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Your Business Blog is Good for Business

March 24, 2010 by Kathy Hendershot-Hurd

I’ve been saying for a long time that business blogging is by far the best investment of time/energy/resources you can make for your business. Well’ now it’s official – a recent study proves that your business blog is good for business. Emarketing commerce reports:

Majority of Business Blog Traffic Comes From First-Time Visitors

Two-thirds of respondents to a survey conducted by Compendium Blogware found that more than 80 percent of all of their blog traffic was from first-time visitors. For the survey, Compendium Blogware, a social media and search platform provider, gathered data from 266 companies about blogging traffic, visitor trends and Twitter usage. … First-time visitors come from two major sources, Compendium said: referring sites and search engines.

These results are hardly surprising. Blogs – especially the WordPress variety – are extremely search engine friendly in their architecture. Combine that with the fact that the act of blogging about your business tends to create content which is rich in the keywords your desired prospective customers/clients are using to find the very solutions you and your business offer.

However, the fact that your business blog can be found more easily by your ideal customers is just the tip of the iceberg. Once those prospective customers/clients discover your business blog – the blog posts you’ve created over the months/years go to work establishing your authority.

So if blogging is indeed good for business – why aren’t more business owners blogging?

One of the most common objections I hear from business owners about blogging is that they don’t have time to blog. Sometimes this objection is based upon the mistaken belief that to “blog” means to write incessantly – creating multiple blog posts each and every day. However, it’s been my experience that most objections about perceived time poverty are instead a cover for the “real” objection to business blogging: not knowing what to write about.

In Unseen Business Killers, I offer a sure fire way to determine if “I don’t have time to blog” is a reason or an excuse.

It’s easy to determine if “I don’t have time to blog” is an excuse or a reason. If you really don’t have time to blog for your business, you can either

hire someone to blog for your business or

hire someone to assume some of your duties so you can find time to blog.

It’s just that simple. You can usually find time to do what’s important – and blogging is important for your business. It’s a great way to get found by prospective clients/customers – and it’s a great way to establish enough trust with them so they’ll take the next step and contact you.

The act of business blogging can be as simple as reworking emails you (or members of your staff) have sent to both current and prospective clients/customers. As a matter of fact, sometimes the subject lines of those incoming emails make GREAT blog post titles.

Once you’ve got a great blog post title that gets your blog found by the search engines, then get to work creating relationships. Once people find your business via the search engines, they then needed to form a relationship with the people behind your business. Building a relationship is part of the whole TRUST thing I go on about here. Building trust is what social media does best.

THAT is why business blogging is so darned good for your business. Not only can those blog posts act as bait to bring in first time visitors who are seeking the solutions your business provides – those same posts can also carry some of the “trust building” weight as well. Prospective clients/customers find your blog – read your blog posts – and decide after reading a few dozen articles that – yeah – you really can help them achieve their Goals – quench their Desires – or solve their Problems. In other words, not only can your blog posts act as bait – they can also start to work on establishing your connection to your prospective client/customer’s GDP.

No wonder business blogs are so good for business!

Creating Authority with Your Business Blog

February 23, 2010 by Kathy Hendershot-Hurd

I’ve talked a lot about how your business blog can be used to build trust with prospective clients – especially if you’re in the business of “selling your knowledge.” However, there’s another term which is emerging which may be an even more compelling reason to begin blogging for your business.

That term is AUTHORITY and it’s becoming a buzz word in the world of business blogging because business blogging is a powerful and effective tool you can use to establish your authority.

Authority is powerful stuff. According to Dictionary.com, one of the definitions of authority reads:

“right to respect or acceptance of one’s word, command, thought, etc.; commanding influence: the authority of a parent; the authority of a great writer.”

Think of authority as the natural next step in the whole “trust building” process.

Authority = trust + power… the power to motivate people to take action.

There have been lots of behavioral studies surrounding the power of authority. One of the most cited works on obedience to authority is the Yale study conducted by Stanley Milgram. In the study, inspired by the trial of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, Milgram sought to answer the deeply troubling question of whether authority could cause a person to contradict their deeply held beliefs.

In the study – volunteers were recruited and told they were part of an experiment which tested memory and learning in different situations. The “administrator” was dressed in a lab coat and armed only with a clip board. and the “student” was actually an actor. The true subject of the study was the volunteer – who was assigned the role of “teacher” in the experiment. The volunteer was instructed to administer increasing electric shocks to the “student”. The results of the experiment were sobering to say the least… 26 of the 40 volunteers went on to administer the maximum (fatal) voltage three times, despite the student’s pleas for mercy and apparent impending death. Only one participant refused to administer shocks to the student.

