Start with Why.

For some of us, this title would beg the question.

Why do you need to blog to grow your business? Blogging (writing articles) or Video blogging (creating recorded videos or Facebook lives) creates interest from real people and also search engine visibility. It helps you get found in Google thus increasing your visibility to prospects that might be looking for your services but never heard of you before.

The benchmark is 2 articles per week per target audience. But how can we blog effectively for our business? How do we actually generate new business leads from our blog?

Niche down.

So if you target audience is start-ups then choose a smaller group within this audience such as Tech Start-Ups. You niche it even further if this still constitutes a sizeable audience such as Online Software Start-Ups.

This will allow you to create two things that help you generate business. If you try to promote everything at once you ‘ll find yourself trying to be too many different things to too many people at once. This often results in very bland content which is easy to ignore.

So forget your ‘Prospect Fomo’ and focus on one small section of your business. Once you carve out a reputation for this niche you can start adding more and get traction faster on new niches you want to target. The secret is to conquer one niche first.

By focusing on these two factors you can start generating interest in your services and carve out a reputation in your niche.

 

Traffic.

Yes, it’s become so taken for granted that we have now started using SEO as a buzz word. But what does SEO really stand for or do? and do I really have any chance of using it to boost my traffic?

SEO stands for search engine optimisation, this is the process of making sure your content can be properly found and indexed by Google. What’s important is that Google knows to serve your content to the right people who are looking for your services.

This needs to be reverse engineered but I can assure you it’s not half as complex as it sounds. As time goes by optimising for people and search engines is easier because Google is improving its algorithm in a way that detects natural content and natural behaviours online. Black hat will be a thing of the past very very soon.

How can you get SEO to work for you?

 

1. Choose keywords that have traffic…

if you create content that nobody is searching for you will have a hard time to get it shared and found. So make sure you do keyword research or commission an SEO expert to do it for you and then use these keywords in your blog post titles and twice in the content. Ideally in the introduction and conclusion. You also need to use the keyword (one per article) to optimise your images. There is a property called ‘alt tag’ you can see this when inserting an image into your WordPress site or even most custom systems that are set enabled. This is a good start if you never SEO-ed your blog posts. If you’re using WordPress you might also want to download the toast plugin which helps you optimise further using a very simple checklist at the bottom of each post.

2. The “OMG this is just what I need” factor.

By niching down you create the “OMG this is just what I need” factor. This happens when a prospect lands on your site and feels sure that your service is right for them. How do you have this effect on people? This is a natural byproduct of niching down to a small sector of your target audience.

If we’re writing for Online Software Start-Ups then we know that they sell online, they need to explain a complex product to their audience and they need get people to register for their product. This puts me in a position to know the needs and problems of my clients more easily and its these problems that are key. Let’s say you sell tax consultancy. You would specifically create content that addresses the problems a tech company selling online o various countries might be encountering. perhaps you can help them understand how to scale, how to recruit remotely and still be on the right side of the law and how to charge tax and pay tax based on where the purchase of their online product takes place.

If I were in the online software business and came across this content I would feel like wow this is just the info I need. But let’s imagine for a second that I stuck with the main target market – start-ups. I might have been tempted to write very generically about company set-up recruiting your first employees and going through all the applicable taxes that start-ups may have to pay. Do you think this wold have been interesting to the Online software start-up? Of course not, although they may skim read your content they will not see you as a resource to return to because you’re not relevant enough.

If you’re now looking to target your first niche you can start by simply writing the main industry you work in, then be adding a descriptor like we did when we toolkit to Tech Start-Ups and then adding one more descriptor to niche down further.

 

Examples:

Start—Ups | Tech Start-Ups | Online Software Start-Ups

Tech Companies | Software Development Companies | iGaming Software Companies

Agencies | Digital Agencies | Email Marketing Agencies

Coaches | Health & Wellness Coaches | Weight-loss coaches

Small Businesses | Small Family Businesses | Small Family Businesses Going through rapid growth

 

Are you ready to find your own niche so you can increase dominate it in the online space?

 

 

 

Download the ‘Find Your Niche Checklist‘ to follow a process that works every time to make sure that when you blog to grow your business you get all the details right.