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.

So passion is the first thing to make your blog successful. The second thing to have is a penchant for writing. Yes, as a blogger you become a publisher and must be able to write. It won’t do you any good if you hand out the writing duties to someone else….you should at least write half of all your content on the blog. That is the only way to be connected with your blog and understanding what you have to do on the blog to satisfy your visitors.

Lastly, you must be able to guide your visitors through your blog. Putting in content for content’s sake is not going to cut it. You have to have a laser focus on where you want your readers to go. “Call to Action” is what you should be thinking about all the time. Give your visitors a reason for being on your blog.

For example, the purpose of your blog is to inform and educate people about your product or service that your busines provides. Explain, in simple terms, how valuable your product is to your customers and that they have to buy it today! Give them a reason to buy and buy now! You also need to generate a customer list. If you have an optin box on your blog, direct your visitors to fill in their details to get on your email list, today! Call to action is what a blog can achieve for your audience.

So let’s recap. The things you need to make a wildly successful blog is:

1. passion
2. write often
3. make a call to action

If you practice these three things, I guarantee that your blog will be successful beyond your wildest dreams!

If you position your business in front of your target audience, you can’t help but be successful. But you must give real, valuable content. It must resonate with the audience you are serving. It sounds simple but so many businesses try to over analyze the “message.” To second guess your market is fatal. Try, instead to be real and develop your content that reflects your values, your personality and what you truly feel that your customers are going to consume and implement.

Once you have a fan club, you then get feedback from them on what they want. The old sales/marketing adage, find out what your “hungry market” wants and give it to them has never been truer.

Your blog should concentrate on reaching out and recruiting more people to your fan base. This is ongoing job. Keep this up and you will be more than profitable in the long run.

If you set up a blog with too many different topics or go into too many different directions, you will just be “spinning your wheels” and will be wasting your time.

Besides your main focus, your secondary goal should be to have a “call to action” for your visitors to go to your place of business and buy something. Your blog can show the benefits and advantages your customer will receive it they do buy your product or service.

If you do nothing more than focus on those two things, with time, your blog will be a very important vehicle for generating more customers and raising your revenues.

It is our basic human nature to be attracted to a good story. When you start a business blog, have a good story handy to help attract visitors to your site. It could be in the form of how the business started. It could be the unique twist your business has over the competition. It could be in the form of how the business is run.

Why do you think daytime talk shows (i.e. Oprah) or “soap operas” are so popular? They have stories to tell. Even reality TV shows use storylines as the attraction to get viewers. You’ll even see stories in commercials on TV. No matter how short the commercial, there  is a storyline with an interesting twist and a compelling visual to get people to buy the product.

If you tell your story in your blog posts, make sure you can interweave your story with all your other blog content. You should have a good mix of relevant content in your blog, well written stories, strategically placed advertisements, and a call to action for your visitors to come to your place of business.

1. Capture and build an email list of customers
2. Able to sell your product or service directly from your blog
3. Sell related affiliate products or services

Between the three benefits listed above, you cannot help but make revenue from your business blog, provided that you publish valuable content on the blog on a consistent basis.

I tell all my seminar students that a blog is an extension of your business. It reaches out and educates, informs, enlightens, entertains and sells the readers on your business. Think of your business blog as a 24/7 sales person that continually keeps the attention of your customers.

Many of you may feel discouraged about maintaining a business blog from day to day, but the simple answer to that is to delegate the posting duties to someone else. It is not rocket science! To compose and insert blog posts takes only 15 minutes on the average. If you can assign a person or outsource this duty, you will reap rewards tenfold.

Treat your blog right and it will treat you right!

A week prior to the seminar, I will be putting up the agenda and some valuable tips in a booklet on this blog.

For details, click here.

For you business owners who have a “brick and mortar” business, you don’t stop advertising in the newspaper, or Yellow Pages, or radio/TV spots. Why would you think adding content in your business blog is any different? Actually, if you give your attention to many different ways of getting the message out to your target market simultaneously, you can’t lose.

With that said, you have to be careful where you are spending your money and time into. Does the Yellow Page ad really bring in the “return on investment” in a reasonable amount of time? If not, chuck it and concentrate on the things you have left to market your business with.

Marketing your blog is one of the best decisions you can make going into 2010. More and more of your customer and prospect base is online looking for you!

Blogging is the most efficient way to get the word out about your business.

“Bloggers who post for a business reported even higher levels of success: 71% had increased visibility for their company, 63% had converted prospects into purchasers through their blog, and 56% have seen their blog bring their company recognition as a thought leader in the industry.” This is according to emarketer.com (Nov 6, 09)

Think about it for a moment. You competition blogs daily about their product or service and any promotions and innovations and your company, not having a blog is “miles” behind in letting the public know about your company. Who do you think is going to have a better exposure rate to your prospect base?

It is obvious that blogging has come of age to bring your business into the 21st Century. Blogs are simple to set up, simple to maintain and bring long term benefit in more ways than one.

Here is a very interesting chart about business blogging, from the individual to the corporate levels. You will find that there is absolutely no downside to blogging.

Even if it is a very simplistic blog, it has the power to bring in visitors that you normally would not have had.

Here are 5 simple things you can do on the most basic of blogs:

1. Display a way of how customers can contact you
2. Describe your business in detail and how it can benefit your customer
3. Insert an opt-in box on the front of your blog to capture leads
4. Insert photos, illustrations and video on your blog
5. Make at least two post a week in your blog

If you follow at least these 5 items on your blog, you will have certain success with it.

Don’t lose out on what marketing trend is happening now. Successful businesses are always looking out for the new thing to use in order to raise revenue and get more market share in their niche. Blogs are the way to go.