That’s the power of authority.

In the study – the stage for the administrator’s authority was planned carefully. The administrator was dressed in a lab coat and given a clipboard. In later subsequent studies, it appears the “uniform” is an important control in creating the appearance of authority. While the uniform in the original experiment was a lab coat and clipboard, subsequent experiments and a few well known scams have used police uniforms to create the authority required to quickly gain the trust needed to influence people to act in ways they would not without the misuse of the power of authority.

Blogs are the “uniform” of authority on the web

So if you’ve been wondering what all the “fuss” is over business blogging – it’s this: Business blogs are great tools for building authority. Bloggers in every niche are constantly being cited regularly as “reliable sources” by various media outlets. Search is a tool used by journalists worldwide – and blogs are very search engine friendly.

Which is why – blogs are quickly becoming the “uniform” of authority on the web.

However, it’s important to remember that trust – and the resulting authority – are not earned quickly nor easily. The newly minted police officer who abuses the privileges his uniform imparts is quickly dismissed from the police force. The same is true of your business blog.

Blogging authority does not come from a single blog post. It doesn’t even come from a dozen or so blog posts. In many cases, it comes from literally HUNDREDS of blog posts on a specific subject.

The path to authority begins with building a foundation of trust. You gain the trust of your blog readers by providing lots and lots of quality content. You answer the questions your readers are struggling to answer with your blog posts. You give behind the scenes “glimpses” of how you solve problems. You demonstrate your expertise time and time again through your blog posts.

Lather – rinse – repeat.

That’s how you “earn”the uniform of authority via blogging on the web. It doesn’t happen overnight – but it does happen – one authority building business blog post at a time

Unseen Business Killers

February 16, 2010 by Kathy Hendershot-Hurd

How a common business blogging excuse may be a sign of an unseen killer within your business.

Lately I’ve been inundated with stories of people battling cancer. One of my friend’s sister was recently diagnosed with the disease and a client’s sister also received this devastating diagnosis. Then I received news that the outlook isn’t bright for a client of mine who is also battling this killer disease. While she was diagnosed within a few weeks of my friend’s sister – my client didn’t discover she had cancer until symptoms forced her to see her doctor. By the time the cancer was causing her discomfort, it had spread throughout her body.

Just as early diagnosis is a key element in treating cancer – it’s also a key to combating a common unseen business killer as well.

Over the past few years, I’ve helped hundreds of client launch blogs to promote their businesses – and I’ve had perhaps just as many if not more decide against launching a blog. One of the most common excuses I hear is, ” I don’t have time to blog.”

Unfortunately, when the gloves come off – “I don’t have time to blog” is usually exposed for what it really is – an excuse.

It’s an excuse used to avoid confronting what may be literally a CANCER which may be growing within the belly of your business. Like all cancers, early detection is the key to an effective cure.

It’s easy to determine if “I don’t have time to blog” is an excuse or a reason. If you really don’t have time to blog for your business, you can either

hire someone to blog for your business or
hire someone to assume some of your duties so you can find time to blog.

Nine times out of ten, when this “either or” is presented, the REAL objection to blogging for business surfaces. It takes various forms, but it can be “boiled down” to a very simple: “I don’t know what to write about.”

AH -now here’s the REAL reason most business owners aren’t blogging. It’s not a lack of time – but rather a lack of direction.

It makes sense if you think about it. After all, we human beings always seem to be able to MAKE time to do what’s important. The working mother who exercises regularly doesn’t do so because she’s got an extra hour not available to the rest of the population – she MAKES the time to exercise. She does so because she recognizes how important daily exercise it is for her health and her sanity.

If the reason is that you aren’t blogging for your business is that you don’t know what to write about – the answer is deceptively simple:

Simply write about your customer’s GDP.

It doesn’t matter if your a B 2 B or a B 2 C – if you’re in business – you are either helping customers/clients to

achieve a goal
satisfying a desire
solve a problem

I call this magic triad “GDP – Goals – Desires – Problems. Pick one -pick two or pick all three as the reason you’re in business and then start talking about it via your blog.

If you find you can’t isolate one of these three reasons for being in business – then chances are you aren’t creating or communicating an effective marketing message for your company.

If you don’t KNOW what goals you’re helping people achieve,

If you don’t know what desires are being quenched,

If you don’t know what problems need to be solved,

Then OF COURSE you aren’t going to know what to blog about.

This is definitely a case of what you don’t know CAN hurt your business.

If you don’t know which GDP “button” to push – you’re eventually going to find yourself – and your business – in between a rock and a hard spot.

Your business blog could be the greatest business diagnostic tool ever created.

