by Nancy Haberman
It seems these days everywhere you look, people are talking about using the internet to earn money. Regardless of whether you’re an entrepreneur running an online store or an artist displaying your work online, your goal should be to drive qualified traffic to your website. A qualified visitor is someone who is genuinely interested in the products or services being promoted, and who is ready to take a specific action (called a conversion), such as making a purchase, filling out and sending in an online form, or calling to schedule an appointment.
Anyone can publish a website, but unless you have a plan of action and know what you want your site to achieve, it will be next to impossible to determine if you are successful. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that once a website is posted, your job is done. That’s like opening a store and forgetting to advertise that you are open. Once a website is online, your marketing has just begun.
One way of driving traffic to your site is to tell your friends and relatives about the site. However, too many people take this one step, and this one step only, hoping for the best, and then wonder why their results are not better. What’s more, they judge their results from lack of sales, or on verbal feedback or phone calls from an extremely limited audience. If you are serious about using the internet as an income source, you’d better have a plan of action that includes expanding your market beyond your friends and relatives. After all, you do have the entire world at your fingertips.
In order for people to find your site among the millions of websites on the internet, you’ll want to achieve page-one rankings in the search engines. While this may seem like a formidable challenge, establishing and implementing a strategic plan of action is necessary in order to achieve, repeatable results.
In my opinion, a blog should be an integral part of your website, as it gives you the opportunity to easily post up-to-the-minute information, packed with essential keywords and phrases intended to direct targeted traffic to your blog, where you can include links pointing to a precise landing location on your site.
Unfortunately, this is the spot where most people get stuck, either because they don’t understand the difference between a blog and a website, or because they have convinced themselves that they don’t know how to write.
All blogs are websites, but not all websites are blogs. You can blog without learning html or web design software. The administrative section of the blog is password protected and is accessed on the internet. Learning to use the blogging software is much like any word processing software. There are lots of sites that offer free blogging software and a server where your blog can be stored. We use WordPress, but you can Google “blogging software” to find other free blogging tools. All the WordPress documentation is online and there are forums at the site where you can get plenty of help if needed.
I’ve seen too many people create a “post,” or a blog article, and miss the essentials, completely wasting the opportunity to reach out to their target market. When writing the blog post, answer the following questions with every story: Who? What? Where? When? How? Why?
Here are some guidelines to follow when writing a blog:
1. Don’t be overly informal – a blog post can be informal…this one certainly is…but since it is for marketing purposes it is important to remain professional.
2. Don’t make it into an “ad” by using the type of language you would put on a sales flyer
3. Keep links within reason and make sure they are relevant to the topic at hand
4. Make it about your customers and how they can benefit, not about how great you or your products or services are
5. Blog articles should be published at regular intervals, and can be more frequent than once a week
6. Include important keywords and phrases, as well as contact information when appropriate
7. Write an engaging headline to capture the attention of the person seeking the specific product or service you offer
Understanding how to answer important questions and include the necessary information for a blog is essential for artists and entrepreneurs. Understanding how to write a press release can be equally important and provides another marketing avenue. This will be addressed in a subsequent blog article.
Do you have thoughts on this subject? What’s missing? Comments welcome.