No matter what industry you are in or what’s the size of your company, business blogging (publishing great content on a blog) will positively impact your organization across the board. Gone are the days when the only way to reach your target audience was via a TV commercial or an ad in a printed magazine.
Here are a few stats that speak tons about the importance of business blogging:
If you are wondering what makes a great blog, here are a few things to have in mind:
Publish content that speaks to your ideal audience
Use SEO (Search Engine Optimization) from the start to get maximum exposure and reach without paying for ads
Write great headlines that catch the attention of the reader: here is a free tool to check how good your headline is
Choose long-form content over short form: statistics show it performs way better.
Write a great opening that hooks the readers and makes them want to read further.
If you want an actionable process on how to write a great blog post, you can here’s a useful resource.
But if all you need is some inspiration, some great business blogging examples, this article is going to help.
I’ve put together a list that will do just that. Without further ado, let’s start!
1. Teachable – platform for online courses:
Teachable is an online course platform that allows experts to share their knowledge without dealing with hosting, coding, or payment processing. The company’s blog shares useful content for any course creator: from pricing strategies to launches and promotion strategies.
Here are some excellent business blogging examples from Teachable’s blog:
This is a no-fluff guide to everything you need to get started with your online course creation business. Each category has a few different options for every budget.
Writing for other people’s audiences is a great way to be visible and build an engaged audience. But you won’t get positive answers if you don’t know how to craft a persuasive email pitch. This post teaches course creators how to write pitches that get open, read and replied to. And yes, it’s a post I have written myself for Teachable. 😊
Tips from Teachable’s blog:
Don’t limit your content to only talking about your business and your products/services. Brainstorm topics that help your audience beyond this.
For example, if you are selling cakes, don’t just write about ingredients and recipes. Your customers are probably also interested in topics such as baking at home, baking with the kids, baking utensils, planning a party or cake decoration.
2. Isa Welly – wellness coach for busy women
Isa-Welly is a wellness coach and an influencer with an engaged community. You might have seen her creating content for Popsugar Fitness and Adidas Women or being featured in Women’s Magazine, MSN and Harper’s Bazaar.
Fun fact: she used to be a professional dancer, going on tours with Robbie Williams, Madonna and Kylie Minogue!
Isa-Welly is an amazing, effervescent woman and, I am proud to say, one of my clients. We worked together on creating her content strategy. 😊
Here are some great business blogging examples from Isa-Welly’s blog:
According to the National Health Service, tiredness is one of the most common reasons why we see our GP. In this blog post, Isa-Welly talks about the seven reasons why we are constantly exhausted.
But she doesn’t stop there. For each of the seven causes of exhaustion, she also offers actionable tips to fight it.
This post delivers on its headline: it’s a 7-minute glutes and legs routine that will help you define your legs muscles and lift your bum up if you do them regularly. The post is accompanied by a video of the whole workout, with Isa-Welly guiding you along the way.
In this post, Isa-Welly shares how her own healing journey started (it was a hot evening in Madrid and she was dancing on stage for Kylie Minogue!) and nine lessons she has learned since then.
The main idea is that when you are on a health journey, no matter what your goals are, you need to show up for yourself the same way you show up for your family, partner and your work. Gotta love this idea!
Tips from Isa Welly’s blog:
The goal of your content strategy is to reach more of your ideal clients and make them know, like and trust you. This is how you grow your business. So don’t think that all your blog posts need to be educational in nature.
It is ok and even recommended to also sprinkle in content that talks about your story, share your quirks and content that motivates, inspires and entertains your readers. This is how you make the most out of your content.
3. Canva – drag and drop design platform
There was a time when you could only have great visuals for a marketing campaign if you hired a designer to do it for you. Or learn how to use some expensive, complicated software. Then Canva came.
Today Canva is the go-to design tool for millions of people around the globe. The company succeeded in making it easy for everyone to design stunning visuals with its professional templates, drag and drop feature and a massive library of images, fonts and icons.
Here are a few blog posts that Canva’s user find valuable:
Whether you’re starting your business from scratch, rebranding, or simply looking for logo inspiration, when you find this post you feel like you’ve come to the right place. The article provides the ultimate logo inspiration.
Without any design inspiration or design principles to follow, it can be hard to come up with a winning color combination from scratch. Canva has done the hard work for you— in this post they are giving you 100 color combinations inspired by nature, food and drink, travel, and everyday items!
Teachers and school employees are one of Canva’s ideal audiences and this blog post has been written specifically for them. It contains 23 different ways to promote a school event using design, and shares some specific templates they can get started with right away.
Tips from Canva’s business blog:
If you have more than one ideal client avatar (type of client), create a blog content cluster that’s dedicated only to them instead of creating content that you hope will meet everyone’s needs (this will most certainly cause your content to fail).
For example, Canva’s blog content has five main categories: design, marketing, branding, non-profit and teacher&students. These categories represent the five ideal client avatars of the company.
4. LiveStrong – simple healthy living
LiveStrong captures the attention of millions of people every month and it helps people make informed decisions about their health. Their award-winning MyPlate app is used by millions to lose weight and improve health.
The 32 million people visiting their blog every month tell us that their editorial content is top-notch: their team is passionate about good health and great information.
Here are some excellent business blogging examples from the LiveStrong blog:
Whole-grain foods have a host of benefits. But the claims marketed on the front of many food products’ packages can make it difficult for shoppers to correctly interpret the ingredients. This post offers useful tips on how to sift through all the options and marketing claims to land on a truly, good-for-you whole-grain product.
People with chronic fatigue syndrome have extreme tiredness that doesn’t improve with rest. So, instead of actually giving you more energy, exercise may make your fatigue even worse. This blog post does a great job at explaining what chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is, how it affects your ability to exercise and offers tips on how to exercise when you are dealing with this problem.
Tips from the LiveStrong blog:
Headlines are the first thing that people see when they go to your blog. Based on what they read, they decide of they leave or continue reading your post. Make sure you know how to write headlines that catch the attention of your audience.
Many of the most engaging headlines on the web contain numbers. Numbers are “brain candy” and LivingStrong knows it. Just look at their blog and you’ll see it. 😊
5. Trello
Trello has one goal: helping teams work better together. And their blog is all about that.
As a former management consultant, I can attest to the fact that when you work in a team, project management means less stress and less mess! To put it simply, project management keeps you on track so that your team can focus more energy and attention on what matters most: producing a top-notch project. This post goes through all the steps to take a project from idea to launch, without being overwhelming.
The last year has been all about learning how to work from home, with all its challenges! Everyone knows that a leader’s emotions can trickle down to the entire team. In this post, Trello’s team covered the topic of “team psychological safety” and offered five specific methods any leader could use to lead with compassion, empathy, and care.
Trello boards help businesses run smoother. This post shows six ways a team (from human resources to IT) can use Trello boards to manage current projects and organize their company’s priorities.
Tips from Trello’s blog:
Although your blog’s main goal is NOT to directly promote your products and services (you should have a sales page/shop page for that), you can find creative ways to talk about them. As long as they will educate, inspire or entertain your audience, you are safe.
6. The Homeworker – online and print magazine
The Homeworker is an inspirational magazine that helps the modern homeworker thrive. In 2020 they got a lot of attention, of course, due to the whole pandemic situation.
Before Covid-19 and the virus-induced lockdown, working from home was seen as a perk, a desirable benefit. When Coronavirus hit, the number of homeworkers shot up almost overnight. The blog posts analyses how this situation has impacted our work routines and make predictions about the future of work in the years to come.
This post discusses the importance of good ergonomics when working from home and offers good ways to work optimally, beyond choosing the right equipment.
This blog post is an interview with a nutrition expert, but with a “work from home” angle. If you have a home office (it’s ok if it also counts as your kitchen table, like in my case!), you probably know how tempting it is to take a short break from a boring task and open the fridge just to see what’s in there.
Or maybe that’s only me? 😊 Anyway, I found this blog post to be useful.
Tips from The Homeworker blog:
Invite other people to share their knowledge and tips with your audience, as long as there are not your direct competitors. This is a great way to offer even more value to readers while spending less time creating content.
7. Passion Planner
When Angelia Trinidad faced lots of anxiety after graduating from college in 2012, she decided to create a tool to help her regain control over her life: a paper planner that would help her focus on what really matters. The rest is history: Passion Planner is now a company with a global community of over one million people.
I have been using it for the past year and I love it!
Heikala is a well-loved Finland based illustrator and she designed one of the covers for the 2021 Passion Planner collection. In this blog post she talks about her creative process, where she finds inspiration, and how she stays motivated to keep creating.
This article breaks down how to set goals (minus the stress) and presents five types of goals you can create. And while doing so, of course, they use a lot of visuals to showcase how these goals would look like on the Passion Planner.
Having structure, good studying skills and striving to work smart, not hard, will allow you to accomplish goals one step at a time. This blog post is a compilation of back-to-school tips that will help you stay focused and on track with your deadlines.
Tips from the Passion Planner blog:
When it comes to marketing these days, it’s all about making an emotional connection with your audience. Use your business blog to show the human side of your brand by putting the spotlight on the people you work with: the owners of the business, an employee, a supplier / a client / a business partner.
8. The Budget Mom
What started as a single mom’s personal blog about living a life on a budget she could afford evolved into a popular brand and profitable business. From married financial advisor to a single mom with $77,000 of debt — Kumiko Love has been through it all. Now she uses her own journey of struggle to help others get control of their finances.
Budgeting is already tight, especially in today’s world. By being aware of the different types of bank fees, you can protect your money and achieve your financial goals. This post is a checklist of common bank fees and tips to avoid them.
The idea of budgeting when money is tight can feel overwhelming. But a good budget isn’t about restriction or doing without. It’s about freedom. This post shows how using a well-planned budget will help you afford the things that matter most to you, no matter how much money you make.
There are many advantages to homeschooling, but unfortunately, it isn’t free. And if you have multiple kids, this can add up quickly. This blog post lists seven ways to homeschool your kids on a budget.
