Get Inspired with Compass On-Demand

At a small networking breakfast I attended recently, I met five people who were either job-hunting or were there to talk about their businesses.

They brought their resumes, engaging personalities, impressive marketing materials and succinct elevator pitches and shared them with our table of 10.

But all five were missing a critical marketing tool that could have landed them a job or set them apart from their competitors.

Not one of them had a blog.  For more than an hour, the conversation centered on how each of them can reach their target audiences.

By the end of the breakfast, I lost it.

“Everyone at this table should be blogging!” I yelled.  With nine pairs of eyes riveted on me, I explained:

–A blog establishes your credibility and expertise.

–It’s like a giant magnet that pulls in traffic.

–It can impress visitors and turn them into buyers.

–Many of your competitors are blogging.

–Unlike Twitter, you can use your blog to discuss topics in-depth.

–You can engage visitors and carry on a conversation with them in the comments section.

–A blog can give you a huge online presence, even if you can’t afford a website.

One way to stay on top of what’s happening at your favorite social media site is to read the site’s corporate blog.

That’s often the first place where you’ll learn about major changes, minor tweaks, improved customer service issues and important topics like security issues and additional features. 

Facebook announced recently that it was releasing a feature that allows administrators of Facebook Pages to publish their Facebook updates to their Twitter accounts automatically.

I saw lots of bloggers discussing it, but the official details are at the Facebook blog. So are several hundred comments from Facebook users who love or hate the change. Reading the comments can often help you see quickly whether that site’s community gives thumbs-up or thumbs- down to a new feature or application. You’ll also glean lots of other helpful tips from those comments.

If the people who read that blog are ideal customers for your products or services, post your own comment. Just make sure it isn’t promotional. The best comments share helpful information, tips and advice.
 
Two other blogs worth noting:

- -If you’re on LinkedIn, don’t miss their blog. The first page includes tips on how to win new clients by optimizing your LinkedIn profile, how LinkedIn helps an entrepreneur close deals, and how to organize networking events for free using your LinkedIn network.

- -Google, the granddaddy of search engines, has an entire line-up of blogs in its blog directory.  It includes search tips, how to use Google tools and applications, and a nifty blog called Citizentube that gives lots of examples on how video is changing the world.

If you have a favorite social site, check to see if it has a blog worth following, and subscribe to the RSS feed.

Working too hard on your blog and seeing little traffic, hardly any
comments and zero sales?

It might be because you’re making one of these five frequent
mistakes:

- -You’re not blogging often enough.  Here’s my solution.  Each
week, I’m trying to reduce by at least one hour the time I spend
answering email (unproductive)and using it instead to write on my
blog.

- -Your blog isn’t focused on a topic, or a series of related topics.  If
your content is all over the landscape, you can’t get the Google
juice necessary to pull in traffic for specific keywords.

- -Your readers don’t know who you are because your name, or
your photo, or both, are missing from your blog.  If they don’t know
who you are, how in the world can they eventually like and trust
you?

- -There’s no way for your readers to subscribe to your blog
updates.  Either you aren’t offering an RSS feed, or you’re not
letting readers subscribe to automatic email alerts each time you
post.

- -You aren’t engaging your readers and making them part of the
conversation.  Instead, you’re writing only about topics you like.
Offer quizzes, write about controversial topics and ask for their
opinions, find out what topics they what to read about, or challenge
them to do something that will improve their lives.  Keep them
engaged, and they’ll keep coming back.

Those are only five little morsels from the dozens of tips The Blog
Squad shared during a teleseminar I hosted with them called “Build
Your Biz with a Blog: It’s Not an Option Anymore!–How to Build a
Professional Blog that Turns Prospects into Clients.”

You can listen to the replay at
http://blogsquad.audioacrobat.com/download/bizblog_012609.mp3