Three reasons why your offline business needs a blog

27/02/2011 By 5 Comments

MicrophoneHelping consultants, coaches and other professionals to get more new business and more repeat business is how I spend most of my working hours.

When the time comes to think about business development strategies I always ask my clients:

“Do you blog?”

The responses vary.  Some clients do blog.  Most don’t.  Those who do tend to blog infrequently. Most of my clients think that blogging is just for internet marketers or it’s for teenagers.  Most of them think it’s a waste of time.   Those who have already tried blogging haven’t achieved a great deal of success, so they’re reluctant to try again.

I’m an advocate of blogging.

I always explain to my clients that blogging is a very useful business development strategy.  It’s a great way to build interest in their business’s work.  It’s something that offline businesses need to do because it really does help to bring in more business.

I have plenty of reasons to offer about why this is the case.  Here are three really important reasons why offline businesses – and especially those businesses selling complex, intangible and ephemeral  services – need to take up blogging.

You can build your status as an expert with your blog

Blog regularly.  Blog for your customers.  Blog about issues that interest your customers and you are laying the foundations for your business’s success.

When you blog in this way, you’ll be helping your customers.  You’ll be offering them good advice.  You’ll be answering their questions and helping them to solve their problems.

However, there’s more you need to do, if your blogging activities are going to succeed.

  • You need to tell your customers you are blogging.
  • You need to refer your customers to your blog.
  • You need to explain to your customers why they should read your blog.

That way your blog posts will complement your other activities.   Your offline business will benefit from your online presence. Your customers will be reminded why they choose to work with you.  You know a lot.  You can deal with their issues.

Here’s an example of how this strategy works.

I wrote a series of posts about value propositions a few months ago.  I find that many of my clients struggle to define what they do.  They struggle to work out the difference between their value proposition, their USP and their elevator pitches.  My posts help them with this task.  They also help them to create value propositions that work.  Every one wins and my blog posts are instrumental in building my reputation.

You can read the series on value propositions by visiting the post entitled:

Your great value proposition

You can use your blog to be found on the internet

Every one dreams of coming up on the first page of Google and in the number one position. Some people allocate a large budget to improving their search engine rankings.

Below is a screenshot showing this website’s number one position on Google.

Margaret Adams - on Google

This has been achieved without expenditure.  It’s the result of regular posting.  It’s the result of posting information that is of interest to my business’s clients.  It’s the result of telling my clients about my website and encouraging them to visit it on a regular basis.

I trade extensively on a personal brand, so lots of people hear my name before they know anything else about me.  That means they are likely to search for me by name.  What could be more impressive than to find the person you are looking for coming up as the first entry on the first page of Google?

Your blogging strategy will help you to be found more easily, especially if you actively promote your blog posts, too.   That will help your offline business.

You can use your blog to differentiate yourself from the competition

Most offline businesses don’t blog.  Those that do, don’t blog often and they rarely have a blogging strategy.  You can make a big impact if you’re an offline business with a popular blog.

I have gained thousands of pounds worth of business as a result of blogging.  In some cases people visit our services page, and then get in touch.  They decide what they want to buy before they speak to me.

In quite a few cases I’ve been asked:

“Why should I work with The Adams Consultancy Ltd and Margaret Adams on this project?  What’s special about you?”

Some consultants will be tempted to start to talk about price, value for money, availability and so on.  I major on my expert status.

I encourage the person asking the question to go on line and look at my site.  I describe what is there and refer him or her to a relevant blog post – that is a post that relates directly to the conversation I have been having with that person.  It makes a great impression to have an expert article there on the web in front of a potential customer.

On one occasion this simple strategy brought in £8,000 worth of business. When the prospective client saw my site, he immediately gave me the contract.  He also said that there were lots of consultants who claimed to know what they were talking about but that he had never had such an impressive demonstration from a consultant that she really did know her stuff.

Get blogging!

The advice I give to my clients is always the same.

“We need to work on a blogging strategy for your business, so that you can start to gain these benefits, too.”

The same applies here.  If you’re reading this post and you don’t blog, you need to get blogging. If you’re a blogger already, you need to find ways of integrating your blogging activities into your other marketing and business-building activities.

Your offline business needs a blog.

What to do next

If you like this post, then please tweet about it and help others to learn these valuable lessons.

If you have an offline business and you already blog, let me know in the comments how your blog helps your business.  If you have an offline business and you’re not yet blogging, will this post help you to make a start?  Again let me know.

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Filed Under: Becoming A Market Leader, Business Skills, Growing Your Business, Marketing Your Business, Productivity, Social Media Marketing, Solo Success In Business Tagged With: , , , ,

You’re starting a consulting business, so tell the world

23/12/2010 By 3 Comments

Tell the worldYou’re starting a consulting business or you will be in the very near future.

You know it.

A few others might know about what you’re planning, but are you making a point of telling the world about your plans?

