Is Your Professional Blog Performing?

If you are a business owner (or business anything), there is a 100 percent chance that you want to increase your customer base. If that statement is true, you need a blog in order to attract the attention of new prospective customers. Assuming that you have a blog already, you need to ask yourself if it is performing to its full potential and attracting new people (as well as existing customers).

Why does your business need a blog?

There are actually several reasons why your business needs a blog (it is not a matter of a luxury, it is a matter of a necessity). On a very basic level, your blog must contain rich keywords and key phrases so that people can find you when they are searching for the products and/or services that you provide.  If your content is written correctly, it will help you to boost your reputation as a business owner, increase your credibility and the credibility of your business, position you as a subject matter expert, and, ultimately, help you to increase revenue through more sales. Of course, the looming question at this point is, how do you make that happen?

The first stage–Searching

In order for you and your business to be found, as stated previously, you need to have an online presence that makes it easy for those who are searching. The other person will search online and your business will come up (hopefully, at the top of the search engine’s pages). If your content is top-notch, the person will find your content and read it all the way to the end. Again, if your content does what it is supposed to do, the other person will want to read more of your content and will not only look for more content online but will also want to interact with you.

That interaction can be online or it can be in person. Often, the in-person interactions start after you have already established your relationship together. Once that person has gotten to know you and trust you, it will be an easy step for him or her to become a loyal customer. That is pretty much the entire process in a nutshell. However, let us break it down here so that it becomes abundantly clear to you.

Searching for what you are offering: There are many different elements that go into your presence, which enables the other person to find you when he or she is in need of what you are offering. The first thing on the list is search engine optimization (SEO). If you want to optimize your content, you need to use tags, including title, meta-tags, and all other tags for your content (specifically blogs).

The next thing that you need to pay attention to is keywords and key phrases. You will want to be extremely careful about which keywords and key phrases you choose. You want them to have maximum effect on the people who are doing the searching. Not only is it important for you to post blogs on your own website but it is also a really effective idea to write blogs for other people as well. That will give you even more exposure. Of course, it goes without saying that your writing must be impeccable. Every aspect of your content should be as perfect as you can possibly make it.

The readers devour your content: When it comes to your blog content, you want your readers to have a voracious appetite for your content. In other words, you want them to be hungry to read anything of yours that they can get their hands on. What will naturally occur after that is that they will tell other people about your content. That is exactly what you want to happen. It will increase your exposure immensely and it increase your reputation a great deal. 

A deeper relationship and converting connections to customers: Okay, at this point, you are doing quite nicely with the other person. You have been interacting with him or her for a while now and that person has learned to trust you and to find you credible. The next thing that will naturally occur is that the person will be converted to one of your loyal customers.

The way that you managed to build the relationship is by sharing valuable, educational, compelling content with that person. The more you do that, the more you will manage to solidify that relationship. So, at this point, you have arrived. You now not only have a new customer but you have a customer who is loyal to you and to your business. That customer is your champion and he or she will do whatever it takes to make sure that other people understand how valuable your offerings are.

Now that you have accomplished all of that, you need to make sure that some other important facets are in place and are in order.

• Your website must be professional and attractive: The truth is that when a person visits your website, you only have three seconds in which to capture the attention of the reader. That means that your website must be everything that it needs to be (graphically as well as the effectiveness of the words themselves). Additionally, you want to have a website that reacts to your reader quickly. If it is slow, you are going to lose the person. You will want to provide all of the relevant information that your reader is seeking, of course. You will need to explain who you are and what you represent and, of course, you will need to give the reader a way to communicate with you.

• Your landing page must be effective: Your landing page needs to grab your reader. Speed is critical so make sure that you don’t have anything on your landing page (such as a lot of graphics) that may slow it down. Your writing should be clear and concise and it should be driven by WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?) In other words, you need to convey to the reader that you have the ability to solve his or her problem.

• Call-to-action (CTA): Your CTA is extremely important. It is the only way that have to allow the reader to interact with you. It should be clever and it should connect with the content on your landing page. Make sure that your links or buttons are easy for your reader so that he or she doesn’t have to make too much effort in order to get to you.

Conclusion 

Your professional blog need to have a profound effect on your reader. After all, you need that person to do specific things and it is the only way that you can start to build a relationship with the other person. If your blog is doing what it is supposed to do, your will see an increase in your website traffic, which is exactly what you want to happen. Your blog is a tool to communicate that you definitely know how to solve your customer’s problem.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a complimentary assessment of your online presence, let’s have coffee.

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