BLOGGING FOR BUSINESS

Five Ways To Attract Your Ideal Client With Blogging

The Anatomy of a Blog Post

Sharing your blog posts and links across social media is a stellar strategy to establish your social media rock star status. This doesn’t mean endlessly posting blog titles with links. It means creating and maintaining active social media business pages then and including your blog link and other social network URLs. Make sure your blog post lives up to your readers expectations and matches the “voice” and persona you’re presenting on the social platforms are on.

How do you get your target audience to notice you? What will bring Jane Ideal Client to your social media profile and, ultimately, your website so she can see how valuable it would be to work with you or buy your product? One of the best ways to accomplish this is to start blogging.

Don’t know the first thing about blogging? No worries, I’m here to help. Here are the basics of formatting a blog post:

Remember to keep it simple, include plenty of white space. You may have to break up paragraphs in places that you don’t feel comfortable doing so, but it’s all about readability and not correct format like in a college or school paper.

Include pictures that are relevant to the blog post, and always fill in the “alt” information for the picture. The best thing to enter in the “alt” field is the title of the post or your business/website name. For example, I include HIT Virtual in my pictures.

Use plenty of bullet points, headlines, h1 and h2 headers. These are formatting elements that will attract the web crawlers (spiders) and get you listed in search results.

Disperse keywords within the first 100 words and if possible in each paragraph. But, remember to keep it natural with keywords. NOT KEYWORD STUFFING! Your first concern should be whether or not your blog post is interesting, engaging, targeted and readable to your niche audience.

Now that you know the formatting basics, let’s go over a few things that you can blog about to promote your business.

(1) Blog About Problems Your Clients Face

(and how you have solved them)

You know your ideal client well and what issues and problems they have, therefore if you blog about these problems and then mention your service as a solution you’ll find your ideal client organically. If you can show how you understand your target audience’s problems, fears and concerns and that you know how to solve them, people will seek you out as the expert. Eventually, you may even receive questions in your email or through social media, and you can use those as blogging material. I often answer reader questions in my blog or via my video tip series. Until you start receiving inquiries, make up questions that your ideal client might ask you.

(2) Blog About Successes

These are the most fun blog posts! Did you solve something for a client, and is the client willing to talk about it? Interview them on it and post it as a vlog to your blog. Seeing satisfied clients rave about your work and how you solved their problems can bring you many new clients. Put the audio and video up, as well as a transcript of the interview for a double whammy.

(3) Blog About How To Work With You

Blogging about how working with you works is a good way to educate those who don’t know how it all works. If you work virtually, some people still have a hard time envisioning how you can do work for someone, whether it’s coaching, providing a service, or even a product without having a brick and mortar space. They may be confused about the technology that enables you to work virtually. If you are selling a product, you can blog about how to order it, what to do when they receive it and your customer service process if they have questions.

By including these topics in your blog posts you’ll go far in filling your customer list. But remember, once you post a blog you’re not done. You need to promote that blog post across all your social media networks. Ask people to share it, and help you get the word out.

(4) Promoting Your Blog Like the Pros

Let’s look at how to market your blog effectively to achieve social media rock star status. There are many different types of social sites you can submit your site to for blog promotion. This includes not only social media sites but social bookmarking sites as well.

Social bookmarking sites are a great way to get quick backlinks, and if you have a great blog and people vote for it, you can get a lot of direct traffic also. Posting on these sites varies by site. However, the basic process is to set up an account (You may have to go through an approval process.) and then each time you publish a blog post, open the social bookmarking site and enter your url, keywords and a short description. It’s really that easy.

Now what about your social networks? By posting actively and making “friends” with people who are interested in your niche, you can increase your status and blog.

When you post notification of your blog post and invite people to read it, write a quick summary and create a short link (using a service such as goo.gl.com). Post this on all the social networks you belong to such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. I recommend posting to each site individually to take advantage of site specific features but you can also use an auto posting service such as Hootsuite to schedule the posts.

(5) Guest Blogging Is Another Great Tactic

Guest blogging is a method used by bloggers to increase blog traffic where bloggers write posts to be published on other bloggers’ blogs. It is one of the best techniques for internet marketing. Here are some tips for guest blogging:

Identify some blogs you would like to submit a guest post to. Check the blog author out. Visit their site, check Alexa rankings, social media profiles etc. Don’t forget your benefit is exposure to the host’s list. If they don’t have one, you get zilch. Actually, you end up paying because you have put your time into establishing the guest blogger relationship.

The host should offer complimentary services - not be your competitor. An example is if you offer branding services you may have a blog host who specializes in search engine optimization. You serve the same audience but with complimentary services.

Look at the relationship as you would a JV Partnership. Set down some guidelines/rules. Yes, in writing. This doesn’t have to be a notarized ten page document. Simply set out some rules of engagement and have everyone sign that they agree.

Blogging and blog promotion is another crucial step in becoming a social media rock star. Start creating and sharing your blog across your social networks and you will be on your way to social media rock star!!

Meet Karen Repoli

Karen Repoli, is a successful entrepreneur who has realized her dream of owning a successful business and having the freedom to live the lifestyle she desires. A seasoned business professional with 30 years of experience in office management, internet marketing and bookkeeping, she holds a Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of NC, Greensboro and is VACertified.

Karen’s practical, proven systems help entrepreneurs accomplish their business goals. Karen is passionate about helping motivated entrepreneurs so they can manifest their brilliance to the world.

She is the author of How To Create, Publish and Sell Your eBook as well as several ebooks including The Nuts and Bolts Series. This series includes books on Coaching Management, SEO, Social Media and Webinar Management. These manuals provide entrepreneurs with the practical tools they need to grow their business. Also, she is the Charleston Internet Business Examiner on Examiner.com. Examiner.com is a top 100 website, reaching over 37 million unique visitors a month.