The sheer act of creating blog posts forces you to FOCUS upon prospective clients/customer’s GDP. If you don’t know your target audience’s GDP – then you know you have a serious problem in your business.

Discovering that you don’t know what your target audience’s GDP is is almost like discovering you have the earliest stages of cancer. Admittedly, it’s not good news – but it’s news much better delivered sooner than later.

It used to be that it took a competitor who who understands the target audience’s GDP entering the marketplace and inflicting “sales discomfort” to send the average business owner scrambling for a speedy business diagnosis. Unfortunately, the explosion of social media has lead to a new “symptom” for the company with a lack of understanding of consumer GDP: customer complaints being shared via social media tools.

There are plenty of reasons to hit the keyboard and start to blog for your business. Perhaps the best reason to begin blogging is the act of blogging constantly encourages you to focus upon what matters most – your target audience’s GDP.

If the REAL reason you’re not blogging for your business is that you don’t know what to write about – think of it as an early stage diagnosis of a serious problem – one that should be addressed quickly and decisively.

I don’t have time to blog

February 11, 2010 by Kathy Hendershot-Hurd

One of the most common “objections” I hear from prospective clients about launching a blog is the concern over the perceived time investment required. For many business people, the term “blogging” brings visions of hours spent preparing daily blog posts. This leads to the most common battle cry uttered by small business owners, “I don’t have time to blog.”

There are two ways to look at “blogging”. One view – the most popular one – is that in order to become a ” business blogger” one must post an article each day – or more.

It’s true – if you want your blog to BE your business – then posting daily – even hourly – is almost a requirement for success. If however, you want to use your blog as a marketing tool for your business instead of becoming your sole source of income – it’s possible to build a successful business blog in as little as an hour each week. Of course the next question you must answer is to define how you’ll measure blog success.

Unfortunately, this perceived time poverty by small business owners can lead to a number of missed opportunities in the future.

It’s almost a cliche to say that time is money. Not only does time equal money but time also affects the value of money. The time value of money states that the value of money is affected by time. For example, if you’re a rational person and you’re offered the choice between receiving $100 today or $100 one year from today, you’ll probably choose to receive your $100 today. That $100 is worth more today because it can be put to work to be worth MORE in one year than it is today.

You may think that the same “rule” holds true of the time available to you as well. Perhaps you think that the time you have available today or even this week is more valuable than time available in the future. After all, time is the ultimate perishable commodity.

It might surprise you to learn that – when it comes to the web – your time today isn’t worth as much as the time you invested last year.

When it comes to building a web presence – older content is ALWAYS better than new content. The only exception to this rule is blog posts – which momentarily get a “pass” when it comes to the “older is better” rule.

Do a search for any competitive term and then look at the AGE of the content returned naturally and you’ll see that older content is more respected content when it comes to the web. Of course, there are literally a hundred or so other variables at play when it comes to determining SERPS – but it’s an established fact that older content seems to have an advantage when it comes to winning the search game.

This preference for older content by the search engines means…

Business blogging is one of the few pursuits where the time you invest today can earn interest tomorrow.

In my blog post, “Measuring Blog Success” post – I tell my own personal story of how a single blog post created measurable results… results that literally required YEARS of preparation to achieve. Unscrupulous marketing gurus might try to package the experience as “Buy my report where you’ll learn how 30 minutes spent preparing a blog post resulted in a five figure payday for me.”

However – I’m well aware that the 30 minutes I spent preparing that initial post was preceded by literally hundreds of blog posts and years of preparation and I’m not about to try to sell you on anything less than the unvarnished truth.

The unvarnished truth is the “overnight success” stories are – 99 times out of 100 – anything BUT overnight. Many overnight success stories have taken literally DECADES of preparation.

I recently heard from a client who began blogging for his business two years ago. He recently landed a new client who told him the reason she chose him over dozens of his competitors was his blog. Even if this is the ONLY client he ever lands from his blog – his time investment in blogging has already been a measurable success.

My client writes infrequently about problems he solves for his clients on his blog. Truth be told, he probably doesn’t spend a full hour a week on blogging – but by sharing his insights via his blog – he has created a way to build the trust needed to convert prospective clients into paying clients.

Did I mention that two years ago – this client also claimed he didn’t have time to blog?

However, over the past two years – he’s build a blog filled with success stories. He also has a “traditional” set it and forget it style web site for his business – one that has 10 pages of static content. Over the past two years – he’s published over 100 blog posts which means, from a search engine point of view – he has over 100 “pages” of content.

Not only does he now have 100 more opportunities to be found via the web – he also has created an archive of client success stories – success stories which impacted one woman so powerfully that she felt compelled to tell him during their first meeting that his blog was the reason she chose to hire him.

