Usually this situation concerns itself with corporate sponsorship of you blog. A corporate entity will be attracted to your business message and want to partner with you by buying banner ad space or get in as a content contributor on your blog. This is a great partnership because it lends itself to leverage both of your audiences to be exposed to the other. This can generate a larger subscriber list or even cross selling of your products or services.

We found a video below that is in the fashion industry that proves out that a business blogger, such as yourself, can multiply your exposure with a corporate tie in with another complementary business.

How do we do attract local search to your blog? Simple, just make sure you mention your local city in your blog posts. Let’s say you are a florist in Chicago, Illinois. A good number of your blog posts should contain the location phrase, “Chicago florist” in it. Remember not to mention it too much. Inserting the local city phrase and your business type at least once in each paragraph.  And it is not important to reverse the phrase to say “florist Chicago,” which does not look natural in a paragraph anyway. The search engines will pick up on “Chicago florist” and make the necessary changes to address everyone searching for “florist Chicago” as well.

So, for marketing you business with a blog, keep in mind that you should always be thinking up of a promotion, at least twice a month, where you could offer a special discount or free gift only to your blog readers who are local to your business. Many business owners leave out this important way that your blog can generate new customers to your store and a great probability to make new sales in the process.

The one thing that can you can do with your blog to make you money is to repurpose your content. What is repurposing? It simply means that if you can “recycle” your blog posts into different forms of content, then you can sell this content and make profits from it immediately.

Here’s how it works. First, you should have a good number of blog posts in your blog, for practical purposes, I recommend you have at least 30 posts.

Next, go over all your past blog posts and divide it up into the various sub topics that you wrote about. Try to combine each sub topic of information and reassemble it as a self standing report. Most of your content, other than discussing your business, should be helpful tips and tricks or valuable industry information that could be valuable for your customers or new visitors to your blog site. You would not believe how many people would be interested in your material.

So now you know that your blog serves two purposes. The first is to provide search engine “juice,” the content you write triggers search engines to visit your site and therefor give you higher page rankings as you add more content. Second, the content you write can bring you hard cash in the form of repurposed content that people can use.

It is easier than you think to develop and implement an online “store front” within your blog. As we write this post, we are in process of adding a “store” tab in this blog to show you how easy it is to make a virtual shopping cart on a page of a blog.

With new blog plugins and features being developed all the time, the time is now to add this feature. Now you don’t have to place hundreds of products in your online store. It could be as low as 3 to 4 items just to “test” the waters to see what things your customers may be interested in buying just from your blog site. You could promote your online store items as “website specials” or limited time sales items to get people moving to buy quickly.

You could rotate items on a weekly basis to give your customers a wide variety of selections to show what you have on hand for them.

The opportunity to actually develop a wider selection to eventually offer up a full blown online store is not out of the question! Some online store sites have started with humble beginnings of offering one or two items and eventually grown to offer over hundreds.

This can be a very lucrative way to add profits to your business!

On the surface, it is not going to get you a list just because you have an opt in box on it. You have to do some promoting to get people to your blog and then to sign up as a subscriber. Here is how it’s done.

First, you must offer something of value in exchange for the visitor to receive for opting in to your list. Second, you must have an “end” in mind to give you your subscriber. It can be in the form of regular emails of your discounts you offer on your products or services. Or, it can be representing other company’s products and services that your subscribers would be interested in from other companies.

In either case, the old saying that the “money is in the list” holds true for marketing from your blog.

Always remember that marketing your opt in should only be one of many things you should do to market your business simultaneously. It is very important that you promote both your blog and your business with several methods on a consistent basis.

Actually, many of my clients that have been trained by me have said that they have now become aware of the many channels of marketing that they have to do at the same time. Yes, it can get tedius just to think of all the online and offline methods you have to use to make a successful marketing plan happen, but it is now more necessary to start this kind of promotion and marketing technique sooner than later!

Blogs are a “natural” to build your list because of the “optin” box that can easily be inserted into the front page of your blog.  It’s main purpose is to capture new subscribers to your list. Your immediate obligation is to serve up valuable content within each email to keep your subscribers interested.

Be sure to plan out your ongoing message sequence with your list so that it is a consistent pathway to selling them more of your products and services.

If you do your job right in keeping the interest of your subscribers as well as successfully selling them over and over, you will have guaranteed repeat sales from happy customers.

The great thing about having a business blog, is that you, as the business owner can easily add and change content in their site by themselves. Gone are the days when you had to hire a highly paid webmaster to make changes you want and had to wait a very long time before they get back with you. You can make changes quickly to your satisfaction. Although there is a little learning curve, on the average it takes about a week or two to get comfortable with the basics.

Having a blog website will guarantee you sales from the site itself and also able to drive visitors to your physical location.

You can compile a group of blog posts and make an ebook of your topic. You could give it away to attract people to come to your place of business.

You could record an audio of your valuable blog posts on a CD and sell it as a series of training or inspirational content to your customers.

You can even make a video of the selected blog posts by making digital slides that graphically explain the content you have. You can then upload it to a high viewed video site such as Youtube for exposure there and lots of backlinks to your blog site.

