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How Blogging Helps You Reach More People in Your Industry

In any industry, there are many prospective customers that are not looking to buy at the moment. Instead, they go online looking for useful information.  Later on, maybe when they get their paycheck or when a new product is released, they will want to spend money.

If you can capture these people’s attention with useful information, you have a good chance of getting them to come back to your site when they want to buy something.

For example, let’s pretend you’re a online video game retailer.  Instead of just having an ecommerce site, you decide to blog about the video game industry.  You publish content like video game reviews, news, and strategy.

As you promote your blog, you’ll start getting traffic from video games fans looking for the information on your blog.  These fans are probably are not looking to buy a video game.  However, through your blog content, they’ll remember your site.

Not only that, but many of them will come back to visit your blog.  Blogs are great at attracting repeat visitors.  Blogs are chronologically arranged with the newest posts showing up first.  This means people will want to return to the blog regularly to see if there is new content.

Through your blog, you’ll gain the attention of video game fans.  Whenever these people want to buy a video game, they’ll probably think about buying the video game through your site.  They have a favorable impression of your site because of your useful blog posts.  Also, they “feel at home” on your site because they’ve been there before.

To succeed long-term in your business, you’ll have find ways to reach more people on a consistent basis.  Adding a blog extends your influence to video game fans that are not looking to buy at the moment.

Also, think about the advantage you have over your competitors who don’t have a blog.  Where will people more likely buy video games?  From a store that gives away quality free information on their blog or from a store that only has product descriptions and a shopping cart on their website?

Finally, by targeting all video games fans including those that are not in a buying mood, you’ll receive a huge increase of word of mouth recommendations.  The video game fans that don’t buy have friends that do want to buy.  The non-buyers will recommend your site to their friends as a place to buy video games because they received value from your blog posts.

Why the New PR is Personal Relationships not Public Relations

PR is now Personal Relationships not Public Relations.

I got the above comment from Tim Ferriss, the author of the bestselling book 4-Hour Workweek, in a podcast interview. Sadly, I don’t remember which interview it was.

Anyways, Tim Ferriss credits the success of his book to personal relationships. He got a lot of traffic and buzz for his book because many influential, high-traffic bloggers wrote about it.  He connected with these bloggers by meeting them in person at conferences. 

He wrote: 

My entire book cost $25,000 to launch, but subtract $18,000 of that because I was pressured to go with this PR firm at first, so I anted up $6000 a month for them to say, “We’re seeding the ground. We’re working on relationships. We’re just building up momentum.” After three months, they only got one print feature, so I cut it. The remaining money was spent going to conferences to meet bloggers in person.

Notice how much more effective he was versus the PR firm.

As the internet has become social, you don’t need a PR firm to capture the attention of your niche. Instead of hiring a PR firm, you can promote your business by leveraging personal relationships with the influential social media players in your industry. These people could be bloggers with a lot of traffic, popular forum posters, or influential StumbleUpon users.

The key is building relationships with these influencers.

But don’t just giving your product/service pitch. Instead, think in terms of a real life friendship. How does a healthy friendship work? Through give and take.

The influencers have something you want: influence over an audience. What can your give them in return?

In an interview, Tim Ferriss talked about how he made the initial connection with bloggers. Instead of mentioning his book right away, he first showed interest in them by asking them about themselves including their blog. Soon, they would ask about him and he was able to talk about his book in a natural way without having to resort to a “hard sell”.

In Tim’s example, we can see that he brought value to the relationship. He added value through his face-to-face friendship and his book.

You may not have time to go to conferences to meet bloggers like Tim. However, you can still build profitable friendships online. Jon Morrow of Copyblogger wrote a great post about networking. He gave these five great ideas: 

  • Write a guest post that gets lots of traffic and adoring comments
  • Volunteer to “vote” for any posts that they’re pushing on social media sites like Digg, Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon
  • Email them an irresistible question, hoping to spark a discussion
  • Leave lots of truly memorable comments
  • Interview them in either a post or a podcast, making sure to ask lots of intelligent questions

You may not have time to write a book like Tim, but you can create a business blog that adds value to your industry.  

Social media influencers are always looking out for compelling content. If you publish remarkable posts, many of these influencers will link to your content. But first, you may want to build relationships before talking about your posts. This greatly increases your chance of getting a link.

Creativity is the New Competitive Advantage

Mark McGuinness writes in Innovate or Die: Why Creativity Is Economic Priority Number One:

Economic advantage and professional success no longer come from the logical, analytical skills of knowledge workers but from creative, conceptual, and relationship skills.