Are you doing the sorts of things that really big companies do when they first put a new product on the market?

In short, are you launching your business?

Well, you need to, if you hope to make a success of your business venture.

Launching your business

If you’ve ever been involved with a business launch you’ll know that it’s important to create awareness of the new product and interest in that product before it becomes available.

Think about what happens before a new television series starts airing on a channel.

There are trailers about the new series. They are shown for some time before the series begins. If it’s a big series, then there will be advertising, too. The series will be talked about when the stars make those guest appearances on talk shows.

The people who want to make money from that new television series know that we viewers must be ready and waiting for the first episode. It’s no good waiting until the series has begun to start to promote it. The people behind this series want us to be counting down the days until the series starts.

Well, are you doing this with your business?

As you move towards the day when you start your consulting business, are you getting the word out about what you’re going to do?

Get people’s interest

Earlier in this series of tips for people starting a consulting business I advised people how to quit their jobs gracefully and professionally.

It’s important to do this professionally, because as well as telling the world that you’re leaving your current employment and your current career, you need to tell people that you’re starting a consulting business before you start trading.

Make a list of people who you want to tell.

Try to find thirty people who you think will be interested in your news.

Get in touch with them.

Tell them what you’ll be doing.

Tell them when you’ll be starting your new business.

Tell them the sort of clients you’ll be looking for.

Tell them about your plans.

If you can write those plans down, then you could send out information about your business, too.  If your ideas are still forming, you can let people know by telephone or by personal communication (not a mailshot).

That will give you the opportunity to contact them again when you’re more certain of how your business is going to develop.

However, be careful not to ask for business. You want to keep these communications channels open, so offer information not sales pitches.

Use your website to get your message out

Even if you haven’t got your website as you want it yet, get a single page up on the internet with a notice about your business.

Give your business name.

Give out some contact details.

Give a date when you’ll be starting your business.

Note a couple of sentences about your new business and what you will be doing.

Of course, you’ll need to make a commitment to yourself to have your website functioning by the time you start business. Yet, just having that single page available to the world will make your business venture more real to you and to every one who visits your site.

Use social media to get your message out

Next get to work on your social media profiles.

Give the same sort of information as you’ve been offering via the other communications channels you’re using, but make sure you use a style that’s right for the medium. What you say on LinkedIn will be a little bit different from what you say on Facebook and so on.

Remember that your focus now is your new business. It’s not on who you have been whilst in employment.

Say something about what you’ll be doing and how interesting you know it’s going to be. Once again, don’t sell directly.

Create a press/media release

Now’s the time to write a press or media release, too.

You need to get some of your plans down on paper or in a Word document in simple and straightforward terms. Writing a press release is a good way of forcing you to do this.

You’re going to write quite a few of these in the course of your business life, so learn how to write simply and succinctly about your business now. – It will be good training for writing copy for your website and for articles you’re going to use to promote your business further down the line, so spend time on getting the words right.

However, for now, don’t be too ambitious.

Two hundred words will do.

Think about what you would want to say to someone in your target market in order to generate the response:

“That’s interesting. I must remember you.”

Remember, it’s your consulting business

Your key objective with these activities is to let people know that there’s going to be a new player in a specific market in the near future.

Setting a specific date for the start of your business is a good idea.

This will give you a date by which you must have sorted out your legal status, your business name and given some thought to what you’re actually going to do to earn a living.

It’s also the date by which you’ll need to be ready to start accepting commissions and delivering services. On the day when you start your business you’ll need to be ready to move into your office, if you have one – or preferably you’ll need to have already moved.

Put a ring around that date in your calendar and tell the world about it.

It’s a very important date in terms of your personal and professional development and also in the life of your new business.

If you like this post you may also like:

Starting A Consulting Business – Time To Change Career

Choose the right name for your business

Decide where your business will be based

Your USP is …..

Starting A Consulting Business – 100 Tips

This is tip twenty in a series of one hundred tips for people starting a consulting business.

See more of the tips by clicking on the term:

Starting A Consulting Business – One Hundred Tips

Filed Under: Starting Your Business, Starting Your Consulting Business Tagged With: , , ,

Learning about social media – what’s essential?

08/12/2010 By Leave a Comment
Social Media - Margaret Adams

Margaret Adams

Last month I ran a one-hour introduction to using social media to build your business following the High Wycombe Business Biscotti event.

You can see the outline for the programme by clicking on the term below:

Social media, the social web and your business.

I published an overview of the content in two posts:

Designing your social media strategy (part one)

Designing your social media strategy (part two)

What’s always important when trying to assess impact and value is to ask people what they learned.

Becky Rui whose photograph of the session is featured above said:

“I found the session very thought provoking, it made me a lot more aware of how the use of networking sites, blogs etc and building an active online persona is hugely beneficial for your business. Since the presentation I have become a lot more mindful of how I want to be coming across to clients”

I’m really pleased that Becky found something she could make use of quickly.