Tips from The Budget Mom blog:
Before writing any content (actually, before even starting any business!), you need to know your audience inside out. Get inside their minds and find out what keeps them awake at night, what are their desires and goals. Then create content that helps them achieve those goals, even if that means taking one small step toward a better life.
9. Meet Edgar
Laura Roeder created Edgar in 2014 so that professionals could manage their social media with more consistency and in less time. Today Edgar, pictured as a funny blue octopus, grew into a popular brand and a multi-million business.
Here are a few articles from their blog that I enjoyed:
With over 322 million monthly active users, Pinterest represents a huge opportunity for building up a recurring revenue stream from affiliate sales of products, programs, and services. In this guide on how to use Pinterest for affiliate marketing, the writer spoke with Pinners who consistently drive traffic to their affiliate links—and get paid for it.
• Pinterest Trends: The Beginner’s Guide
Whether you’re strapped for content ideas, or you’re looking to grab attention from a wider audience on Pinterest, this guide will help.
Unlike most social media sites, Pinterest delivers super valuable insights via numerous charts and metrics. But with so much on offer, it can be overwhelming to know what to look for.This post covers which metrics are important, how to track them, and how to make smarter decisions and achieve your goals for audience growth and traffic acquisition.
Tips from Meet Edgar’s blog:
Statistics show that long-form content works best. When people come across a detailed guide that SERIOUSLY helps them, they start to trust the brand/company / expert that wrote it. Long-form content gets you more of what you want: more online visibility (social shares, links), more proof of your authority and industry expertise, and more engagement.
10. Buzzsprout
BuzzSprout is a user-friendly podcast hosting company and their blog is about the ins-and-outs of podcasting. Here are a few great examples of business blogging from their team:
The internet is a powerful tool for finding the answers to a lot of podcasting questions, but sometimes your show can benefit more from who you know than what you know. This blog post is a list of podcasting conferences that are worth checking out in 2021.
One of the advantages of podcasts is their ability to produce highly tailored content and attract a highly engaged audience. This guide breaks down how podcast advertising works and show you how to leverage podcast ads for optimal results.
This is a blog post that offers more details on the journey of the company during a specific year: from publishing new features to starting a new social media channel and helping their audience through added-value content.
Tips from the Buzzsprout blog:
Although your blog is not the place to publish announcements and news about the company, if you already have good monthly blog traffic, you can be creative and find ways you can highlight your accomplishments via a blog post (and let more people know about this). Just make sure your blog doesn’t turn into a press release platform!
I hope these business blog examples have inspired to start your own and also offered a few useful tips on what kind of content you can publish on it. And if you think it would be nice to have some help with drafting the entire business blog content strategy for you, I got you covered.
[+ free download –my popular blog post cheat sheet and the 25 persuasive headlines swipe file]
IMPORTANT NOTE: I am not an affiliate with any of the tools I write about in this blog post, so I do not make any money if you click on the links or purchase any of them.
It doesn’t matter what industry you are in. It doesn’t matter if you are a solopreneur or you have a few employees. It doesn’t matter what your favorite marketing tactic is
The one must have skill today is writing effective blog posts.
Why? I am glad you asked.
Research shows that blog posts are still the #1 asset for engaging with your audience and generating warm leads for your business. In fact, marketers who use blogs generate 67% more leads than those who don’t. Not only that, but blog posts also cost 62% less per lead than other types of marketing efforts. At least this is what Neil Patel is saying ( https://neilpatel.com/blog/how-to-write-blog-post/) and who am I to contradict him?
I have asked a lot of people why they don’t publish more content, although they know the importance of it. The answers that came up were among the following:
I am not a good writer
I don’t know what to write about
Writing takes me forever
If this is your case, continue reading, as I am going to take all your excuses away! I believe that writing a great blog post is a skill you can learn fast. And in this article, I will show you exactly how to do it.
I have even taken it a step further and created for you:
a swipe file of 25 persuasive headlines formulas that work in any niche
a blog post writing cheat sheet
an editorial calendar template (plug in the 25 headlines, and you will have half of year worth of content that you will be eager to start producing)
You will find them at the end of the article.
Now let’s get to the meat and potatoes. I am going to show you the step by step process of writing not just any blog post, but one that will stand out, seduce your readers and transform them into hot leads as quickly as you can spell… “leads.”
Here is what we will cover:
Understanding what your audience wants to read.
How to choose your topic.
How to come up with the perfect headline every time.
How to write the blog post and what to include for maximum results.
How to easily edit and proofread your blog post.
Ok, so let’s start.
1. Understanding what your audience wants to read
As you can see, everything related to your business, even your content, begins with your client in mind. In this case, we are talking about your readers. They are your target, and you are trying to come up with the right blog post to move them one step further towards becoming your paying clients.
You want to educate, entertain and/or inspire them.
Always ask yourself: what would they love to read about this week? It shouldn’t be too hard to imagine if you think about who they are, what do they try to achieve and what are the top 5 struggles they face.
So take 5-10 minutes here and make a list of a few general topic you can write about.
For example:
Let’s say that your audience is stay-at-home-mothers who want to start a side business and earn some money while raising their kids.
In this case, a few general topics you can easily come up with would be:
the best WordPress themes for the non-tech woman,
how to make 1000$ on the side as a stay at home mother or
how other stay-at-home moms succeeded in growing a successful side business.
You see? They are all general topics related to what those stay at home moms would relate to and would be interested in reading.
2. How to make sure you have a solid topic every time
Coming up with the general topic idea is one thing. But making sure that you fill the blog post with the information that is super relevant for your audience is a different thing.
And that is because general topics are made of lots and lots of subtopics. You can’t cover them all in one blog post and you shouldn’t.
So how do you decide what is the must-have information to include so that when your audience reads it they instantly feel like you were just reading their minds?
The secret lies in copywriting.
You see, any good copywriter will tell you that, before writing any copy, they perform a lot of research to understand what their audience wants and needs and what their exact questions are.
If you want your blog post to be effective, you will do the same.
There are a lot of good ways to do this easily. I will list a few of them, the ones I use every time I write something.
Tools like Buzzsumo or EpicBeat: they are paid tools, but they also have a free test version. The way they work is: you input your general content ideas, and they will show you the top performing articles that cover this topic. In only a few seconds you will have a list of a lot of very good article ideas, which are virtually guaranteed to resonate with your audience since they are already going viral on the internet. This is a nice starting point, right?
The blogs of your competitors: here I recommend looking at the big names, and this is because they have a lot of information about the needs of their audience and they use this information to come up with engaging blog post ideas. So have a look at what they are writing about and see what you can add to that.
Blog comments: if you already have a blog where you have been publishing content, and people are already commenting on your articles then you can use this. Take a look at the comments on your blog posts and see if your readers have specific questions or if they share information about their struggles that you can address with your future articles. If you are not that advanced, you can do the same thing with the comments posted by the readers of the bigger blogs in your niche.
Amazon is a never-ending source of inspiration for me. I used it to come up with different online business ideas or to do research for my copywriting It works every time. All you have to do is to look for products or books in your niche and read the reviews of the buyers. You won’t believe what gems are in there. Of course, everything comes with a price. In this case, it’s the time needed to go through all those comments (there can be hundreds of them), but it is well worth it.
FB groups: if you know some Facebook groups where your audience hangs out, go there and use the search function to look up posts related to your topic. Then read the posts and comments. You can find some useful information.
Quora: a place where people ask questions on any topic! What more would you want? You can get a pretty good idea about what people would want to hear more of, so this is worth spending 10-15 minutes on.
www.answerthepublic.com: this is a free online tool you can use to see what kind of questions people have on a specific topic. You just write your topic in the search field, press “enter: and you will receive a big list of questions people ask online.
3. How to come up with the perfect headline every time.
People who come to your blog and see your article will first read the headline. The headline must be compelling enough to make them think “Hmmm, this sounds interesting, let’s have a look”. Otherwise, everything will be in vain, as they will leave without reading it.
The first thing to do is choosing a working title. Then work it out, based on the tips below:
Use the following structure “adjective + topic + benefit.” For example: “The quickest way to lose 10 pounds even if you are the busiest person in the world”
Make a big promise to your audience, one that you know they want and one that you can keep. For example, I could write a post called “How to start an online business and become a millionaire in 2 months”, but I am sure you’ll just walk away thinking that this is a scam and you’ll never trust me again, right?
Pick the most important benefit the reader will have after reading your blog post and include that benefit in the headline. Example:“How to start a side business and quit your job in 60 days”
Try to use words that will offer your reader an emotional benefit. Emotion sells best, and it’s the “weapon” of choice of all the good copywriters. Example: “The 5-minute read that will make you a marketing genius” (in this case the reader understands that if they read the post, they will feel smarter).
As you can see, the idea here is to seduce the readers, making them feel like you have the answers they have been looking for. Of course, you will also have to live up to your promise and deliver the value in the body of the article.
4. How to write the blog post and what to include for maximum results.
Now comes the writing part, which I know a lot of people dread because they think they can barely write their own to do list.
I have some good news: you don’t have to be the next Ramith Sethi to come up with great articles. It will probably take you more time than it takes Ramit today, yes, but you can do this.
You will begin by doing some research.
The research will help you to:
Understand more about your topic.
See what others’s wrote about it, so that you can think about what your own angle will be (save the links for the most valuable articles you found, so that you can include a few of them into your article, as a supporting reference – bonus points if the writer of that article will share yours with his audience!).
Discover the most popular articles already published on your topic, so that you can understand what the readers liked the most.
Gather relevant statistics and facts that you can incorporate into the article.
The tools I use for my own research are Google, Google scholar (mainly for statistics, facts, research articles) and Buzzsumo/EpicBeat.
I also use AirStory, which is writing online software designed for research-based writing projects. More details here: http://www.airstory.co/. (I got this through an AppSumo deal a few month ago, and I paid only $49 for lifetime access, so it was a great deal. They also have a free trial.)