No matter what business you are in, adding a small (or big) dose of creativity to your business can help it increase sales.

With more and more businesses going online, the internet is becoming overcrowded. There are only 10 spots on Google’s first page. If you’re in a competitive niche, you’ll need a way to stand out from the crowd and gain the attention of internet users so they keep coming back to your site.

By harnessing your creativity and producing something unique, you can capture the attention of prospective customers.

Creativity definitely applies to business bloggers. It’s not enough to create content. You need to create compelling content.

Think like a magazine publisher. Your blog is the magazine, but instead of selling ads, you advertise your own product or service. So ask yourself:

  • What will my readers find interesting?
  • What kind of content will entertain my readers?

Blogs are not college textbooks. While your posts may inform and educate, make sure to also add some flair to your posts. Check out some popular magazines in your industry. Copy their headline templates because those are the creative words that hook readers to pick up a copy. Also, find out which topics are being covered and see how those topics are being covered in a creative way.

This type of research can help you write less boring, more interesting posts.

The Foundations of Good Business Blogging

If you’re thinking of starting a business blog, you’re probably wondering, “Will it work?”

Are business blogs worth it?  Maybe you’ve heard success stories of businesses that used blogs to increase their sales and improve their brand.  Maybe you’ve heard how online business has become social, so you need to start a blog to join the conversation.

But still, you’re wondering, “Will it work for me?  Will it work for my business?”

In my experience and research, I’ve found five characteristics that successful business blogs share in common.  I believe if you have these five characteristics, your blog will have a great chance of succeeding.

1) Passion

Are you passionate about your industry?  In a social environment like the internet, passionate bloggers attract the biggest crowds.

If you love your industry, that will come through in your blogging.  Your passion will attract other people who love your industry.  These people will become your evangelists.  They will tell others about your blog and your blog will grow through word of mouth.

However, if you don’t have that passion, if you’re blogging strictly to increase sales instead of blogging to add value to your industry, people will sense your selfishness and lack of passion.  They’ll visit other blogs instead of yours.

2) Knowledge

You don’t have to be the world’s foremost expert in your industry.  But you do need to know more than the average person that’s interested in your industry.

Fortunately, you can take time to do research to increase your knowledge.

3) Focus on readers

Successful bloggers understand their readers.  Instead of blogging about topics they find interesting, these bloggers are always asking questions like:

What would my readers find interesting?
What would they find useful?
What topics would entertain them?
What are their most common questions?

You can be more focused on your readers by going to places where they hang out (like forums and other blogs) and observing their interactions.

4) Consistency

If you keep your blog regularly updated, you will have a steady stream of traffic.  Your readers will be like avid magazine readers.  They will visit your blog regularly in anticipation of your newest post.

5) Patience

Successful blogs don’t happen overnight.  There is definitely a sowing period for most business blogs where you won’t have much traffic or comments.  However, if you’re patient, you’ll reap great rewards.

Business blogging is like building a reputation in real life.   It takes time to build a reputation but every little bit of counts even in the early days.  As you continue to add value in your industry through your posts, you’ll soon have the stellar reputation that leads to much higher traffic and sales.

Why Participating on Web 2.0 Sites Should Not Replace Blogging

Web 2.0. Social media. New media. Join the conversation.

Whatever you want to call it, there is a big shift happening on the internet. Instead of just consuming information, more and more online users are become publishers.

Web 2.0 sites like forums, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube attract many amateur publishers. Also, these sites are taking away eyeballs from mainstream media sites like Yahoo, New York Times, and MSN.com.

In the rush to get the attention of these web 2.0 users, companies are posting in forums, commenting on blogs, creating Facebook pages, and producing YouTube videos.

There’s nothing wrong with this. In fact, companies that do participate on web 2.0 sites have an advantage over companies that don’t. However, many of these companies don’t have a blog. This leaves money on the table, because in the long-term, it’s more effective to send Web 2.0 users to a blog rather than to a business home page.

Web 2.0 users are usually not in a buying frame of mind, so sending them to a sales page will not give you a high conversion rate. However, if you send them to your blog, you’ll enjoy these benefits.

  1. You’ll start building a good reputation because your blog provides free, useful information on a consistent basis.
  2. Web 2.0 users will be impressed with your company since most business sites don’t have a blog. Having a blog shows them that you understand the importance of web 2.0.
  3. You will get useful feedback through blog comments.
  4. Over time, as visitors read your blog, many of them will trust you enough to subscribe to your RSS feed or your email list. This subscription lets you communicate and sell to them over and over again.