf every day, looking for different types of blogs. If I like them, I either sign up for their RSS feed, or add them to a growing list of sites to check back in on once in awhile.

Of course I also find a bunch of blogs that simply don’t work. So today I thought I’d share 5 Things Not To Do With Your Blog.

1. Don’t blog for SEO. Sure, blogs are wonderful because they do attract more attention on Google and other search engines. But if all of your posts are exclusively written for SEO purposes, they will be a bit, well, boring. Imagine seeing the same title again and again: what would make you want to read any of the posts? If you’re blogging on a regular basis, some posts will be written to attract keywords, and to be well suited for SEO. Use other posts to make your blog exciting, and keep people reading. Overall, if you’re active with your blog, you will attract attention.

2. Add some photos, videos or graphics. Copy is a bad thing when it goes on and on. Because a blog lists multiple posts on your home page, without the break up of graphics and photos, the text seems to run on forever. Graphics give the eye something to focus on. It gives you a reason to want to read.

3. Lots of ads. How about post after post, with an ad in each one? And each ad is for the same thing? Is there any desire to read further and click on an ad? I don’t think so.

4. Lots of blinking, moving, cartoonish graphics moving around the screen. Don’t these graphics give you a headache? I know I move on as quickly as possible when things are blinking at me. If I’m going to read online, I want it to read like a novel. I want to be able to spend the time to understand the reader, and focus on what he or she is saying.

5. Blog all about you. A blog is about your opinions, your thoughts, and your resources. I want to know how you feel about certain subjects, and learn more about your expertise. But I don’t want to hear about your products and services again and again. Use caution when promoting your stuff - people will find out how to work with you when they feel comfortable with you. 

This morning was catch up morning for me. After meeting with a client, I sat down to review some of the RSS feeds I receive, and find out what my favorite writers had to say. I have about 2 dozen feeds that I follow on a regular basis, so it takes me 30-40 minutes to go through everything.

One thing caught my eye that I want to share from a business perspective.

As a business owner, you may be blogging about concepts, ideas and resources. But don’t forget to do the occasional plug when you have something new. While you don’t want to plug your stuff all the time, if you’re truly providing quality information, an occasional action item is acceptable.

One of the blogs I follow is by David Meerman Scott. In one of his recent posts he talked about his brand new book, Tuned In, that will be released in about a month. But as a blogger, he has 100 advance copies to send out now.

What a great way of gaining PR! (A trick I’m going to store in my memory for the release of my next book.) He blogs on his new book, gives you tidbits of information, builds up the desire to read it, and  then offers to send you one for free.

If you have your own book coming out soon, I suggest you store this in your memory as well as a great PR move. Or if you have other products/services, how can you turn this into an idea that will work for you?

If you know anything about SEO, you’ve probably wondered, “How can I rank number one on the search engines?”

Blogs are wonderful at receiving ranking because they are search engine friendly, and allow you to connect directly with users for what they are searching for. But in order to start attracting attention from your prospects and customers, you have to keep in mind two things:

First, you need to focus on what searches you actually come up under.

A photographer shouldn’t concentrate on getting top ranking for photography. Instead she should concentrate on getting high rankings for searches of benefit to her, such as “wedding photography aspen Colorado” or “baby portraits Vancouver”.

A mortgage broker shouldn’t concentrate on getting top ranking for mortgages. Instead he should concentrate on getting high rankings for searches of benefit to him, such as “California home loan” or “Florida mortgage lender”.

Find your long tail keywords, and concentrate on getting ranked for them.

Second, concentrate on the position you rank within the top 10 results on that particular list. Yes, you have to be on the first page of the results in order to get any traction at all. But it also matters where you are placed on that first page.

To show you how different the results are, and why it matters where you are placed, take a look at a heat map from Cornell University, showing where people make the most eye contact when viewing search results. [source: Online Marketing Research ]

Getting placed as the first result is obviously better than ranking lower. But what if you have two positions? Three? All ten?

The more niched down you go with your keywords, the better chance you’ll have at monopolizing more than one position under search results.

And a blog gives you the power to do this effectively.

Are you blogging today?

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