Archive for category: the Say It For You blog

I like to quote the wise man who noted that everybody’s favorite radio station is WIIFM (What’s in it for me?).  When online searchers arrive at your blog, you know they got there because they were looking for information about something you sell, something you do, or something you know a lot about. If the information those searchers find in your blog matches what they are looking for, their perception is they’ve “tuned in” to the right station!

Of course, your goal is to convert those searchers into “shoppers” who move the process forward by clicking onto your website, where you hope to convert them into customers of your business or clients of your professional practice. The blog which begins the process, though, needs to be about them, not about you, as I stressed in Blogging’s What’s-In-It-For-Them Rule.

In that earlier blog, I promised to get back to testimonials and success stories, and how those fit into your blogging-for-business strategy.  Your website can include customer testimonials to boost credibility. Webcopyplus.com explains that testimonials help your business in two ways. Customer success stories and client testimonials, needless to say, boost your credibility with new prospects, helping them decide to do business with you. But, as webcopyplus.com explains, website testimonials “also foster commitment from those providing the testimonials.”

Robert Cialdini, author of the social psychology book Influence: Science and Practice , explains why that happens. “…when people take a stand that is visible to others, there arises a drive to maintain that stand in order to look like a consistent person.”

To make maximum use of the two-way link you’ve created between your website and your blog, you can build a blog post or two around a customer success story. Say you’re a realtor, and today you’re blogging about how important “curb appeal” can be when you’re marketing a client’s home to potential buyers. To illustrate that point in your blog (while earning “Brownie points” with the search engines, to boot), you can briefly allude in your blog to Sam and Susie.  These successful sellers improved the curb appeal of their residence by planting colorful flowers and painting their front door an attractive red. As a final touch for your blog, you link back to the full version of Sam and Susie’s testimonial and success story which are already part of your website.

In this way, your clients’ testimonials and success stories can be turned into a success story for your blog! Keep up that back-and-forth linking in your blogging , and before you know it, your blog-website combination strategy will turn into one big marketing success story for your business! And, just as in the Hokey Pokey, folks, “that’s what it’s all about.”

The blogosphere is enormous, with plenty of free space just waiting for your business blog, as I explained in For Business Blogging, This Space For Free. Everybody’s there on the Internet, it seems –  blogging, reading blogs, commenting on blogs. You’re ready to get started, but how, you wonder, do you plan and execute a successful launch of your new electronic presence?  . “How will people know I’ve finally arrived at the blogfest?”

As Tutor2U, a British marketing firm explains, blogs are part of what is called “pull marketing”.  Potential clients come to your blog because they are searching for information about something you sell, something you know, or something you know how to do. In contrast with, say, sending out mass mailings, which is “push marketing”, blogging is meant to address specific audiences who go online to search for what they need or to look for information on something they need to know more about.

Still, people probably won’t know you’ve arrived, at least not for awhile.  It may take a number of weeks, perhaps even a number of months of persistently posting blog entries, before the search engines, most notably Google, Yahoo, and MSN, begin to include your blog in their “indexing” rankings.  Software programs called “spiders” or “web crawlers” weigh several factors: frequency (how often you update the blog), recency (have you updated the blog recently or did you give up after the first few weeks?), relevance to the key words searchers use in their inquiry, and longevity (how long your site has been active), in addition to the quality of the information in the blog.

Speaking of recency, an article I read very recently in Speaker Magazine talks about launches.  In this case, the article’s authors are offering tips to professional speakers who want to launch books they’ve written. “A great book launch begins with well-written sales copy.” (Now, here is the part that is so apropos for business owners launching blogs): “Don’t tell your prospects how great you are; tell them how great they will feel when the ideas in your book relieve the pain they’re experiencing.”

What wonderful advice for business bloggers!  Your blog isn’t about you, not at all – it’s about them! A wise man once said that everyone’s favorite radio station is WIIFM (What’s in it for me?) Use your blog to offer searchers the relevant, up to date information they came to find.  Give it to them in short paragraphs and in conversational style.  Then lead them to take action (in another blog post I’ll talk more about using testimonials and endorsements, plus success stories). 

However you do it, though, remember it’s all about them.  How great they’ll feel when they “tune into” your website, knowing their search has led them to exactly the place they needed!