not enough, when Jonathan explained to me that we needed to be posting on all our social media 5 times a day! Oh My! That was a shock! I learned that I needed to think about the questions that my clients asked me regularly. Think about what keeps my clients awake at 2 am. What is their pain?
Gradually, my blogs have evolved into a series of tips on marketing and LinkedIn. What your blog does is educate and inform your audience... and entertain them just a tad. It takes time to build the know, like, and trust you need for business, so be aware that you probably will not get a lot of response for at least 3 to 6 months.
It takes time to build trust when you are doing it faceto-face as well. When I first moved into the Edmonton area, it took me 6 months to build enough trust with my Womanition networking group before I had my first client there.
As I have coached many clients to help them with LinkedIn and their marketing therein, I noticed that most of them were not blogging. So I thought about why they were not blogging. What was I missing with these people? One day the light bulb went on! I realized that most of them had never written anything since high school. They had no idea what or how to write in a way that would attract readers. They had‘ writer’ s block.’
This led me to realize that perhaps I could help these people by offering to write their blogs for them! When I get a chance to have 5 minutes to‘ pitch my business’ at a networking meeting, I read one of my blogs I had written about someone sitting in the room. I had no idea that the results would be so rewarding!
At a recent meeting, I read a blog about a gal who did Reiki and the gals had to guess who it was. Well, there was only one person in the group who did that, so it was a no-brainer. A few days later I received a phone call telling me that the gal I wrote the blog about had received a new client directly as a result of hearing my blog! That is the power of a blog!
A blog can attract followers from your target audience, who will be loyal to you as long as your blog is running. They look forward to reading the next tip or the next bright idea or the next answer to a question. They comment on your blog post and ask you questions... and share it with their networks.
Now, this is the key...” sharing with their networks.” People will buy from someone that has been referred to them much faster than through building trust from scratch. Every week I have people who are following me on LinkedIn and other platforms, ask me questions and send me referrals. When I answer the questions, I write a blog about it. This also keeps my followers alert to my posts.
On another note, if you are blogging and find that nobody seems to read your blog, get some advice from an expert. They can help you to target your audience and perhaps be less‘ pitchy’ with a blog. Yes, you do attach your links to your sites to the bottom of your blog and you can ask your readers a question that will make them want to get more information as a result of reading your blog, but you cannot pitch to them every time.
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