Write down a high-level summary of your post
This would be the main ideas you want to write about. Then, after each main idea, write down three bullet points with mini-ideas that go under the main idea.
Then, all you have to do is to incorporate the results of your research and your own experience, theory, examples and fill in the blanks.
Write your introduction.
This should be a powerful one, a hook to make people continue reading. You can start with an interesting fact that catches attention, use an anecdote, a quote or even begin like an old-fashioned fairytale (I once wrote a blog post that opened with the phrase “It was a dark and stormy night back in 2010” and it was a hit). Be creative, try to include an element of surprise and study what others are doing. With time, you will become a natural at this, I promise.
Write your ending.
Draft your conclusion and don’t forget to insert a CTA (call to action) – think about what you want the readers to do further. The examples are many: you can ask them to go and implement what you taught them in the article, to comment, to share the article, to make a plan, to download your content upgrade, etc.
Also, brainstorm your content upgrade. A content upgrade is a lead magnet that is linked to your article. In this case, your CTA will be to sign in and download the content upgrade (list building). This is highly effective in turning readers into email subscribers. Brian Dean wrote a very detailed article about this here: https://backlinko.com/increase-conversions.
5. How to easily edit and proofread your blog post
I am not a native English speaker, and for a lot of time, when I was considering starting a blog, I thought that this would be a major setback. I was wrong.
Lots of different people will visit your blog. You can’t please everybody. The ones that matter (aka the ones that will resonate with your content and become your leads) will not pay attention to your imperfect grammar, but to the real value you deliver with your ideas.
Of course, I am not suggesting that you should forget about grammar and spelling. You should not! And with tools like Word Autocorrect, Grammarly and Hemingway, grammar, spelling, and punctuation are very easy to get right.
If you want to take it even further, you may also hire someone to do this for you. There are a lot of online services like wordy.com where a real person can proofread your text. So this is a great option if you have the budget. It is not that much, but costs can add up fast if you don’t pay attention and I know every dollar matters when you are just starting out).
6. It’s all about formatting
As David Ogilvy put it: “Write short words, short sentences, short paragraphs.” Don’t overcomplicate your sentences; they should be very easy to understand by someone who is no an expert on that topic. You are not writing for your peers, but for your ideal clients (well, unless your ideal clients ARE your peers). ?
Be consistent with your format: use the same fonts, if you make your subheadings italic, make all of them the same.
Use images. Adding a great image at the top will grab people’s attention and make them read. Inserting other visuals (images, charts) in the body of the article will keep your readers more engaged and increase the chances they read until the end (where your CTA is).
Don’t forget to pay attention to copyright. What I am using now are the amazing photos from Unsplash.com (all are high resolution and royalty free), and I also do my visuals with Canva.com and getstencil.com (both of them have a great free version).
Use subheadings to introduce your main points. This will make it easier for people to scan and then read the article. This is also good for SEO purposes if you include your keywords in the subheadings.
Don’t be afraid of using lists and bullet points. I know that there a lot of articles that use them excessively. I am tired of seeing it. But for some niches, it works wonderfully. So it all depends on who your reader is and what they prefer.
If you have some key points that the readers should pay attention to, emphasize them by bolding or italicizing.
Finally, my advice is, when you plan and write an article, don’t think about how much information should you give away. Give your best knowledge and tips. This is how you will make your readers trust you and keep them wanting to come back.
This will also set you apart from a lot of bloggers out there who think that writing 300 words list type posts is enough to have a sustainable blog and business.
The perfect example here is Ramit Sethi (again!) who gives away 98% of his content for free and based on this he managed to build a multi-million business. I also like Marie Forleo very much, because she knows how to make her (video) content engaging and fun.
But please remember.
With content marketing, high quality is never enough, you also need consistency!
Consistency is critical for building trust, getting new leads and turning them into raving fans and paying clients (more about that in a future blog post here).
Of course, I am all for publishing your best content. If you don’t provide super valuable advice to your readers, nobody will pay attention. It is too crowded out there.
But quality, while essential, is never enough per se. If you don’t publish constantly, you will never earn the trust of your readers. Your blog will be doomed to forever be a hobby, not a business.
Ok, so blogging seems to be hard enough, right? ? This is why I want to make it easier for you to write a new blog post every week (remember, quality and consistency are the keys if you want to grow your online business). So if you have some templates at your fingertips, why not using them?
This is why I put together for you:
a swipe file of 50 persuasive headlines formulas that work in any niche
a blog post writing cheat sheet
an editorial calendar template (plug in the 50 headlines here and you will have a full year worth of content that you will be eager to start writing).
Insert your best email below and I will send them to you right away.
Success! Now check your email, look for an email from me and click on the link inside to confirm your subscription and immediately download the OptIn Swipe file.
In case you’re wondering why so many write about the benefits of blogging for business: starting a blog for your business is like infusing a vitamin cocktail into your marketing strategy. Begin publishing awesome content and you will see great results!
And here’s the best part. Once the word’s out about how great your blog is, it will help your business grow for years to come.
After reading this post, you’ll understand why blogging is so important for business, even if you might think there are too many blogs out there.
Specifically, I will address the following questions I get asked all the time:
What is blogging and what are its advantages and disadvantages?
Is a business blog still relevant in 2020?
What are the benefits of blogging for business?
What are some great examples of small business blogs?
I will share a list of 40 benefits of blogging for business and will show you relevant examples for each of them. If you want to understand the advantages of blogging for business, you will love this post.
What does blogging for business mean (and how is it different than regular blogging)?
Let’s jump in.
A blog is an online platform where someone publishes content (thoughts, opinions, experiences).
People start a blog for different reasons. Here are the three main types of blogs of the world wide web.
The personal blog
This is an online journal where people write stuff about their life and share their thoughts and personal experiences. The focus of a personal blog is on the author (the blogger).
Here is an example:
The Frugal Woods blog
Reasons to start a personal blog include:
Sharing information about one’s life with friends and family or a bigger audience
Sharing ideas and views
Shaping one’s thoughts
Connecting with other people who are interested in the same topics.
Blogs are also started for professional reasons, to showcase the blogger’s knowledge and expertise in a field.
The topic blog
This is a type of blog started by a part-time or full-time blogger and it usually features content on one big topic.
The Cookie and Kate blog
The goal is to eventually start monetizing the blog (with ads, promoting other people’s products and services, selling merchandise, etc.). For this reason, in this case, the blog represents the core business.
The Business Blog
A business blog is a marketing tool. It is usually used together with other marketing tools (like social media, email marketing, paid ads, etc.) to grow a company’s market share and profit.
The Dollar Shave Club blog
This type of blog helps any business build a strong brand, reach more people and get more leads. Plus, no industry is too boring for a blog, as long as you are publishing content that your audience finds valuable.
In the past years, platforms such as YouTube, iTunes and social media networks have become bigger and bigger and they shifted the way people consume content online.
With more time spent on social media, watching videos and listening to podcasts, the question is: are people still reading blogs?
In a nutshell: YES! Now let me explain why.
First: we live in a digital world and still like to read, so we are always searching for the best blogs to read online.
Second: Google.
I don’t know about you, but I go straight to Google when looking for more information on a topic. I don’t call a friend or go on Instagram and Facebook. A classic Google search is always my first option.
Chances are you are doing the same thing. And so are billions of other people, your clients included! If you don’t have a blog, those people will never find you.
But more about this in a moment.
Now let’s look at some stats that speak tons about the importance of blogging.
My point here is: if you don’t have a blog, your business is missing out on a lot of exposure and leads.
Now, let’s take a closer look at all the benefits of running a blog for your business.
The Benefits of Blogging for Business And Marketing
No matter what industry you are in or your company’s size and type, blogging will positively impact your business across the board. Gone are the days when the only way to reach your target audience was via a TV commercial or an ad in a printed magazine.
We will go through all the specific ways a blog will help your business reach more people and increase its profit. But first, let’s have a look at the three main areas that are positively impacted by blogging:
Marketing strategy
Branding
Sales
Intrigued? Let’s see exactly how small businesses can benefit from blogging.
Advantages of blogging: a business blog will strengthen your brand
The benefits of blogging for business include building brand awareness, developing a solid reputation, and establishing yourself as an expert in your industry.
#1. It transforms you into an industry leader
By regularly publishing great content on the blog, you will showcase your company’s know-how and results. This will build up your brand authority and position you as an expert in your field.
The team at HubSpot, for example, built their entire business by growing one of the best blogs in the inbound marketing space.
HubSpot’s blog page
By regularly publishing quality blog content, your audience will trust you more and more, and will likely be more inclined to buy from you. It will also lead to additional media opportunities, higher word of mouth recommendations, and more partnership opportunities.
All of this translates into increased sales and profits.
#2. It signals your business is active
Do you know what’s worse than not having a blog? Having one that hasn’t been updated in a long time.
If people visit your blog and see that your last post was published in 2018, they will probably feel like walking through a ghost town. Your potential blog readers will leave in search of a better place.
By regularly publishing new content on the blog, you send the message to both new and returning website visitors that your business is fresh.
A blog will help your company gain visibility and build brand awareness in more than one way:
as you start ranking in Google searches, an increasing number of people will stumble upon your blog
other websites will link back to you, which will expose your blog to their readers, as well
an influencer can come across your blog, love the content and decide to share it with his followers (your content can become viral!)
a journalist can discover your content, appreciate your perspective and mention it in one of their articles or reach out to get a quote from you
All this is perfectly viable for your business, as long as you focus on one thing only: publishing excellent content that educates, entertains, and motivates your audience.
You started THIS business and not another one because you are passionate about your topic and want to make a difference (at least I hope so!).
By writing about your preferred topic, you will inevitably showcase your passion. This will make you human, relatable, making it easier for your audience to connect with you, your brand and your business.
Passion is also contagious: don’t be afraid to write passionately about your topic. It is one of the best ways to attract an engaged and loyal audience of people who will be your biggest brand ambassadors.
