I hear it regularly at local networking meetings: why should a local business worry about blogging?

Most small business owners still believe that blogging is a) only for crazy online geeks with big glasses and b) won’t be of any use to small businesses that provide services or sell to mainly local markets.

Point a) I know many bloggers that are quite normal people who have families, go on holiday, drive normal cars, go to restaurants, have friends (yes, it is possible as an Internet geek to have real life friends!) and live a normal life, just like you. So don’t judge them on the stereotype (although I agree it’s funny).

Point b) In this post I would like to point out the advantages of blogging to YOUR business. You could be a real estate salesperson blogging about the market and newest listings, a coach blogging about midlife crisis, a consultant about tips on finding a new job or a cosmetic institute blogging about the latest eye shadow fashion.

The main thing about having a blog is to attract the right kind of people to your website or blog, the people who likely love what you have on offer – either your knowledge or your goods. You could have tons of people visiting your website, but if they are not targeted – people who are not in your target audience – you gain nothing from it, just a fleeting visitor who vanishes into thin air within two seconds.

If you are a dating coach and you regularly blog about dating tips, how to dress for a date, dating body language, dating psychology and so on, chances are that you will get the attention of single folks who are eager to read your newest advice – and eventually book an appointment for a consultation with you.

Chances also are that other businesses who have something to do with dating, for example men advice forums (like Askmen.com or similar) may find some gems in your post and link to you – bingo, and you have started to become more important in the online world and your blog or website will be ranked better due to this link. The more you have the better it is, but don’t fall for these weird emails from foreign people who ask you for a reciprocal link to their dodgy website that sells even more dodgy products. If the other website’s content has nothing to do with your content it won’t give you any advantage, the opposite can be the case. So beware.

When you have your own blog for your business make sure you research what your target market wants to know. Ask them when they come through the door of your shop or send them a survey (great free survey tool is http://www.surveymonkey.com) This tool has a weird name, but is used by many large companies as well as small ones.

If you are a fitness coach, the amount of topics about weight loss is sheer endless and you actually offer a kind of community service to blog about your fitness and diet advice. It would be crazy if you didn’t make use of a blog to show off your expert knowledge, build relationships with your readers and even offer your products or consultations occasionally. But be aware and don’t stuff your blog posts with constant “buy this” or “order that”.

A blog is there for information and relationship building in the first place. Remember you talk to people who look to you to find help with their problems. Once you have build relationships and you use an integrated marketing approach (including email marketing marketing and opt in reports and freebies) you will earn money with your knowledge and attract more clients who are keen to sign up with you.

If you get a blog from your webdesigner, make sure that it’s connect to social networks. There are many plugins (loosely translated as a connector) that help blog visitors to share your post with other people. If you mention “plugins”, your web developer will know what you are talking about…

If someone, for example, loves your post on how to loose weight without starving yourself, they can “retweet” it to their followers on Twitter. Twitter is a ultra popular Social Media tool that millions of people use daily. Many people keep the window of Twitter open throughout the day, always ready to read about something new or interesting. If your post gets re-submitted to a large group of people, chances are that other people will tell others about it, too, and you have quite a viral effect with your one post. Other people, who have never heard about you, will come to your blog or website and read what you have to say. And maybe even become your customers…

Another thing to ask your webdesigner for is the RSS feed to your blog. With this feed your loyal website visitors can sign up to receive all your future blog posts straight away after posting. There are different options on how they can receive them (in a reader or per email) and you can discuss this with your webdesigner). It is important to have this function so that you can start building relationships.

“Heike, I’m located in xxx and all my customers are locals. Why should I blog? I don’t need to get website visitors from the other side of the globe”, you may say now.

Becoming an authority in your field is a great thing, if you are recognized in Iceland, in the Seychelles or in your hometown, your website will get a better ranking when you have optimized your keywords that describe what you do, offer or write about. Your local people may well put in a search term, such as “Hamilton real estate”, into the search engine and if you have optimized your blog posts’ keywords, chances are your post will come up for the person to read.

Additionally, never really discard selling globally! I know it sounds scary, but it’s sometimes even easier than locally because there are so many people out there maybe looking for exactly your tools and knowledge while your locals might not even care. So don’t close your eyes to the opportunity, especially when you offer a service, such as coaching, consulting, training, etc. You’d be amazed how many people train with overseas institutes nowadays or buy wares from foreign countries. It might be time to open up your mind about the opportunities worldwide.

