It seems these days everywhere you look, people are talking about using the internet to earn money. Regardless of whether you’re an entrepreneur using the internet to inform and find new customers or running an online store, 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. 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 lure targeted traffic to your blog, where you can include links pointing to a precise landing location on your site. In order to maintain a blog and update regularly, it’s only necessary to understand word processing and the blog interface, so you can forego learning html and complex web design programs.
All blogs are websites, but not all websites are blogs. The administrative section of the blog is password protected and is accessed on the internet. 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?
If you’ve decided you’re going to have a blog, here are some guidelines to follow:
- Establish an appropriate tone – “you,” or “yours” … not so good for a press release, but a blog post can be a bit more informal…this one certainly is
- Don’t make it into an “ad” by using the type of language you would put on a sales flyer
- Keep links within reason and make sure they are relevant to the topic at hand (some press release distribution sites frown on links)
- Make it about your customers and how they can benefit, not about how great you or your products or services are
- Post regularly – should be published at regular intervals, and can be more frequent than once a week
- Include important keywords and phrases, as well as contact information when appropriate
- Write an engaging headline to capture the attention of the person seeking the specific product or service you offer
Tags: Blogging Essentials, Blogging Tips // Add Comment »