#5. It builds a trustworthy brand
Teachable’s blog
When you are consistent with your blog publishing, whether this means publishing every week or every month, you send a message that:
You are here for the long run
You are reliable
This will develop into credibility for your brand, which will help your entire marketing strategy.
#6. It showcases your brand personality
When you meet someone for the first time and they have a great personality, you want to become friends. Right? Your blog content has the same goal: to make the readers like you and want to start a relationship with you and your brand.
Expressing your personality through your writing is a wonderful idea. No matter the topic, infusing your individuality in the content will make your blog stand out from the crowd.
Once you are clear on your brand personality, you can sprinkle it throughout your content in several ways, like for example:
Include personal stories
Have a conversational tone
Be funny / thought-provoking / controversial
Talk from experience
Use storytelling
Use visuals that showcase your brand personality (gifs, videos, colorful or only black and white images, etc.)
By the time people book a call with you or go to the sales page, they should feel like they know you and like you. So don’t be afraid to reveal yourself in your writing. You will attract more people resembling your ideal client (and turn off those who would only waste your energy).
Advantages of blogging: a business blog will create an excellent foundation for all your marketing efforts
When you create a blog, you start building a solid foundation for your online house. All your marketing tactics will then help you build roads to this house and invite everyone to visit. This is how your business grows.
#7. It positively impacts your business long term
Once you publish a blog post, it has the potential to bring in traffic for years to come. The traffic will increase as your blog post starts to rank in Google searches.
As you publish more blog posts, you will see a “snowball” effect in your business. HubSpot published the graphic above to show how much traffic they are getting from new and old content on their blog.
#8. It transforms your website into an interesting place to check out
Your blog needs to be more than just another blog. You don’t want to become a part of the Internet noise.
You should aim to create such compelling content that people want to check it out regularly, just because they enjoy it so much. This is possible for many niches.
This is how you take your blog from a need-based one (I need to read this because I have a question) to a want-based one (I want to read this because I simply enjoy it). In the process, you are nurturing your readers and transforming them into fans – you are growing a community around your brand and business.
Your blog’s content needs to be so exciting and entertaining that people want to read it for leisure.
For example:
a restaurant can run a blog with posts on choosing quality ingredients, easy seasonal recipes, food destinations around the world, good quality cooking equipment, etc.
a fitness training company can run a blog around supplements, home workouts, nutrition, health, etc.
the LiveStrong blog
This is exactly what the founders of the award-winning app MyPlate did with their LiveStrong blog, which now is read by more than 32 million people every month.
#9. It adds a competitive advantage
One of the most impactful benefits of blogging for business is building a competitive advantage.
A business with an active blog is more likely to persuade a visitor to become a client.
Also, by having a
well-thought-out blog, with excellent content that brings value to your target audience, your business will simply stand out from the crowd and leave your competitors behind.
Example: the American Express blog adds a lot of value by regularly publishing great content on high-interest topics for their business-focused clients.
#10. It gives you valuable feedback from the market
Your blog should encourage readers and clients to share their opinions. In the comment section of a blog post, they can leave their ideas about the content, share their experience using your product or interacting with your brand.
Example: Ramit Sethi’s blog, GrowthLab, is a gold mine of examples. His writers do a great job of ending their blog posts with great calls-to-action which invite the readers to share their thoughts and struggles in the comments.
Here’s an example of a call to action which resulted in no less than 173 comments:
Result: lots of comments
You can pull out useful information from these comments, such as what topics the readers seem to engage with the most or what other topics they would love to read about.
This information will make your marketing more targeted and effective.
#11. It helps you better understand your target audience (ideal client)
By analyzing the results of your blog content (what topics get the most traffic and engagement, how much time people spend on your blog, etc.), you will gain valuable insights into what goes on in your audience’s mind. You will better understand your ideal client and their specific preferences, interests and challenges.
Examples of useful information you can discover about your target audience:
“how-to” posts are preferred over case studies (you can find this information by checking the number of shares or comments you have on different types of content)
they are more interested in content around seasonal cooking than meal prep (you find this information by analyzing the engagement on various topics)
they are more likely to subscribe to a free mini email course than to a downloadable worksheet (you find this info by checking your opt-in rates for different lead magnets you promote on your blog page)
#12. It allows you to be in control of how people perceive your brand
Long gone are the days when a business’s reputation relied either on word of mouth or (costly) TV and radio commercials.
Today, even the tiniest businesses can have control over the way their audience perceives their brand. This can be done by creating valuable and engaging content and using easy online marketing tactics (social media, Pinterest, paid ads etc.) to place this content in front of their ideal clients.
This is precisely what Suzi Whitford from Start a Mom Blog did to start a successful blog that allowed her to build a successful business and even help her husband retire from his corporate job.
#13. It helps with concept validation
Blogging is an inexpensive way to test out and validate a business idea or a new product/service before taking it to the market. By publishing content around your new idea or concept, you can test your audience’s reaction and gather data to decide if it’s a good idea to move forward.
This can help you save many resources (both time and money) and avoid investing in something that won’t bring results.
Similarly, you can start writing and publishing blog posts on a specific topic and, after a while, you will have enough validated content that you can quickly expand into a book or online course.
#14. It answers all the questions a client might have
Suppose you are spending a lot of time on customer service activities. In that case, you will be happy to know that one of the benefits of blogging for business is reducing this time substantially.
Many businesses require a reliable Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section on their website – for example, if selling a piece of software people need to install and learn how to use correctly.
These FAQ pages can get long and your customers can get lost and frustrated that they can’t easily find the information they are looking for. A blog can help with this.
Instead of having a never-ending FAQ page with lots of information for each question, you can include only the basic details along with the link to a blog post where you are presenting that topic in-depth (maybe even embed a video tutorial, a diagram, or a screenshot).
This is what a popular social media scheduling tool, Buffer, did with its FAQ page:
This section will help your entire customer service process, by reducing the frequency and duration of your interaction with clients and the overall time spent answering their questions. You can also increase customer satisfaction, as they will be able to find the answers they are looking for, when they need them (like at 11 pm, for example, when you are not working).
#15. It gets more results for your buck
If the main reason you are not starting a blog is that you think it’s too time-consuming, you are not alone. This is one of the most common objections I hear.
While researching and writing great content does take a significant number of hours, you can immediately transform it into many other pieces of content for all your marketing platforms once you wrote a blog post.
This is called content repurposing and will effectively save you a lot of time with overall content creation.
Here is what you can do with a 1,000 words blog post talking about 10 tips to achieve [insert your topic here]:
create 2 Instagram posts for each of the 10 tips = Instagram content for 20 days
create 5 Facebook posts
take out 10 quotes (from any people you are featuring inside the blog post or simply quote yourself) and post them on Twitter
create 5 TikTok videos
repost it on LinkedIn
transform it into a lead magnet and run Facebook ads to it to build your email list
turn it into an email newsletter (or a mini email series)
put together a presentation for a webinar / Facebook live training in your Facebook group
create 10 images in Canva (one for each strategy) and share them in a few Facebook groups across 2 weeks (to build your expert status)
make a YouTube video by transforming the blog post into a video script
record a new podcast episode, by transforming the blog post into show notes
As you can see, when you look at the bigger picture, writing a blog post will in fact save time, while setting you up for organic traffic from Google searches for years to come.
Also, consider that the life of a blog post is a few years, while the life of a social media post is under 20 minutes. So invest your time in creating content that will continue to help your business grow as time passes.
If you want to learn the specifics steps to take, this video by Louise Henry will help you:
#16. It enables you to share what you stand for
A brand shouldn’t waste any opportunity to share what it stands for.
Your blog will allow you to practice what you preach and bring your company’s mission statement to life. Through your blog posts, you can express what your company and brand are about: your vision, your values, your approach and how your products are different from others.
This will help you attract the right audience and transform them into followers and fans.
#17. It highlights the human side of your business
When you put others in the spotlight and make them shine, they will be more inclined to do the same for you. It will also show the human side of your business.
You can use your blog to talk about your business partners, clients, founders and employees and showcase their stories, insights, expertise and achievements.
The content can have different formats (case studies, roundup types of posts, Q&As, written or video interviews, etc.) tohelp those featured in several ways: build their personal or business brand, gain more social proof and increase their reach.
The popular email marketing company ConvertKit has dedicated a whole blog section to its clients’ stories:
#18. It expands your network
Business networking is an essential part of a company’s growth, especially for small businesses. It can help you connect with thought leaders in your space, generate high quality leads (from referrals) or create opportunities to increase your visibility and reach (speaking opportunities, media interviews, participating on an industry panel etc.)
By being active on your business blog, you become more visible in your industry’s community which can lead to many opportunities to make new connections and find new ways to grow your business.
Here is a handy infographic about how you can transform your blog into a networking machine:
#19. It helps you build relationships with your clients
In a world where the competition for the clients’ attention increases every day, convincing an existing client to buy again is easier and cheaper than getting a new client.
By focusing on increasing one customer’s lifetime value (getting repeat business from existing clients), your overall profit will increase.
Blogging is a good way of keeping your existing clients engaged and ensuring your brand stays top of mind. This is a critical asset that will help you make the most out of your customer retention marketing strategy.
#20. It gets your content shared
Because your content adds value to your readers, they will share it with their friends and networks, thus bringing in more traffic. Once it gets shared by a critical mass of people, your content can become viral, ensuring growth in exposure and traffic to your website.
Example:
Of course, you should make sharing very easy, by inserting social media “share” buttons below your blog posts.
You can use free tools such as ShareThis or paid ones such as Sumo (also has a free option)
Here is what it looks like:
#21. It brings traffic
By publishing content on your blog and optimizing it for search engines (SEO = search engine optimization), you will get more traffic from Google searches without paying for it.
With every new blog post two things will happen:
new visitors will discover your blog and, thus, find your business and begin their client journey.
existing readers will revisit your blog, each time advancing on their client journey.
