When you're trying to make money from your blog, it seems bizarro to just give away content. Why would people pay if they can get something for free?
The short answer: Giving away free content helps your business.
Giving away free content:
- Establishes your expertise
- Gets you (and your keywords) on the Web more often, increasing your Web presence and your search engine rankings (SER)
- Keeps your audience engaged
- Serves as a "free sample" of your premium (paid-for) product, making customers more secure in making a purchase
So what's the right way to do it?
Specifically use the word "free"
The marketing site Hubspot.com has lots of data and surveys about how free content actually helps sales. In one study, they found that using the word "free," specifically, improved conversion rates.
Be patient
Leo Babauta of Zen Habits (which has more than 100,000 subscribers), says that he gave content away for a long time before being able to charge for his advice. In his article "Why Giving Away Your Services For Free Will Get You Business," he tells his own story about how he waited to build up his audience before asking people to pay anything - it took time and patience, but it eventually paid off.
Give them a taste so they'll want more
If people don't know you, a free offer is a great place to start. For example, many sites have a free online course or ebook for readers, followed by a more advanced tier of offerings for people who are beyond 101-type material.
This strategy makes sense. Beginners don't know what they don't know. A free beginning course or book will give readers a taste of your style and offerings and reveal what else they need to learn. If they liked your free product, a more advanced course/offering/e-book will help them fill in those gaps.
Let it lead to offline offers
Paul Anater, who writes Kitchen and Residential Design, doesn't offer paid courses or anything to "buy" on his site, but it's made him incredibly connected and he constantly receives speaking, design and other paid opportunities because of his blog and social media activities. For more on Paul, read this case study on business blogs that work.
What kind of content can you give away free on your blog?
| Erika Gimbel helps improve business blogs. She is seasoned business and marketing professional who is passionate about writing to help businesses achieve their goals. Visit http://finepointwriting.com/free-blog-ideas/ to get free ideas for your business blog. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Erika_Gimbel |  |
How to Leverage Your Blog to Attract New Prospects and Grow Your Business
By Ford Saeks
By creating and effectively leveraging a blog for your business, you will rank higher in search engines, attract more targeted traffic to your site, create and establish repeat traffic, and get more sales of your products and services.You might have heard the saying, “Content is King.” This idea is now updated, because fresh content is the new king. According to Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere series, more than 900,000 blog posts are posted every 24 hours. By posting this fresh content, bloggers are able to add timely and valuable content for their readers, while at the same time increasing traffic to their sites, building relationships, and establishing themselves as the expert in their fields.
There are more than 200 million active blogs out there and three fourths of the people who use the Internet read blogs. So what’s all of the hype about BLOGS and why should you care? By creating and effectively leveraging a blog for your business, you will rank higher in search engines, attract more targeted traffic to your site, create and establish repeat traffic, and get more sales of your products and services, and that’s just scratching the surface of the benefits blogs can offer you. As a marketer for your business, your purpose is to communicate the value of your products and services. Blogs allow you to do that in a much more personal and interactive way.
When planning your blog, start by focusing on the benefits to your site visitors. What do you think they’d want to know more about? Ask your customer service, sales people, or receptionist to make a list of the top questions or areas of concern relating to your business. Spend some time researching and reviewing other blogs on your subject or topic area. You’ll quickly find many ways that adding a blog to your marketing plan just makes good business sense. As a marketing tool, it allows you to create a much more personal relationship with your viewer than regular web content. In being able to establish a personal relationship with your prospects, you will walk them through the process of knowing you, liking you, and then trusting you, which will then lead to them buying your products or services.
6 Tips to Help You Effectively Leverage Your Blog
1. Use your blog to increase credibility. Make sure your blog is well written so it entices the curiosity of a visitor. Also ensure each of your postings allows users to ask questions and clarify doubts they might have. Organize your blog so it also allows your customers to easily find the information they are looking for by using the proper keyword tags and categories and a search option.
2. Use your blog as an education-based marketing tool. Blogs serve the role of a teacher, so make sure your blog has valuable information for your visitors so they can learn more about your industry, viewpoints, area of expertise, products, and specific technical information on a variety issues. Furthermore, your blog must be a place where visitors can send feedback and questions to you, which you can then respond to with helpful, relevant information and answers.
3. Use it to boost product sales. Detail all of the benefits and usage of your product or service on your blog. This attracts prospects to your website and keeps customers updated on the latest developments with your company’s products or services.
4. Use it as a tool for internal communication. It is accessible to everyone in your company, so why not make it a central place for company information and updates? Display all of the latest events and the future plans or training for your company. Implementing these and other strategies will help your blog play a key role in helping you communicate to the employees of your company.
5. Blogs also make great Content Management Systems (CMS). In addition to regular blog postings, you can also use blog software to update and manage the content of specific areas of your website.
6. Use your blog to establish powerful word-of-mouth marketing and recommendations. Create postings that invite comments. Viewer comments on your blog create extra content which in turn will help raise your search engine rankings and attract more visitors. Also, everyone trusts the opinions of others more than they trust the marketing copy communicated by the companies selling products. Generate content that entices your prospects and customers to post their thoughts and comments on your products, services and company.
Two Distinctions
When talking about Blog Marketing it’s important to make a couple of distinctions. The first is “using a blog to help to market your website.” In this perspective, the blog is mainly used as a traffic generating strategy. Your focus is on adding keyword-rich content in various formats — text, audio and video postings — that solves your readers’ needs or desires and gets ranked by the major search engines.
The second distinction is “marketing your blog.” Many blogs are not standalone websites, but are part of a bigger website and can be used for publicity and public awareness. In this case, you may just want visitors to come and read the content posted on your blog, and then hopefully they click-through to other pages and make a purchase.
There are many reasons for building your business blog — perhaps as a place to highlight product reviews in a more personal way or to write posts which link to the products pages of your site with more product details. You can write about how people use your products or services, like case studies, and write about news and upcoming events — for use internally or externally. Remember that personal recommendations are key factors in buying decisions, so let your blog help facilitate this and in the process give potential customers helpful information to encourage sales! HBM
Ford Saeks is best known for his ability to position people and their products and services for profit through proven Internet marketing, innovative publicity and sales campaigns. He is the “go-to” guy when you want to increase targeted traffic that converts into sales. Learn more about how he can help you find, attract, and keep your customers at www.ProfitRichResults.com.
Sidebar: Blogging News From Government
On the heels of launching the first government-sponsored online community for small business this past spring (http://Community.Business.gov), Business.gov (the U.S. government’s go-to information source for small business owners) has just rolled out a blogging platform called "The Industry Word."
This new feature joins other Web 2.0 tools on the site, and brings together a lineup of notable small business professionals to share their small-business expertise with other members of the Community. As contributing members of the Community, the small business guest bloggers are covering a range of topics from franchising and marketing for small business owners, to technology, legal, tax and accounting.
For more information, visit:www.Business.gov The Industry Word (or
http://Community2.Business.gov/t5/The-Industry-Word/bg-p/IndustryWord)
(http://Community.Business.gov
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