Show People Your Skills
When you are getting your platform started, the hardest thing to establish for yourself and your business is credibility. It’s not enough to tell people you are great, you have to also be able to do it through social proof. Social proof can come from endorsements, testimonials, referrals, social media mentions and also blogging. I want to spend time on blogging today because it’s the area of social proof where you, the business owner, have the most control over getting your message out there. If you are a business owner and you are not blogging, you are missing one of the best ways to show people your skills, thoughts and
A Step-By-Step Beginner’s Guide To Blogging
Blogging is a tough thing for business owners to wrap their minds around and get excited about adding to their business. Blogs can be a great tool for reaching out to your clientele and building lifetime relationships. Blogging done right can be a tremendous asset to your business. For that reason I give you my step-by-step beginner’s guide to blogging. I have talked about the numerous benefits of writing as a business owner. There’s the benefit of writing for clarity as well as utilizing blogging as a bootstrap marketing tool. Ultimately, blogging is a great tool for building intimacy with your clients that create lifetime relationships. This post is going
Make Your Life Easier With A Blog Schedule
Flying by the seat of your pants can be an exhausting journey. With all the demands that are placed upon business owners, it’s easy to see why we always seem to be responding to crises and jumping from fire-to-fire. When your schedule is like that blogging is usually one of the last things on your list. We are going to change that today. I am not going to sit here and tell you that blogging should be the most important part of your business (unless it is your business). I will say that there are ways to make creating blog content easier. One of those things is by creating a
Can Writing Make You A Better Business Owner?
To write or not to write. That’s the question. Many business owners that I talk to feel like they don’t have time for writing or that it’s not important. Writing in and of itself won’t make or break your business but it could make you a better business owner. Writing is a great tool for self discovery and for gaining additional clarity about your business. It’s also a great way to be social in the social media landscape without being present. Today I wanted to go over some time where it may make sense to write and times where it may not make sense. Sales copy: If you are needing
How To Create Content That People Want- Part 1
You already know that getting found on the internet is important. What a lot of us struggle with is engaging readers/clients once they get to our site. Creating content is one thing. Creating good content is another story altogether. So how do we create content that readers/clients want? Today we are going to start with how your material is presented from a look and feel standpoint. I ran across on article from the Search Engine Blog that got me thinking about this. The article is titled, SEO 101 – part 12: Everything You Need To Know About Page Content. We often get so caught up into the different tricks that
Social Media is Dumb and A Waste Of Time— Pt. 1
It’s a little ironic to write the above headline for a blog post but it reiterates the conversations that I have with many entrepreneurs today. For entrepreneurs, their main concern is getting the word out about their product/service. In the majority of cases they don’t feel that social media can actually help them with marketing. Small business owners think that social media is trivial at best and a complete waste of time at worst. This may come as a surprise to some. I know it surprises me at times. It feels like Facebook and Twitter are littered with entrepreneurs, MLM participants and work from home experts. While there may be
Easy, Affordable Online Marketing
Yesterday I talked about the importance of becoming an online expert with regards to marketing. Today I want to take it a step further and talk about some of the more easy and affordable ways that you can market your business. I just read a great Q&A on the subject of inexpensive marketing this morning. In the interview, Sylvia Browder, Project Director, Business Coach, and Consultant with the Women’s Business Center, she talks about 6 methods that business owners can use to market their business. Among the online tools she recommended were: press release as well as various online platforms such as blogging, social media, newsletters, search engine optimization, pay-per-click
The Best Business Marketers Are Online Experts
As a small business owner, you are most likely the first line of defense when it comes to sales and marketing for your business. The evolution of marketing to more of an online forum, means that business owners can market their businesses cheaper than ever before. The problem that business owners face is that some are technologically challenged and avoid these online avenues for marketing their business as a result. The reality is that to grow your business on a tight budget, you need to develop some online savvy. Don’t worry, I am not asking you to be a total online expert in every area but you should have a
The Fallacy Of “The Path of Least Resistance”- Blogging Edition
Bootstrapping, creativity, maximizing resources…All of these things describe how a business owner survives in their initial stages of business. However, there is a fine line between being resourceful and not preparing yourself for the long term. Blogging is one of those areas where small business owners try to cut corners and travel the path of least resistance. Unfortunately, small business owners learn the hard way that, in some cases, the path of least resistance is a fallacy. It seems like I have been getting tons of questions about blogging lately and a lot of it is coming from inside my own house. My wife has a business and she started
In Today’s Market Everyone Needs To Be A Writer
In working with entrepreneurs on their small businesses, one of the hardest thing to get them to do is to write content for their business. The reason for that is, unless you are in the writing business, you probably don’t fashion yourself as a writer. Because of this it’s tough for business owners to find time to write a newsletter or a blog post let alone an entire e-book. In today’s information market everyone needs to be a writer to maximize success. With the free fall of the publishing industry, I am strictly talking about online mediums for producing content. (Which ironically if you use online methods properly will lead