The more people read your content, the more sales you are going to see.
#22. It helps with Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Now let’s talk about the SEO benefits of blogging.
You want your content to appear on the first page of Google whenever your audience is searching for topics related to your brand. Otherwise, your content will never be seen (unless you pay to promote it).
Writing SEO blog posts is a big topic, but the main idea is to write content around the keywords (terms and phrases) your audience uses in their Google searches.
This is how insurance companies appear on the first page of Google for searches like “what to do after a car accident”.
Search engines prefer websites that offer a constant supply of fresh content, therefore regularly adding quality pages to your blog will create more opportunities for you to show up in searches, resulting in more traffic to your site.
100 blog posts on your website = 100 chances for a new visitor to discover your business every second. This can quickly add up and result in thousands of new leads per month.
Advantages of blogging: A business blog will make it easier for your targeted audience to buy from you
#23. It brings value to your customers’ lives
A business blog’s primary goal is not to promote products and services but to provide value to its target audience. Your content needs to serve one of the following purposes: educate, motivate, or entertain your readers.
This will create a delightful experience for them and they will come back for more. Your relationship with your audience will deepen over time and you will be able to use other marketing tactics (like paid ads or email marketing) to convert them into paying clients.
A great example of a company that does just that through its blog is Southwest Airlines:
#24. It helps you build an email list of potential buyers
People will come to your blog, read a post and then leave. Life gets in the way. Many of them will probably forget about you by the next hour or day. You will lose many opportunities to sell to all these people.
Capturing their emails is critical. It’s the only way you make sure you can get in touch with them again. And a blog will make it easier.
You need to include opt-in boxes on your blog that allow the readers to subscribe to your email list. You should also incentivize them, by offering something of value in return: a digital download, a coupon code, a free limited trial of your service, etc. This is called an opt-in offer or lead magnet.
Once they become email subscribers, you will send them regular emails which will enhance your relationship even further and gradually transform them into clients.
#25. It gets you more clients without pushing for the sale
A blog with a resourceful strategy will have content designed for people in different stages of their buying journey.
If a person is researching potential solutions to their problem, they will be most likely attracted by a valuable how-to type of post. If a blog visitor already knows how you can help them, they may decide to book a call with you after reading a persuasive case study.
When you have a captivating content strategy that ties everything together, your blog will show the right post to the right person and do all the selling for you.
It’s selling without the selling part. Who doesn’t like that?
#26. It enhances any influencer marketing campaign
An influencer is anyone who is popular among your target audience and who can influence their buying decision.
Influencer marketing means collaborating with influencers to get your products and services in front of their audience. This can take different forms, from product reviews to sponsored social media posts. An influencer might also mention your products without any incentive – just because they love it so much (ideal case!).
If you run influencer marketing campaigns, you can write a roundup post for the blog, showcasing how influencers are using your products and services. This will stay on the blog for a long time after your collaboration has ended, having a great potential to help sales down the line.
Backlinks are essential in ranking high in Google searches. Google sees every backlink as an endorsement for your blog. The more backlinks you have, the more you will show up in searches.
A backlink appears when one website references another website (links to that website: a specific blog post or any other page). When you start putting out great content on your blog, you also start getting backlinks. This is another SEO benefit of blogging.
Here is an example of a reputable blog, linking back to one of my articles:
A backlink is as good as free PR: by linking back to you, other websites put your blog (and brand) in front of their own readers.
#28. It educates and nurtures your audience
Your blog’s primary goal is to educate your audience to see you as an expert immediately. When they read your blog post, they take the first step towards building a relationship with your brand/business.
When researched and written appropriately, your blog content will do all the marketing for you. It will generate traffic to your website and then convert it into leads for your business (people who sign up for your email list, book a call with your team or go straight to a sales page).
#29. It allows you to cover a topic in-depth
When you are quoted by a journalist or are a guest for 30 minutes on a podcast, you can’t cover a topic in depth. But you can do so on your blog.
A 2,000 words blog post will better educate your audience than an 800-words one. Publishing comprenhensive content allows you to showcase your expertise while improving your SEO (search engine optimization).
Longer content also gets more shares, just like we can see in the graph below:
#30. It creates a self-multiplying effect
One of the benefits of blogging for business is that you only work once and then reap the results well into the future. This is the compound effect of great content.
In-depth, evergreen content (covering things that are valid today as well as in the foreseeable future) creates a compounding effect. Once picked up by the search engines, it will generate consistent traffic every month in the long run.
This is exactly what the HubSpot team has seen with their own blog content:
For maximum impact, update your evergreen posts at least quarterly, to keep them fresh.
#31. It improves your email marketing strategy
Email marketing is powerful, but you can’t send promo emails all the time. This approach will only make people want to get off your email list.
For the best results, your strategy should include emails that entertain and/or educate your subscribers. Look at an example: Jon Morrow from SmartBlogger always sends out an email with the latest post from his blog:
Your blog has the same goals as your emails: make readers trust and like you. So, you can increase your email campaigns’ efficiency by sending content taken from your blog posts. This will enhance your entire email marketing strategy while making the most out of your time, as you’ll repurpose your blog content.
#32. It can become a content house for your entire business
A blog is an excellent way to create a content hub for your entire business, that every area/department of your business can easily refer to when needed.
This is even more relevant if you embed all kinds of content formats in a blog post: audio files to a video, an infographic or a slide presentation.
For example, let’s say you are selling a subscription-based digital design software. Your customer service representative can easily send a link to a blog post to a client who needs to learn more about all the different designs they can create by using your software. You can even create easy step by step tutorials (how-to type of blog posts) to help them.
Let’s see an example from Canva’s blog:
The same blog posts can be used by your sales representatives to demonstrate to a potential client how easy it is to work with your software.
#33. It upgrades your social media content
A few months ago, a client told me she hasn’t started a social media account yet because she was intimidated by the thought of having to post something every day – she was not confident she could come up with enough content ideas all the time.
You might handle your social media content creation yourself or you might have a VA or a dedicated social media person to help you. You might be more active on Instagram or you might prefer focusing on TikTok.
No matter your specific situation, if you have a blog you’ll never run out of great content ideas for your social media game plan. And, since the content is already created, you will save precious time.
Here are a few ideas on how you can repurpose blog content for social media posts:
Put together an infographic
Create multiple images with tips
Write a quote (you can quote yourself or someone featured in the blog posts)
Write a two-phrase summary of the blog posts (the main idea/ main lesson learned) and share it with a link to the blog post
Use the blog post to create a video script and for a YouTube video
Another extra benefit is increasing the quality of your social media content altogether. Since you are committed to only publishing top-notch blog content, by using it on social media you’ll have top-notch content here as well.
Your posts will not become part of the noise and you’ll see more comments, shares and clicks (people love sharing great content).
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#34. It creates more opportunity for your business to be discovered
As mentioned before, the more pages your website has, the more chances it has to rank up in search engines. Search engines need fresh content to index every day, which increases your opportunities for being discovered in searches.
But you probably only have 3-7 pages on your website and chances are that you are not updating them very often (think about how many times you have updated your “Home” page over the past 12 months).
Having a blog page and publishing regular content , will solve this problem and set you up for organic traffic from searches. The more blog posts you publish, the more pages your website has.
#35. It keeps readers longer on your website
By writing a blog post and inserting links to other content on your website (to another blog post, to your sales pages or your “Work with me” page, etc.), you will further guide new or familiar readers further into their client journey.
Depending on how you build your links, your readers will have the opportunity to learn more about your brand, read more useful content that position you as an expert in their minds, discover your products and services, go to a landing page where they can sign up to your email list, etc.
This is an easy strategy to make the most out of every blog visit, increase the time blog visitors spend on your website and effectively push your readers forward on their client journey.
#36. It creates more promo opportunities for your offers
People search Google because of two reasons:
They are looking to educate themselves on a topic (for example they might search something like “how to tie a bow” or “keto weight loss”)
They are looking to buy something (searching for things like “best vegan restaurant in London” or “gift ideas for new moms”)
Your blog posts will come up in those searches if you work on your SEO (search engine optimization). These people will discover your website and check it out to see if your content helps them with whatever they are searching for.
Now, let’s imagine that you are selling T-shirts with funny messages and someone is looking online for this exact type of T-shirt. Google suggests them to check out one of your blog posts where you wrote about the different types of T-shirts people can buy from you. Maybe the blog post is called “5 Funny T-shirts To Buy For Father’s Day”. This blog post includes links to your shop page, where people can place an order.
The reader has actively searched for “funny T-shirts” on Google, with the intention of buying one (or more). This means that they have high buying intent. They will read your blog post and a part of them will click on the links inside the post to learn more about colors, prices and how they can order.
Once they click, they are taken to your shop page and they can place an order immediately. So each blog post can be an opportunity to promote an offer, converting readers into clients.
Here is an example in action: an organic dairy farm with a blog full of yummy recipes. Each recipe includes ingredients that can be purchased from the farm’s online store.
#37. It helps you showcase what your products and services can do
No one likes an unpleasant surprise. Heck, some people don’t even like a pleasant one!
Social proof is an essential part of the sales process for any company: is crucial to prove that your products and services are doing a fantastic job at solving people’s needs and that your past clients loved them.
Also, people love a good “before and after” case study, especially in specific areas with a high visual component like home improvement, weight loss, personal styling, website design, etc. It is essential that they visualize how their life, home or body will look after working with you.
The easiest way to share a case study is via a blog post. All you need is a few high-quality pictures that showcase the transformation. Once this is done, people can come across it via Google or you can send the link to anyone who asks for examples of your work.
#38. It helps you get more sales
With an array of similar products and services to choose from, your clients will make buying choices based on their subjective perception. People will choose the brand that they know, like and trust the most.
Your blog can help them choose your brand.
By publishing great content that your readers particularly enjoy, they will like your brand more, until it becomes natural to choose you over your competitors.