There are so many more ways to repurpose your content and make money with it or use it for promotions.

So when making your next post, think about the possibilites.

What is great about these events is that it is doesn’t cost much and the returns are tremendous. If you host an open house, it is just a matter of getting invitations out to your customer list, placing small ads in newspapers or local publications and making a calling blitz to businesses or customers in your target area.

What is also effective is holding seminars at another place of business or online webinars. These are very strong marketing methods that can often lead to a ton of sales in a short time. As a matter of fact, you should host these live events twice a month if you can.

If you haven’t started planning for self promoted events, get started!

We are in process of putting out a product that shows businesses how to produce these events to bring in more business.

The large national corporations blast your TV with non ending commericals of their products and tie it in with “Thanksgiving Sale,” or “Christmas Specials.” How many times have we said to ourselves, our holidays are becoming more commercial. Well, it’s a fact, that we need to get customers attention by tying in product promotions and sales with the holidays. Some may think its “selling out” but if you really look at it from a business standpoint, it makes sense.

If you don’t promote your products at this time with the holiday “tie in,” you are losing a lot of sales. The reason being that your customers right now are distracted with the holidays. What better way to grab the attention of your customers than with promoting “holiday” and your “products” in the same breath?

Don’t feel bad. I don’t think your customers are going to be mad at you for your holiday promotions. As a matter of fact, if you promote your product in a fun and entertaining way, it won’t matter. Remember those “Superbowl” commercials? They reninforce the brand of many of those products without a “sell out” feel. As a matter of fact, people look forward to the commercials.

Get creative enough and you can use the holidays to promote your blog and expand your fan base almost immediately.

All successful business blogs and websites have a way for a visitor to enter their name and email address to subscribe. This is usually done through offering some incentive such as a free report in exchange for their email information. This type of list building is very effective today.

Secondly, everytime a customer walks through your door, get their name and email address, even their physical mailing address in exchange for a chance to win a gift certificate at your place of business. Anything that the customer thinks is a perceived value, they will gladly give their name and address.

With these two simple marketing tools in place, you can dramatically increase your business 5 fold. You now have permission from these people to sell products and services to into the future.

Affiliate ads have got to be the easiest way to make money from your blog. It is so simple to sign up as an affiliate, get the HTML code to insert in your blog, then display it. Then, whenever you get a visitor to click on the affiliate graphic button and they buy something from that site, you get an instant commission from it.

For opt in subscribers, this is where “relationship” marketing comes in to play. A visitor will come to your site and enter their name and email address and they are immediately sent a greeting email. The beauty of this system is that it is completely on “auto-pilot.” You can carry on a “conversation” with your subscribers by pre-writing emails that either give valuable content or tactfully sell products.

Lastly, selling your own products will be your strongest advantage. Just thing that all your visitors are coming back for more valuable content you provide and you become the authority in their eyes. What better way to sell to this group of prospects who are already “sold” on you.

But one widget that can add to your bottom profit line is the online store widget. This widget is a blog add on that allows a blog page to function as an online store. What is included in this widget is a graphic of the item being sold and description along with reviews, price and buy button. Some widgets are simple and some are very complex full blown productions.

What does this mean for you? Well, if you can’t wait for people to subscibe to your ezine or come visit your physical place of business after reading your blog, an online store is the answer for getting instant sales of the products you carry while they arrive to blog for the first time.

What is very cool about the WordPress blogging platform is that there are literally hundreds of widgets out there, free and paid, that are available to upload to your blog to turn your blog into an online store.

Did you know that after you get your business blog established you can make money from the blog itself? Earlier, I stated that the purpose of your blog is to connect with your audience to showcase your brick and mortar business by posting interesting and informative articles related to your business.

After your blog has a good number of blog posts, say over 200 or so, it’s time to monetize the blog itself.

One of the first methods is to insert affiliate ads. This way, when you are attending to the day to day posting on your blog, you “silently” make money when visitors click on the affiliate link and purchase the product from that link.

Next, when you build up a large viewership to your blog, then begin to sell banner ad space for a monthly or yearly fee.

Lastly, you can develop an information product or membership to sell within your blog.

Having these three sales channels going on simultaneously along with selling products from your business is a winning formula for profits to you.

The number one rule in marketing to customers is benefits and leading to the result of them using your product. If your customer wants to look young and you provide skin cream, you want to stress how your product achieves that look.

The marketing “mantra” today is build customer relationships. So remember that the sales process takes time. You can’t expect to get a sale from a prospect on first contact. You must develop that relationship with your customers first then you lead them to the sale. People want to buy, not be “sold” to.

With a business blog, you give time for the prospect to get to know you and trust you. They see your “world” via your blog. You make regular posts on your blog about your business, its latest promotions, customer testimonials, pictures of your business location, videos of you introducing yourself, articles about your business that was previously written in a magazine, pictures of specific products and brief descriptions of each.

Blogs have so much to offer your potential customer that it can’t help but look to you for authority in your industry. You are a live and breathing business that is available to your customer and their needs.