This client’s business is growing – and as such his time is becoming much more “valuable” which means he’ll probably have LESS time to invest in “blogging” in the future. But that’s ok – because the time he’s already invested creating blog posts was time well spent. He’ll continue to reap the benefits of his blog for as long as he keeps his blog.

Anyone who tells you that you can build a successful blog – or a successful business – overnight is simply doing their best to part you with your hard earned money without as much as kiss to go with it. However, I can’t think of a better investment in time – or energy – than building your own business and the blog you use to promote it.

Unfortunately, when the gloves come off – the “I don’t have time to blog” is usually an excuse. It’s an excuse used to cover up what may be literally a CANCEROUS TUMOR which may be growing within the belly of your business. More on that next time.

Measuring Blog Success

January 26, 2010 by Kathy Hendershot-Hurd

Measuring Blog Success How do you measure blog success? Is it determined by the number of RSS subscribers? Is it determined by how many blog comments? Do you measure blog success by how much money you can make from your blog?

There are many different ways to define blog success and the list above doesn’t begin to exhaust the possible definitions of success. Because blogging is new, we’re still LEARNING about all the things blogs and other social media tools can (and can’t) do for a business.

We’re learning that blogs are a HORRIBLE “Minor Sale” facilitation tool. If your business is making Minor Sales -sales which do not warrant an investment of time or energy into researching alternatives – then a blog will probably not be a profitable investment of your time and energy.

On the other hand, if your business is making Major Sales – then a blog is almost a “must have” tool in your marketing toolbox. (Read more about whether a Blog the Best Marketing Tool for Your Business)

Unexpected Blog Success

A couple of years ago – I converted this traditional HTML web site to a WordPress blog. In making the conversion – I changed paths so to speak. I went from a “set it and forget it – softer easier way” HTML based web site to a dynamic, constantly changing blog.

While the change from a static HTML web site to a blog has meant more time and energy being invested in the “care and feeding” of the blog -it’s also resulted in some outstanding “side” benefits – benefits above and beyond introducing prospective clients to me – my thinking – and my services.

For example, last week, I got a phone call from a client who had a turnkey online training business for sale. She had contacted me and asked if I knew of anyone interested in buying her business. This is traditional marketing 101. If I hadn’t had a blog, I would have done as she had done and sent a “mass” email which outlined the opportunity to everyone in my address book. However, because I had a blog – I was able to create a blog post and then send emails to my contacts who might be interested.

For the next six weeks, I received a steady stream of people expressing interest in the business. Surprisingly – none of them were from my immediate sphere of contacts. Without exception, all of the interest in the business came from virtual strangers. Some left comments – which I did NOT approve to protect their privacy – while others contacted me via my contact page. It wasn’t an overwhelming flood of response- but it was enough for my client to set up an auto responder to deal with the inquiries.

According to my client, the quality of the inquires was truly amazing. Many were real prospects – which put her in the enviable position of being able to pick from the best offer. I’m not a business broker – nor do I play one on TV. However, with a small investment of time and energy, I helped to connect my client with not just one, but several serious prospective buyers.

My willingness to turn from the softer, easier – “set it and forget it” style web presence has been one of the best investments of time and energy I’ve made. However, I think it’s important to point out that when I launched this blog – becoming a business “pimp” was not part of my grand blogging plan. This experience just provided a very POWERFUL illustration of the unexpected long term benefits one can expect from business blogging.

There are plenty of people out there who are definitely willing to sell you their system to the softer easier way to achieve blogging success – but I’m not one of them. My “blogging help” resource is called the 8 week Power Blog Launch – not the “overnight success blog launch.” That’s probably because the one thing I’ve learned over the years is that seeking the “softer, easier way” ultimately leads to regular attendance at 12 step meetings of one kind or another! 🙂

However, if you’re looking for a reason to begin blogging for your business – the best reason I can give is you that you never can tell what future opportunity lies ahead. I have yet to say to myself, “Darn! I wish I hadn’t converted my html web site into a blog!”

With that said, I don’t recommend reckless business blogging – on the contrary.

Determining HOW you’ll measure the success of your blog is the first step to ACHIEVING blog success.

Start your blog with a plan. The old “if you fail to plan then you’re planning to fail” cliche comes to mind. However, with that said – you also shouldn’t try to “contain” the direction your business blog blog takes.

When you begin to blog for your business, it’s best to adopt an adventurer’s mindset. Be ready to accept a possible “alternate” blog success scenario. Maybe you don’t need 50 comments per post to achieve blog success. Maybe you don’t need 10K RSS subscribers to call your blogging experiment successful.

Maybe – just maybe- you’ll find a whole new way to define blog success.