#39. It boosts your PR efforts
When you send pitches to the media, you can include a link to your blog. A well-written blog signals that you are an expert on your topic to any podcast host, editor, journalist or TV producer. They will be more likely to consider your pitch.
If you also have a significant amount of monthly traffic to the blog, it makes sense to use it when you have a special announcement that you want your target public to know about. Think of a press-release kind of content where you can share news about your company, the launch of a new product or a new valuable partnership.
Here is an example from the Starbucks blog:
This is a more advanced tactic and should be used wisely, as your blog’s goal is not to become a PR platform for your business.
#40. It is fun!
This is my all times favorite benefit of blogging for business. Blogging is hard work, but it’s fun too. This is especially true when:
you are passionate about your topic: when I am writing for my own blog, I lose any sense of time. I can spend hours without needing to take a break. This is how much I enjoy it. But I am sure it would be a different experience if I had to write about a topic that bores me to death.
you like writing: if you don’t, consider outsourcing the blog posts writing part to a freelancer – you’ll thank yourself later.
you start seeing results: more email subscribers, bigger launches, substantial profits and taking your business to the next level.
Ok, so now you have it: a complete list of the 40 benefits of blogging for business: this is how a blog will help you reach more people, build your brand and grow your business.
So, what next? Well, let’s take a quick look at the things you need to pay attention to as you start defining your blogging strategy.
How to get the best results from your business blog
Blogging takes time and effort. If you just start writing, with no strategy and plan whatsoever, you’ll soon feel like you are shooting in the dark. Here are a few things to consider as you start your blogging journey.
Have a strategy for your business blog
If you don’t take the time to create a clear strategy for your blog, you can end up writing and publishing every week for months without seeing any results coming in: no traffic from Google searches, barely any new leads, not to mention any sales.
But how do you even start drafting a strategy for your blog? Start by answering these simple questions:
What do you want to achieve with publishing content on your blog?
Examples: authority (brand building), organic traffic (from search engines such as Google), email subscribers, people who book a call with your sales team, etc.
This will further dictate your content topics, blog post format (a detailed “how-to” type of post versus a case study to showcase how your product/service changes the life of your customers) and call to action (what action do you want people to take after reading the blog post)
How many blog posts will you publish every week/month/year?
Important note: more blog posts don’t necessarily equal more traffic or more leads. It is much better to focus on writing high-quality content (that is truly helpful for your audience) than on quantity.
Who will create the content strategy?
This means deciding what topics to write on. If you want your content to appear in Google searches, you need to plan your content strategy with SEO in mind, which takes a lot of research. You can take an SEO course or work with someone who can help you.
Who will write the content?
You can write everything yourself, you can assign this to a member of your team, you can hire a freelancer or even work with a content creation agency.
How will you promote your blog content?
Write down all the social media platforms that you are already active on and choose the ones where your clients are most engaged. My recommendation for those who don’t have a team is to start with one platform and go all in. Once you start seeing results, you can bring other platforms into the mix.
Other promotion methods to consider are: reaching out to influencers in your space, including links to your new blog posts in your email newsletters, using paid ads, etc.
How will you track and measure the impact of blogging on your business?
Based on your blogging goals, you need to have a simple system to track and measure your results against that goal. This can be as simple as a spreadsheet that includes, on a monthly bases, all the traffic numbers, new email subscribers, number of comments, new booked calls, etc.
What budget will you assign for blogging?
Whether you decide to do everything yourself or outsource it to a freelancer, you need to set a budget for it. This can include things like: SEO research tools (I use Ahrefs), freelancers, proofreading and editing work, any SEO course you need to take if you choose to do everything yourself, etc.
Be consistent
Just like any other marketing strategy out there, blogging takes consistency and commitment. Google loves fresh content and you will not appear on the first page of Google if you only blog when you find some free time.
You will make your life easier if you focus on publishing quality, long-form, evergreen content. It is more time consuming to write it, but once you created it,you’ll only need to update it a few times per year (even less) and you’ll have evergreen content that your business will benefit from in the long term.
Deliver on your promise
Writing compelling headlines is essential, as their job is to attract as many people to your blog. But once those people read the headline and decide to read further, you need to give them exactly what you promised in that headline (and even more!).
There is nothing more off-putting than extraordinary headlines that set the expectations high, followed by average blog posts that fail to deliver on the promise. If your headline is “The Ultimate Guide on How To Create Graphics In Canva”, you’d better write a blog post that’s worthy of its headline.
Keep it simple
Many have a hard time trying to explain a process or a concept to someone who is not familiar with that subject. Remember, your audience is probably not made up of your peers (unless it is!). Stay away from industry jargon and complex sentences. Use words that your audience would naturally use when searching for this topic on Google.
The average American adult reading level is that of a 9th grader. Therefore, you need to use simple words and sentences that are short and not complex, which can be a lot harder than it sounds! Most online writers are surprised to see how high the reading level of their content is.
You can use tools such as Hemingway to check out the readability level of any text.
And a final note:
With millions of blog posts published every day, make sure you don’t just become part of the noise. Start with a content strategy that focuses 100% on providing value to your ideal audience, dive in and stick to it.
This is the only way to have a blog that is not just a blog, but also a lead generation machine.
Have you ever found yourself staring at that blank screen and wondering why it is so hard to write another blog post? I mean, you are an expert in your topic, so you know what you are talking about. So, what is the real problem here?
Usually, all you need is just a little inspiration to start with. It is much easier when you already have something, to begin with, and not just a blank page that looks like it just makes fun of your lack of creativity. I get it, I had too many of these moments and it was not funny at all.
So what should you do?
The first thing to do, when you have one of those moments, is to reframe it a little bit. Instead of asking yourself “What should I write about today?” you will ask this “How can I help my readers today?”. This simple trick will make it much less overwhelming, and I bet that only from this small change a few blog posts ideas will already come to your mind right away. Don’t you believe me? Just try it.
Now, you will go through this list of different blog post categories, and you will choose one, based on your desired objective (provide value, provoke emotion, engage, promote etc).
Provide Value
– The Listicle:
This is a list of things/steps to take/tools that your audience needs to have. People are lazy (myself included!), so list articles are always very well received (and they are very easy to consume, so people can get immediate value out of it).
– The Tutorial / How to post:
I am sure that you have many things you can teach your audience, so choose one and write a step by step tutorial. You can use screenshots or video to make it clear. This will help you a lot with growing your expert status fast.
– The Case study post:
People love a good story, so make sure you talk about a specific person (this could be one of your existing clients, or people you helped out for free, or even yourself). Talk about a specific strategy and include real numbers. For example, instead of telling them how your client doubled their productivity (what does this mean exactly?), tell them how your client achieved the same results working 2 hours less.
– The Well researched post:
Research will always make your content more credible in the eyes of your readers. Choose the topics you are interested in and set up a Google email alert: this will deliver daily to your inbox the latest articles on your topic. Then you can save them in a special folder and whenever you want to write a research blog post you go there and sum it up. Make sure you write this article from your own angle, take all the research, use it, and come up with your ideas and conclusions. Reference back to the research articles to back it up.
– The checklist:
Everybody loves a good checklist. It is very easy to consume and easier to implement. Write it as a blog post and don’t forget to also include it as a content upgrade (you can easily make it pretty by using something like Canva or Word/PowerPoint/Excel).
– The ultimate guide:
This works particularly well in list building, as it gets a lot of shares. Not a lot of people invest the time to write an ultimate guide, so you will stand out if you do it. You can also offer the pdf version as a content upgrade.
– The FAQ post:
If you are already established in your business and have launched a few products, I am sure you already have a good list of questions your audience asked about your topic or about your products. So you can write a post and address these questions.
– The infographic post:
If you want to mix the content format a little bit, you can take one of your popular articles and turn it into an infographic. In this way, you will address various learning styles.
Talk about someone else
– Profile post:
Write an article about an influencer in your field. It doesn’t have to be the biggest star, he/she should be someone who is more established than you are and who has had nice business results. After you publish your post, share it with that person (by email or over social media). Influencers are also people, like you and me, and people love it when somebody puts them into a positive light, so they will most probably share your blog post with their audience. This means more eyeballs on your work.
– Interview post:
Keep a list of people who you admire, who you like, who took actions and achieved things, who have a story that resonated with you. Then reach out to them and ask for an interview. It doesn’t have to be something fancy: you can send them your questions via email and receive their answers, or you can do a video interview – it is up to you). You can even have a monthly interview series.
– The “best from the web” post:
If you feel particularly lazy or just have a bad day and can’t focus on writing something original, just quickly research some useful articles/videos on your topic and include those links in one “content curation” type of posts. As long as the content is super useful for your audience, they won’t mind it is not yours. In fact, there are bloggers out there who have this as their business model, and they are quite successful. Content is king, and great content is… well… THE KING! 🙂
– People/Blogs/Companies to follow post:
As someone who loves to stay updated with everything related to your field, you must know people who are worth following or clogs that are worth reading. So why not use this information to write a blog post?
– Expert round up post:
Brainstorm specific topic that falls under your niche. Then research and make a list of people who are experts on those topics. Reach out to them and ask them one particular question that you know is a popular one among your audience. Feature their answers into a blog post.
Get emotional
– Motivational / Inspirational post:
Self-motivation is hard to maintain so, from time to time, what everybody needs is a good inspirational story. Find one, whether is your own or someone else’s and write a post about it. You can also include related quote cards, to enhance your message and impact.
– A special time of the year post:
Whether it is Christmas time, the first day of spring or the back-to-school season or just the Oscar days, you can always find different special events to write about. Of course, you will find a way of incorporating these events into your topic. For example, you can write about how the back to school season gets you into the launching mood again.
– Share a personal story:
you can write about an important life lesson, your big dreams, your goals for this year, your big “why”, a time when you were a mess and how you managed to get out of it, a time you were the happiest. Personal stories will make you a human, a relatable person, so your readers will feel like they know you and like you more. And that is key to any brand building strategy.
