As previously mentioned, it all starts with great content. Writing about your business, your products, and your industry will greatly influence whether people are going to visit your site again and again. Once you get repeat visitors, then they may be inclined to opt in their name and email address into your email list. This is a very good thing because you then converted a “stranger” into a “friend.” When they start reading your email newsletter, then you have the advantage of “trusted advisor.”

Then, whenever you have a great product promotion in your business, you can let your subscriber list know first what products you have for sale that they can buy before anyone else knows about it.

Your subscribers then feel like they are “privilaged” to get into your VIP treatment. From there, your sales funnel can continue with more valuable content you give them and then upsell them with more expensive products that they may be interested in.

It is also important that you plan out the “sales funnel” process too. You want to be able to know what products and promotions you are going roll out way in advance so it looks to the subscriber that you are offering fresh and new offers in an ongoing basis. Little do they know you planned several promotions out months out in advance!

The sales funnel is practiced by the most experienced marketers out there. Plan and design your blog marketing efforts accordingly and you can’t help but make it a win-win situation for your customers and your businesses.

What you have to do is make a list of topics you plan on talking about in your blog and keep track of the number of times you write posts about each. I prefer to balance out the types of posts I make to appeal the widest readers of my blog.

Content can be in the form of blog posts, pictures and videos. If you consistently insert these items, you can’t go wrong in appealing to your audience.

Currently the best form of content (other than text posts) is in videos. Videos have proven to be very effective in generating a lot more views for your blog. Another popular way of getting your content useful is to comment on other people’s blogs. I personally found that, after commenting on one other blog, I received 20 backlink visits from that blog within one hour after posting. Very dramatic results.

What it comes down to is to generate content on a daily basis. I used to post once or twice a week but now, with more “blog” competition, I find that posting once a day keeps my stats very active. It doesn’t have to be a long drawn out post. A post of 150 words is all you need as a minimum. Just keep on writing!

You have more than enough information to keep on appealing to solving their problems. Blogging allows feedback from your customers as well. Remember in previous blog posts I stated that you need to carry on a “conversation” with your blog visitors. You make a blog post that is relevant to your visitors, and it sparks interest with them and they comment back to you. Now, just because you may not get many comments from your visitors, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t reading or paying attention to your blog. So many people are coming back to your blog and reading everything and not commenting.

You don’t realize it, but your visitors are paying attention to your blog. You will find out through checking your visitor stats. If you don’t know how to check your stats, ask your webmaster how to get into the hosting account to find these statistics. For those of you who have Google Analytics attached to your blog, you simply log in there and find out these stats.

What is important is you consistently post to your blog. In time, you will have hundreds, if not thousands of regular visitors to your blog and this is where you start monetizing your blog.

In my next blog post, we will cover techniques on how to monetize your blog.

On the other hand, a blog has a very user friendly administration area where they can add their own content. Yes, the learning curve is still there to add content, but it only takes maybe days, at most to learn.

You can find so many resources on the internet, whether through video or articles that you can find out for yourself that can teach you how to manage a blog.

For the long run, blogs are your best bet because, not only can the owner of the site manage it, but they can also grow the blog, with gaining more knowledge of how to creatively add features to it. Some of my clients who knew nothing of how to manage a blog, learned how to insert a post, moderate a comment, and add a picture in less than a week. From there, they will learn how to insert videos, add their own widgets and change the layout of the blog.

What is a relationship? It is developing trust and gaining favorable reputation with your customers. This takes time. No one wants a “relationship” thrust upon them in a short time. Japanese businessmen have a ritual where they have to know you for quite a long time before they will do business with you. They have inner patience to “give and take” within this relationship and make it in their best interests to do business with you. It is not because they got “burned” from some unscrupulous business scammer, rather, it just makes sense that they feel comfortable doing business with you after judging from your actions that likely to prove you are worthy to do business with.

It makes good sense to keep your blog content consistent to “prove” to your visitors that you are real and have value to offer them. If you sell at all, it comes down to how people buy. They buy from people they “like, know & trust.” It has been written in many creditable sales books that the relationship is the key to successful selling.

So, when blogging, keep this principle in mind. You should take the time to lay out consistent and relevent content that you know your visitors will appreciate and use. Don’t waste your time, and their time, in content that has no value. Also, keep asking your visitors and customers what they want to see in your blog. Let them have a “voice” in what they want to see from you. I guarantee that you cannot second guess your customers  on what they want from you. Asking what they want in content, what kind of additional service or product your business can provide, will be very important to your business.

Your blog’s sole purpose is truly a collaboration between your business and your customer.

I found a great video here that shows what kind of equipment he takes with him when he travels the world and still manages to post  regularly on his blog. Remember, just because you are away from home doesn’t mean you can’t keep up your blog! Enjoy.

We are an online society, and it has taken on the world stage. I truly believe that in order to survive into the future, you need an online presence. Often, in my seminars, I even intruct my students to reserve their own name with a domain name company. You can always use it in the future.

Branding plays a key in the success of your business and personal success. If you brand your name, or your businesss, a blog can do that.

If you have not had any writing experience, I suggest you brush up on writing skills. When you start a blog, you become a publisher. When you become a publisher, you are responsible to write consistently.

I am often asked by bloggers, “what can I write about?” You should look everywhere around you. What is happening in your industry? What is happening on TV that pertains to your industry. What humorous things are happening in your industry. What kind of tips and tricks can you reveal to yuor audience. There is literally unlimited amount of things to write about in your blog.

Remember that your blog is an extension of you and your experiences and dreams and hopes. Share this with your audience and your will get a following and soon, paying customers.

In planning your blog layout, you should have a clean and easy to navigate design. It should not be “cluttered” because you could lose your visitor interest if there is too much going on. What would you do if came to a blog that had a “gazillion” buttons, lots of banner ads, too many pictures and videos? When faced with making too many decisions on any website, you leave.

A very effective blog layout that has proven to be the most successful is a two column format, one post area and one sidebar, with a simple but compelling header design. There should be, on the average, 6 navigation buttons below the header graphic and always think of inserting an “opt-in” box either on the upper right or upper left sidebar. The most effective column to have the posting area is on the left side.

Just up until a year and a half ago, the most popular layout was a three column design, but it was found that it became too “busy” and the blog owner lost visits because of it.

The blog should be a thing of beauty in simplicity. People who visit blogs know where they want to go within your blog. They check out your new content and then go over the familiar areas that you set up, such as your videos, your white paper reports and other content you have available for your visitors.