Unfortunately many people have a two step approach when it comes to blogging.

Step 1 – Write a blog post.

Step 2 – Ring in Sale$

If you’ve been taking the above approach you’re probably disappointed at your results so far and are likely considering quitting this whole blogging idea.
You need to look at the purpose of blogging in a whole new way. There are two main purposes to blogging.

1. To establish authority
2. To capture drive by visitors

Lets talk more about each:

Establishing Authority

By writing an article on a topic/subject and then posting it for the world to see you are essentially doing two things. You are establishing yourself as an authority on that subject to your potential customers and secondly you are establishing yourself as an authority to search engines like Google/Bing/Yahoo etc.

The more articles you produce – over time – the more credible you become and people start seeing you as an authority on Subject X. Also at the same time search engines like Google have been indexing your blog posts. Google will start to associate you with your keywords (content) and with each post your search rankings edge up a little more giving your website better ranking.

Capture Drive-by Visitors

Once your content starts getting attention of visitors and drive-by’ers the next thing you want to do is develop a way to capture visitors email addresses. Notice I didn’t say try to SELL them something.

Let’s say someone has read a few of your posts and got some good advice and value out of them. Wouldn’t it be logical that they might want to read more? So why not offer them exactly that? Have a call to action that says ‘Sign up to get exclusive articles each month on how to …XXX’, or ‘Download our report on..XXX’. Now we have an actual name and/or email address that we can follow up with.

People that have signed up to your service are about twice as likely to buy something from you than someone that hasn’t. I don’t know about you but if I can sell something twice as easy I’ll take that any day.

This technique isn’t limited to e-newsletters, or reports. You could offer a webinar, a manual on how to maintain your XXX, or even invite them to a live in person workshop/seminar you are holding.

Another question I’m often asked is ‘how long do I have to do this to see results?’. I wish I could give you a definitive answer like X days/weeks unfortunately each industry and its audience is unique and what might work a certain way for one might not work as well for another. You might need to do a little more research before getting started or you could test approaches and see which one works best.

The keys to successful blogging are:
1. Decide what results you want out of it in the first place (define a goal)
2. Brainstorm your list of content to produce
3. Always do your best to deliver value where/when you can.
4. Work on converting the drive by visitor into a sign-up fan.
5. Have a plan for following up on your subscriber list.
6. Rinse and repeat.

I should also mention that one of the most important elements of blogging is your headline. If you headline wont capture interest, then no matter how great your article is – no one will be reading it. Here are some headlines you can use to help get you started.

What about you? Do you have any tips to help other folks get results with their blogging? Please leave a comment below.

p.s. Could you share this article on your social media? Thanks