– Share a success/failure:
this is also a personal story, but it is one strictly related to you building your business. Every entrepreneur has failures and successes along the way so why not share those? You will educate your readers, and you will also take advantage of the “like and trust” factor that will come with this type of article.
– Behind the scenes:
this is quite popular. You can share how a typical day looks like for you, or how your home office is organized, or how you managed your last launch. Just keep it relevant. If you only talk about how you like to have your coffee in the morning, people will get bored (unless you are Oprah or George Clooney!). Show them something interesting, something they can relate to and that they can use as a positive example. Especially in the online world, it gets lonely sometimes, so it always enjoyable to see how other people are doing this.
– Off topic:
I don’t encourage you to publish too many off-topic articles on your blog, but one every 30 regular posts should be fine. It will break the regular pattern of your content, so your blog and brand will be more interesting.
– Destroy a myth:
it seems to me that we are living in a world full of myths. Between “I made $1 million in one month with no sweat” and “I am working around the clock on my business, I am making hundreds of thousands of dollars every month, I am a good mother of 7, I cook every day, and I look like a supermodel”, all you need is a breath of fresh air. So take notice of what are the myths in your industry and write a post to bust them, one at the time. People like honesty. Plus, this type of content usually gets a lot of shares, because it is controversial.
Entertain
– Educational content presented entertainingly:
if you have a little acting spark in you and can act naturally in front of the camera (something I wish I would!), then you MUST include some form of entertaining content into the mix. Video works best for this type of content. Start your YouTube channel and stream your online “tv show”. Need some inspiration? Check out what Marie Forleo is doing with her MarieTv: great speaker, valuable content, funny elements thrown in – https://youtu.be/ucu9n47PNIU
– Parody post:
are you tired of seeing those things in your industry that should not happen? Are you sick of all the myths and misleading information? Then write a post about it, using parody. It gets your message across, and it certainly is entertaining. Check out what Bushra Azhar is doing with her Lucy Diamond McDreamy character: https://www.facebook.com/persuasionrevolution/videos/658953160973033/
Be Useful
– The Review post:
you can write a detailed review of a tool you are using for some time, a product you have just purchased, an interesting book, an online course, etc.
– The survey results post:
for this one you will perform a survey among your audience (using something simple like SurveyMonkey or a simple poll in a Facebook group), then you analyze the information received, formulate the conclusion and write all about it. This technique applies well also to the “research” type of blog post.
-The new trend post:
whenever some new marketing strategy or technology enters the market, I am usually one of the latest adopters. So for a (long) time, I just like to watch other people experiment with them, before deciding if I should also do it or not. This was the case with live webinars, then Periscope and now Facebook lives, for example. But if you are not like me, if you are always happy to test the latest thing, do it and then document your experience and your results in a blog post or video.
Engage
– Answer question:
whenever you come across a question related to your topic, collect it in a file and then answer those questions with a blog post.
– New freebie post:
I guess you already know that you should periodically test new freebies on your website so that you attract new email subscribers. Every time you upload a new freebie, write a short post about it and let your audience know, just in case they also want it.
– Contest post:
host a giveaway. Besides building your email list fast, you can also reward your existing readers. And who doesn’t like to be rewarded, right?
Promote
– Featuring Clients (case studies):
showing what your clients have achieved by using your products or services is one of the most effective ways of persuading other people to buy from you. It is basic human psychology.
– Income reports:
I have seen a lot of examples lately of people in the online business world who fully disclose their monthly earnings with a detailed blog post. Pat Flynn is maybe the most famous example. He also mentioned that he considered stopping these posts but then saw that they were so popular that he reconsidered. So you might want to write something like this if you are comfortable with telling everyone how much money you make. Again, it is basic psychology. People are curious to know about things that we tend not to share: secrets, behind the curtains, inside peek and especially money, of course.
– Launch post:
there is no secret that content is a big part of any launch, or at least it should be. So whenever you plan a new launch, take this into consideration and plan your blog posts accordingly.
As a side note, I want to say that while I have mostly written about blog posts, you can use the same ideas for a vlog, if you enjoy this more or if you just like speaking more than writing.
This is it. Think of a topic that will help your audience, pick your format from the seven categories and start writing.
I know there are a lot of categories listed above, so I have also put all the blog post ideas in a convenient one-page list. You can download it, save it to your computer, print it and use it, so that you will never run out of blog post ideas again.
Do the words LAUNCH STRATEGY give you shivers? Bear with me, I promise that by the end of this (long) post, things will look a lot brighter.
This is what we will cover:
Why you need a strategy and a plan?
The difference between a strategy and a plan.
The super benefits of having a launch strategy and plan in place.
1. My own launching story
Back in January 2015, I was busy as a bee. I was a wife and a mother of a 5-years old; I was working +60 hours every week and, during weekends, I was cooking, cleaning my house and doing laundry. Then, one sweet day, I found out that I was pregnant and then spent the next four months throwing up every other hour and dying for a full day of rest.
But I couldn’t take a day off. Oh, no. I had important projects to finish, millions to make for all my important clients (to keep them and my boss happy). This is what it takes if you want to be a senior management strategist for five different Fortune100 companies at the same time. Basically you must play all your cards right, otherwise you are screwed.
Thinking about my situation, I suddenly remembered all these expensive online marketing courses I had signed up for, hoping one day I will have my own freedom business.
You see, I don’t drink or smoke. I don’t collect brand bags or designer shoes. I hate shopping malls. I have never been to a spa in my life. I collect online courses. This is my thing. And I know that some of you will resonate with me here. 😊
I immediately knew it: IT WAS NOW OR NEVER.
I have recently read that at 35 years old people begin to hate their jobs. I don’t know if this applies to everyone (I hope not, this would be weird and sad at the same time), but it sure applied to me.
I hated my job not because it was boring, oh no! Quite the contrary! The projects I managed taught me something new almost every day. And sometimes, during a good “office politics” scene, I was feeling like watching a good psychological movie (but without the nachos and salsa). I swear.
I hated my job because it kept me from living my life the way I wanted to.
I wanted to focus more on my family, I wanted to have the time to know my kids. Not know, but KNOW them. I couldn’t do this while working +60 hours every week and taking only two weeks of holiday every year.
I wanted to be able to take time off whenever I needed it, without getting “the look” from my manager. Something had to give.
That morning, I made myself a promise: I was going to launch an online business and replace my corporate income while working from home.
But boy, have I mentioned being busy and pregnant? Well, if I was going to do this, I needed a solid plan. Luckily, I had previously prepared complicated launch plan for hundreds of small and big companies, so it was not new territory for me.
That day I secured my URL and over that weekend I stayed in bed and launched my DIY (ugly looking) website (with lots of throwing up pauses, of course, not because of the launch anxiety but the pregnancy).
WHY AM I SHARING THIS?
I am telling you all this because I have talked to lots of people lately who were just starting an online business (selling a service, a physical product or a digital product) and they hope just to hit publish and then watch those sales come in.
Nothing wrong with hoping, of course. The problem was that they had no plan at all. Unless, spending your mortgage on Facebook ads without knowing what to watch for, is a plan. This never works. Except if you were born the luckiest person on this earth, in which case you don’t need to read this, just go and enjoy your life (btw, I hate you). 🙂
I was surprised at first. But then I got it. It was not them; it was all the “overnight gurus” that make you believe this is possible. You know, that “How I became a millionaire in 2 months while taking fake selfies and spending all my time on Instagram” bullshit.
The internet gets more and more crowded and everyone talks about copywriting and sales pages and landing pages and ads and traffic and everything else. All those are very important things, yes, but not by themselves.
Who is talking about starting with a strategy? Only a few people. Wanna know why? Because strategy is not sexy, is not seducing. The word “strategy” will just make you want to go back to your bed and take a long nap or binge watch “Suits” on Netflix. Yes, I agree, the series will not be the same after Meghan Markle moved in with Prince Harry, but please, let’s get back to the strategy.
The thing is that, if you don’t know where you want to go, you will never get there.
You MUST have a clear idea in mind about what your overall objective is. And for this you only need to answer these simple questions:
1. What is my overall sales target for this year?
How much money do you need to make in 2018 so that you feel comfortable, motivated and convinced that this online business thing will work for you? Write this number down on a piece of paper and put in where you can see it every day.
2. What is my sales target for this particular launch?
You will most likely have a few different launches (or re-launches) in 2018 to reach your final sales goal. Think about your first (next) launch and set a launch sales target. If this is your first launch and you don’t have a big audience and a big budget to gather one quickly, then don’t aim too high.
For my first launch, I projected a sales target of 1,000$. I only had close to 100 people on my list and I was too scared to invest in paid ads. I decided to start small and see how it goes.
Choose a target that seems feasible without making you nervous. If this is not your first launch, then use your previous experience to set your next launch sales target.
3. What is the price of my product/service?
Depending on your product and your market, this could range from a 10$ e-book to a 1000$ course or coaching package. Or even more, of course. If you want to understand everything about pricing psychology I recommend listening to this material: Ramit Sethi talks about how to set your prices
4. What is the estimated conversion rate?
The conversion rate is the percentage of people who see your sales page and purchase your product or service. You can easily calculate it by dividing the number of sales by the total sales page visits.
Now, all the gurus are telling you that you should expect a conversion rate of 1-2%. I will contradict them. There is no standard rate. It all depends on different factors like the engagement of your list and on how persuasive your launch assets are + how useful your product is for them, of course. I had launches where my conversion rate was +30%.
5. How many subscribers do I need?
Here we will calculate the exact number of subscribers you need to reach your desired launch sales goal. The magical launch formula that will lead all your actions from now on is:
number of subscribers = sales target */ (conversion rate* price)
Let’s take an example here. Let’s say I have a sales target of 1,000$ for my launch. Because I will be clever and persuasive with my copywriting, I estimate a conversion rate of 10%. The price of my product is 100$.
Based on the Magic Launch Formula, the number of subscribers I need to reach my launch goal is:
1000 / (0.10*100) = 100
This means that I only need 100 targeted subscribers to make 1,000$ from my launch.