Tony Harrison – of My Business Buddy -  said:

“There are many people claiming to be Social Media Experts, however Margaret Adams is the ‘real deal’. Her presentation to Business Biscotti members in High Wycombe gave us good reasons to engage in social media (to build a community of people who know and trust us).

She followed with practical tips on getting started whether we chose to blog, tweet, use Facebook or Linked In.

I came away understanding the benefits of having a clear strategy for utilising social media to grow my business. Highly recommended.”

My principal message is always that it’s important to have a strategy and to plan your social media activities carefully, so again I’m pleased to have helped.

Thanks to you both for sharing your learning.

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , ,

Twitter and Follow Friday – Following Nigel Temple

05/11/2010 By Leave a Comment

Nigel TempleFollow Friday on Twitter gives every one the opportunity to tell people who they’re following.

This week I’m letting my followers know that I follow Nigel Temple who is a small business marketing specialist.

Nigel says that he does his best to help people who follow him and I’d agree that he does.

Nigel offers lots of tips about being in business.

He shares useful, helpful and material which is relevant to small businesses, independent professionals and just about anyone who wants to attract more customers.

Nigel also tweets regularly, so there is plenty of this good advice, too.

What demonstrates the fact that Nigel’s tweets are worth reading is his number of followers and the number of lists on which he appears.

Nigel has often said that:

”Twitter is bonkers.”

However, he seems to have grasped what makes Twitter work.

Therefore, today I’m following:

Nigel Temple

By the way, I’m also a member of The Marketing Compass, a community of small business owners, founded by Nigel, which is mentioned in his Twitter profile.

Follow BMargaretAdams on Twitter

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , ,

Writers’ Marketing Mistakes (4) – Outsourcing marketing

17/06/2010 By 2 Comments

Marketing MistakesGetting rid of the marketing is a dream many writers share. When success comes to a writer, marketing will be the first thing to go. Someone else can do it. Someone else can take the responsibility.

Here’s how the argument goes.

“Today we’re encouraged to outsource everything. No one can do everything. People need to focus on what they’re good at, and get others to do the remaining tasks. Therefore, just as a person who doesn’t know much about accounts outsources book-keeping and accountancy to someone else, so the same should be done with the marketing.

Agreed?”

Every time a writer says this, there’s hope in his or her eyes. Unfortunately, the premise is wrong.

Book-keeping and marketing are different

You can outsource book-keeping and accountancy. It makes sense to do so unless this is your field.

Giving a brief to an expert in book-keeping or accountancy is not that difficult.

There are rules and regulations to follow. Accounts are set out in similar ways. There isn’t a great deal of scope to do things differently. Therefore, you can outsource these tasks knowing that they will be completed in much the same way whoever you engage. You’ll see profit and loss accounts. You’ll see cash flow forecasts. You’ll see your company accounts set out in a particular way.

There’s a lot more scope to address some accountancy tasks in more individualistic ways, but the basics are completed according to the same set of rules.

Marketing is individual

When you come to think about your marketing there are lots of ways to set about the task and lots of different marketing styles. There are also lots of different objectives you can set yourself.

You can aim to build your reputation. You can aim to get yourself known. You can aim to make book sales or sales of associated products. Then you can focus on off-line or on-line approaches to marketing, or you might give precedence to face-to-face marketing. You can choose to advertise. You can choose to use article marketing strategies. You can blog your way to success. You can tweet and use social media as your major marketing strategy.

You know which ones suit your business, your circumstances and your budget. That person you want to outsource the marketing work to doesn’t know you well. He or she doesn’t know your aspirations and so on. If you want someone to take responsibility for your marketing, you will have to spend a lot of time briefing that person and then monitoring the work. Even then there will be things to be done that only you can do.

Someone might get you an interview on a radio programme, but you have to do the interview.

You need to work out for yourself what your marketing will cover and how it will fit in with what you’re trying to achieve.. You need to know what your principal objectives are. You need to know which successes are you aiming for. You can’t let someone else make these choices for you.

Outsource tasks

You can, of course, outsource specific tasks, once you have your marketing strategy in place, but you shouldn’t just hand over responsibility for your marketing to someone else.

  • You can bring in someone to help you with your social media strategy.
  • You can bring in someone to help you to blog more effectively.
  • You can ask a public relations agency to help you with all aspects of media relations.

What you should avoid doing, however, is handing over control of your marketing to someone outside your business.

You’re in charge

You know your business, your personal brand and your objectives best. You know your audience – or you should. You know what works in your industry and with your audience and what doesn’t – or you should.

You know the history of your marketing activities. You know what you have tried and what you haven’t attempted yet. You know what works.

You’re the best person to sell yourself and your products and services. You really are the expert in yourself. That’s the real reason why you can’t outsource your marketing successfully.

See also:

Planning your bestseller – what comes first?

You’ve got a publishing contract. What do you do now?

What do your tweets say about you?

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,
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