Small Business Blogging
the Most Effective Social Media Platform to Increase Sales.
Ask any small business owner what constitutes social media and you will most likely hear Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. How about blogging? Is blogging social media? If you accept that the purpose of social media develops relationships with prospects and warm leads, then your own blog makes the most sense as a social media tool in marketing your small business.
Where other social media tools provide a very limited space for you to engage your target market audience, your own blog provides a larger opportunity to talk with your prospects about what they want and need from your small business.
According to HubSpot (see chart below) not only can you engage your target audience with blogging but done properly you can increase you sales opportunities.
Build Rapport With Prospects
According to RainToday.com there are 5 simple ways to build real rapport with your prospects:
1. Be Who You Are. Perhaps the most important lesson to learn in engaging with your prospects on your blog concerns offering honesty about who you are. If your personality trends to the more analytical and straightforward, include that sort of language, along with charts and graphs, and bullet points.
2. Show Interest. Nothing turns a prospect off more quickly than an attempt at a conversation with a solution provider who pushes what worked for others vs. taking the time to find out what matters to each individual business owner.
Demonstrate interest in your blog, ask questions regularly and leave the comments section open so that your audience can respond. Show interest in them as people. Ask them about the struggles in their industry. Ask them about the lessons they’ve learned along the way.
Ask them, if they like to go fishing. Ask them whatever seems relevant to the topic at hand and to your personality (see #1 above). You can learn so much about what your hottest leads really want and need, if you give them the opportunity to tell you.
3. Don’t Be In A Rush. Sales conversations take time. People like to research options before making a decision. Be sure to incorporate a relaxed stance in your blog message. Leave the blog writing to a stress free day vs. a day when you fee pinched to make a sale. Don’t have time for blogging; check out this easy small business blogging solution.
4. Balance Questions with Talking. The primary tip making sure that you aren’t overwhelming your prospects with too many questions. On the other hand, make sure you aren’t pushing your typical sales message out to them without balancing the conversation. An effective blog will have an opening, a paragraph or two and then a question about that information. Then repeat. The best blog questions come from questions that you hear most in your one-on-one sales conversations. As you begin to incorporate those ‘compelling’ questions into your blog, your audience will feel understood by you and will become more incline to talk with you in the comments section.
5. Listen, Actually. Perhaps the best way to prepare to write your small business blog. After years spent listening to your clients’ say things like, “Since working with you we are no longer concerned with falling outside of legal compliance,” or “we really need to get out of this revenue rut,” you know exactly what to write about and what to ask them in your blog. “Are you worried about falling outside of legal compliance?” “Are you currently in a revenue rut?” All of those years spent listening have prepared you for this online sales conversation.
Discover Online Tools That Can Help
Would you like a little more help with writing your blog? These tools can help.
Social Media Examiner lists 22 blogging tools in their http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/22-top-blogging-tools/ post which includes a “Content Idea Generator,” a tool which will help you keep track of interesting articles for later posts, and more.
7 Critical Factors For Sales Conversions: rainsalestraining.com/7criticalfactors/thank-you-(Link no longer active.)
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/22-top-blogging-tools/
Takeaway
First you need a website and second you not only need a blog but you must find a way to blog a minimum of once a week, twice even better. In the hype and explosion of new social media platforms do not lose site of blogging as the critical aspect of marketing your small business to increase sales.
Related Information
5 Excuses For Small Business Not Blogging
Is Blogging for My Small Business?