The Internet has made it possible for us to cross borders, communicate with people from around the globe and to sell and buy easily from other countries, so keep your mind open about this. If you would like to have more information on this, please send me an email.

Summing up, blogging is a great tool if you are a local business targeting local people just as much as global audiences. Be brave, try it and you will reap the rewards of getting a better website ranking, more targeted visitors to your blog, more inquiries and connections.

When blogging started years ago it was more of a diary for people. Nowadays business blogging has other reasons: it’s a place where you can prove you are an expert or that you know what you are doing because you can “talk” about it on your blog and inform your target audience.

You can also bond with your readers because you write about the topics they are looking for. The other very important aspect is the enormous benefit “fresh” content on your website/blog because the search engines, like Google, will like this and rank your website higher and it will be found by more people. The best is to have your blog page on your website in a combined blog website, which is usually on WordPress.

If you have a WordPress.com blog that is hosted by WordPress, not one on your own domain as WordPress.org, it won’t help your website’s search rankings because it’s separate from it. There is a difference between getting a blog that is hosted by WordPress and one that is hosted by your own webhost. If you have a website without a blog it is a good solution to switch to a WordPress blog website rather than having a separate website and a separate blog. It’s not difficult to switch and it’s not an overly expensive exercise either.

Blog websites are just optimized much better to be found on Google than ordinary websites. If you combine your website with a blog your website’s traffic ranking will go up quicker, especially if you focus on keywords that your niche will search for. If you write blog posts try to think about topics that your niche wants to know about and then focus on these keywords. Put this keyword in the heading, mention it in the first sentence and sprinkle it throughout the blog post text. This way it’s easier to be picked up by the search engines, which means more people can find you when they search for the keywords you focus on.

So nowadays a blog is an important tool for a coach to be found online by prospects and to show their knowledge and bond with prospects so they become clients. If you want you can even re-purpose your blog posts and send them to article submission websites, which will give you more traffic again. As there are so many coaches around it is important that you stand out with your content marketing efforts.

I just read  this great article in Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero’s Ezine, Copywriting TNT. As a graduate of Lorrie’s Shefactor Bootcamp I’m a great fan of hers and wanted to share this post with you:  

Blogs Are the NEW Secret Weapon for Reaching Your Tarket. Just like you, I hate being marketed to. Every day we’re bombarded with over 3,500 marketing messages. And frankly I’m sick of it! But blogs are different. Blogs are a two-way conversation between blogger and bloggee (plus all the readers in between). Through commenting and cross-linking, you can share feedback. You can build your network. You can become, dare I say it, an Internet celebrity!

See, blogs add humanity and instantaneous expression to the web. Like ezines, blogs are a way for your customer to get to know you.

However, unlike ezines, blogs help you with search engine rankings. Did you hear me? I said, unlike ezines, blogs help you with search engine rankings. That’s a big one.

Entrepreneur Magazine, Business Week, even the FCC (Federal Trade Commission) all believe blogs are here to stay. Recently Michael Powell, chairman of the FCC, started one. His initial post drew over 30,000 readers. A Microsoft spokesperson says Bill Gates is considering starting a blog. And filmmaker Michael Moore built a blog to promote his controversial movie, Fahrenheit 9/11.

But who has time to read a blog anyway? Exactly! The job of a blog is to cut through the information overload and deliver searchable, relevant and current content. BlogAds.com recently conducted a survey of over 17,000 blog readers. Here’s what they report:

• Blog readers are older and more affluent. 61% of blog readers are over 30, and 75% make more than $45,000 a year.

• Blog readers are more cyber-active. 54% of their news consumption is online. 21% are themselves bloggers and 46% describe themselves as opinion makers.

• Blog readers are media-mavens. 21% subscribe to the New Yorker magazine, 15% to the Economist, 15% to Newsweek and 14% to the Atlantic Monthly.

• Whether on the left or right, blog readers have traits in common that often are absent in today’s public spaces: passion and initiative.

• Blog readers have apathy towards traditional news sources. 82% say that television is worthless. 55% percent say the same about print newspapers. 54% say the same about print magazines.

• Meanwhile, 86% say that blogs are either useful or extremely useful as sources of news or opinion. 80% say they read blogs for news they can’t find elsewhere. 78% read because the perspective is better. 66% value the faster news. 61% say that blogs are more honest.