I bet you can have those subscribers in one week. I show you exactly how in other posts here, on my blog. So if you are just starting out and have list building anxiety, stick around.
Now here you can find a very useful tool, you can use to set your income goal for one year, based on what products you plan to launch, how many launches you want to run and your prices. Input your information below, download and save this tool on your computer.
Download yours now!
Success! Now check your email to confirm your subscription and download your Launch Sales Simulator.
This income simulator is something basic that all the big companies are using (of course, they have these scary spreadsheets with lots of information prepared by those serious finance people and consultants – I was one of them), but the essence is what you see here.
Play with this tool, visualize the possibilities and internalize it. Once you see the numbers, everything will seem less scary and a whole lot more motivating, I promise.
For example:
In 2018 I want to make 15,000$. I can sell:
– a 50$ product (a small email course) to 60 people * 5 times.
– a 100$ product to 30 people, every 3 months.
– a 300$ product to only 5 people * 10 times.
Now imagine if in 2019 you will have all those three products ready and you will launch them all. That’s a total yearly revenue of almost 50,000$.
You see? All you need is a valuable product that efficiently solves a burning need and then you’ll find 5-60 people to sell it to. I am sure you can find those people! Everybody can.
From my experience:
I added 350 subscribers from 2 quality guest post, so why can’t you?
I added 370 new subscribers in 2 days with promoting a very valuable opt-in in 3 Facebook groups, why can’t you?
I used cheap Facebook ads (10$/day) last December (a crazy month with high ads cost for marketers) to add 150 subscribers in 3 days.
This is what your strategy should look like. Now let’s talk about your plan.
The Plan = the exact steps to take to implement your strategy (reach your yearly objectives).
To draft your plan you will answer the following questions:
What will I sell?
At what price points?
When will I launch and for how many days?
How will I launch: via an email sequence, webinar, challenge, free email course?
How many subscribers do I need? How I will add them: opt-in (one or more), marketing plan for promoting my opt-in.
Individual launch plan: what do I need, by when, what steps I need to take and when?
Then EXECUTE the shit out of your plan.
Wow, that was a long email, with lots of information. If you made it so far, perfect! You know how to start planning all your steps to take and reach your financial objectives for this year.
I am wondering: was this useful for you? What is the one thing you walked away after reading this? Let me know in the comments below.
Download this free Launch Sales Simulator tool, play with it and enjoy its magical motivational superpower. Suddenly, your next launch doesn’t seem too scary, right? 🙂
[+ free download: the OPT-IN ideas swipe file – 60 great opt-in example for every niche ]
As I was scrolling my Twitter feed today, I saw this hilarious post that featured potential reasons why you are probably single:
“Last time I went in for a checkup my doctor asked me what birth control I was using and I answered:
– My personality.
She laughed so gotdamn hard she had to put her clipboard down.”
It made me think: this is just like in the online business space, where your “opt-in personality” can scare away your audience. Whether your lead-magnet truly sucks (it’s you), or they just don’t immediately see the value it brings on the table (it’s them), it doesn’t matter. If you don’t change something quickly, you are doomed to be alone forever.
This is tragic because no email subscribers = no business.
And no business = your freedom dreams crushed.
The good news is I can help you change all this is as little as one day. Yes, you heard me right. I will share with you the exact steps to take if you want to copy my results:
An opt-in that, when promoted in one FB group, gives you 365 comments in 1 day
An opt-in that once published on your website gives you a 60% conversion rate
An opt-in that, once you are running ads, is so attractive that it gives you leads for a few cents.
All of these without being a “guru,” a native English speaker or having hundreds of happy clients that are dying to write fabulous testimonials for me.
Wanna know how? Let’s dive in.
1. Find out your USP
First things first, you must be clear about your USP. This stands for Unique Selling Proposition and it means you must know what your service/product is and who is it for.
If you know this already, that’s great. If not, let me help you quickly solve this. Fill in the blanks below and here is your USP.
“I help [insert your target audience] with [insert their general problem you can solve] by [insert your solution]”
Like in my own example:
I help TIME STARVED ONLINE ENTREPRENEURS with their LAUNCHING STRUGGLES by TEACHING THEM SMART CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGIES THAT WORK.
2. Choose your ideal client (and my counterintuitive advice on why you should NOT brainstorm around the ideal client avatar)
Once you are crystal clear about your USP, let’s get to the famous “ideal client avatar” step.
Except: I DON’T BELIEVE IN A CLIENT AVATAR. This avatar might work great for SF movies, but that’s about it.
This is what most people recommend: brainstorm the shit out of your ideal client avatar. When I was just starting out, I did the same. And guess what? It gave me months of procrastination, of not moving on with my business because I was so unsure what I brainstormed was the real thing.
And it was not about the easy questions like “are they a man or a woman?”. Oh, no. There were questions like: “What keeps them awake at night?” that got me stuck. I could have kept fantasizing for hours and then ending up wondering if I got this right at all.
Maybe it was my previous career as a finance and management consultant; maybe it was my experience with writing hundreds of business plans for small and big companies, maybe it was all those times I helped businesses identify the profit leaking sources and take measures to close them quickly. One thing is for sure: not one of those business experiences relied on going onward with an idea without testing it first to make sure it works.
So, please excuse me if I don’t trust those highly priced business coaches who sell this like this is the natural thing to do. Because IT IS NOT.
So I did things a little bit differently. I went to a Facebook group filled with people who were in my general audience (women who wanted a freedom business). I chose one person I knew and whom I WOULD HAVE DONE ANYTHING to have the opportunity to work with. In fact, when I tried to put a face to my “ideal” client avatar, that was the person that immediately came to my mind.
I reached out to her (we previously talked about our business struggles) and I told her about a new product idea I was working on. I asked her if she would hop on a call with me for 20 minutes to answer a few questions I had. She agreed.
3. Do your research to figure out what they want
Earlier on in my business process, when I was validating my product idea, I went to Udemy and searched for courses on my general topic (content marketing) that had at least 100 good testimonials.
I also performed a basic search on BuzzSumo for smaller topics within my general topic that had lots of shares (more than 10k shares in the last 12 months).
From doing this two things (which only took 30-40 minutes), I ended up with more than 30 different ideas I knew I could use for my opt-in. But I had no idea which of them would be the most attractive to my ideal clients. This was exactly what I was going to find out during my call with my ideal client (which was real, not some avatar).
Before the call, I prepared a list of questions. These questions helped me not only easily finding out what the most relevant struggles were (bye-bye brainstorming forever!), but also making her open up and going deep with her answers.
What I mean is that I didn’t get generic answers like “I would like to have more guest blogging opportunities but don’t know where to start”, but things like “Every time I want to open my laptop to research potential websites to write for, my research anxiety kicks in. After 5 minutes of staring at the Google page I feel like my brain freezes and then I begin doubting my entire business building abilities. Am I ever going to do this when I can’t even come up with one darn website that would be great for my brand?”.
See the difference?
4. Choose one thing and narrow it down
Your paid solution (the product or service you want to sell) is something that will help your clients solving their problem. We know that.
But how do you come up with the perfect opt-in idea that makes your subscriber scream “Give me more of that!” and then immediately taking out the credit card and purchase your product?
Things are pretty straightforward; you just have to answer the following three questions:
Does this solve a small part of my customer’s problem (like the first steps they need to take towards solving their problem)?
Is very easy to consume and implement?
Is this so good that other people I know charge money for it? Don’t be afraid to do this. The internet is very crowded today and, if you are only starting out, the only chance to stand out is to give away for free something extremely valuable. And then having a strategy in place to rip off the benefits of doing this, of course (more details will follow in my next emails).
Now, if you want to see some great examples of lead magnets that tick all the boxes above, I have put together for you a free download you can immediately access: the Opt-in swipe file with 60 lead magnet ideas for every niche. Fill in your info in the box below and enjoy it.
Success! Now check your email, look for an email from me and click on the link inside to confirm your subscription and immediately download the OptIn Swipe file.
5. Free or low-cost tools you need to put together a highly converting opt-in offer
Once you found your winning opt-in idea, you can easily put it together, by using free (or almost free) tools like:
Graphic design tools
I have tried a lot of free and paid tools and the only ones that worked for me are Stencil and Canva. Both of them come with a FREE version.
Shooting videos and video editing software: your laptop/smartphone camera and free software like Screencast (for Windows) or iMovie (for Apple products).
An email management system like MailChimp (which has a free version) or ConvertKit for delivering a free mini-courses as your optin.
For quizzes: take a look at Typeform (www.typeform.com) which has a free version or the quizz builder from Thrive Themes. I’ve heard very good things about both, but I never used them personally.
Also, bear in mind that even free stuff (like your new opt-in) should have a sales page (which in this case is the opt-in page). Even if you don’t sell something for money, your visitors still need to decide to give you or not their email, based on what they see on the opt-in page. A few tips here:
– make the opt-in benefits clear: tell them what they will get AND how this will help them with their problem.
– make it easy for them to sign up: considering leaving out the “first name” box, even if you love personalized emails. The recent studies show that this can dramatically increase your opt-in rate. Also, don’t write a lot of copy here: a one-paragraph description of the opt-in and three bold benefits are more than enough.
Let’s see a few good examples:
6. Conclusion
As Marie Forleo, one of my mentors, says: everything is FIGURATEABLE! If you are stuck with your opt in idea, or the opt in you currently have doesn’t convert well, there is hope. You can change everything in as little as two days.
What does this mean? Let me show you.
Let’s say that you have a monthly traffic of 1000 people and your current opt in converts at 5%. This means you add 50 new subscribers every month.
Now let’s say you revamp your opt in offer and increase your conversion rate to 60%. This means you will add 600 new subscribers every month only from this change.
How would your business change if you could pull this out?
I put together for you an OPT-IN ideas swipe file with 60 great examples of lead magnets that you can use for immediate inspiration.