• Blog readers appear united in their dissatisfaction with conventional media and their rabid love of blogs.

Don’t you want to be a blogger too? How about looking at some samples of the good, the bad and the bizarre?

Model citizen blogs: http://www.marketingsecrets.com/blog/ – John Reese’s blog. Hey, the guy just made $1,080,496.37 online in a single day. Here’s a good rule of thumb. If Reese is doing it, you should be too.

http://www.talkbiz.net/ramblings/weblog.php – Copywriter Paul Myers keeps us up-to-date on SPAM and other Internet marketing nightmares.

http://www.bookedsolidu.com – Michael Port’s new streamlined and simplified community helps you get booked solid. His old site, Booked Solid Referral Network, was just too big. This one is amazing! You’ll love it.

My Blog: http://www.redhotblogging.com – my blog today.

Bizarro Blog: Jeff Bridges’ site is considered a “blog.” He uses “hand-written” graphics that make it a unique and clever site! (Yes, really.) http://www.jeffbridges.com

I dipped my toe into the blogging pool a few years ago. Now I’ve decided it’s time to really learn how to do this stuff with an expert who will take me by the hand through the scary forest of the blog-world. I’m going back to school!

Christina Hills has opened another world to me using WordPress. I just attended her amazing, content-filled “Website Creation Workshop” studying her detailed webinars. Even though I have my own Blog, I’ve learned a ton since meeting this bright and intelligent guru woman!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Award-winning marketer, world-renowned copywriter and creator of “The She Factor®“, Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero of Red Hot Copy has a reputation as the top female copywriter in the info-marketing industry. She has written award-winning home study courses, conducts a world-famous virtual copywriting training, holds live workshops, and is authoring the original book, The She Factor based on her own She Factor Marketing System. Lorrie is dedicated to teaching the world it is possible to shift from the hype-filled sales to a more modern version…marketing written with authenticity, trust, and rapport. Check out Lorrie’s websites:  http://www.redhotcopy.com and http://www.redhotcopy.com/shefactorbootcamp1.html and http://www.redhotblogging.com.

Hello again,

I have just launched my new WordPress website specifically designed for my local, New Zealand, market. I feel it’s important to keep in mind that there are some slight differences in the local market to, for example, the US market.

Our economy is a bit different, our business landscape features mainly small businesses and hardly any large corporates and we are the country of Kiwi ingenuity (which means, we do a lot ourselves). So, thinking of this I believe that Kiwis want to read some different things than international visitors. Please correct me if you feel that I’m wrong.

One major difference is, for example, that there are not many Virtual Assistants in New Zealand. If you do a search, you will probably find a handfull of women who call themselves Virtual Assistants, but they usually run their business under the secretarial services or secretarial support header. 

But not all Virtual Assistants are secretaries who just work out of a home office, many international Virtual Assistants add online marketing, ecommerce and social media marketing to their repertoire. This is a whole new field that New Zealand based Secretarial Services can bite their teeth into.

Marketing services is usually more brick and mortar driven here. Many local marketing consultants will focus on the offline activities while online marketing falls into the hand of webdesigners. Unfortunately, the webdesigners are often not skilled in online marketing (the psychological bits). They are amazing when it comes to the design of stunning websites, but the whole area of persuasion, customer involvement and content effectiveness seems to be something that needs some updating.

Another thing is that many Kiwis haven’t really made use of the idea of blogging yet. Many NZ websites with blogs I’ve visited so far hardly ever update their blogs. There’s usually one post made in May, another one in September and maybe one to say Merry Christmas or Happy New Year.

What is missing is the understanding that blogs can be immensely powerful. Looking at the 6 and 7 figure earning international bloggers (check out some of these blogs on my links page) the tool of blogging is highly undervalued. Ok, I understand that most of us will never earn that sort of money with our blog posts, but how about reputation management and customer relations?

Aren’t we all still stuck in the olden times when a business or service would look down on us, the little customer, and don’t ask how we like the service or products. The thing is only that people have changed. We are not that “quiet” anymore and we don’t believe in the authority of businesses anymore. And it’s not only Enron’s fault.It’s that we woke up and found our voices. We want to have a say and if we can’t have that, we just stop buying from these businesses. Easy. And the businesses don’t know why. Hmmm.

Maybe a blog could help to listen to the customer and finding out what they think or what they need. It’s well worth trying. I definitely will.