blogging-for-the-busy-business-owner

Blogging and online videos are something that many small business people have heard of, but are unsure if they could work for them.

We’ll cover the advantages of blogs and online video, and how they can be easily adopted as part of your marketing strategy.

By the end you will have an understanding of the successes possible from both blogging and online video, and be able to decide if they are right for you at the moment.

Blogging for business
‘Blog’ is just short for web log – initially an online public diary entry, but now used for describing online articles across a wide-spread of areas.

Blogging is another area where your content is online working for you as a salesperson.

Usually your website will have a blog section where you can easily upload posts to help people.

You can explain new changes in your profession, talk about your own clients and how you have helped them, or answer frequent questions in a blog series. There are a huge range of topics that your clients would be interested in.

If you are generating quality content, then you should see an increase in traffic and enquiries to your website.

…and this continues over the years. I am getting regular website traffic from blogs I’ve written several years ago because they are topics that keep coming up.

Generally, the more you post the better your results will be – but remember you should measure your results and adjust your time spent. Many websites are able to have a plugin activated that will show your web traffic or you can sign up for the free google analytics service.

I decided to perform my own test to prove the theory of more activity so for a period of two weeks I blogged every day, the result was… I increased my website traffic by nearly double… and had a record 10,000 hits one week.

Whilst blogging every day isn’t something that many people can sustain, it does prove the point.

Video for business

the-benefits-of-using-video-for-business

When it comes to business video, although it can take some time to create initially you may be surprised to find that it actually saves you time in the long run.

Like your website, videos can be 24/7 salespeople working for your business.

If you upload videos that answer common questions you face from new clients, then the result can be shorter meetings.

When I first started in business my average new client meeting was about an hour long. After I had uploaded my first series of web videos I found that the first meeting time had reduced to 20 minutes in some cases – people had already seen my videos, knew how I could help them and had ‘met me’ virtually online by watching the videos.

A point that people also miss is that YouTube is actually also the world’s second biggest search engine, so uploading videos there can generate a lot of traffic for you and also bring in clients directly from the site.

How do you create videos? Very easily, if you have a smartphone, tablet or laptop that’s all you need to get started.

You can record yourself using the front facing camera and the sound should be reasonably ok to begin with. Later you may want to investigate more advanced equipment, but you can get going now with equipment you have.

There are apps that will let you edit the video and then upload it directly to YouTube, all from your smartphone if you like. From there you can embed the video on your website and also use it to promote the business using social media.

If you don’t want to shoot videos of yourself then you can have someone video you. Using an interview style means that you can ignore the camera and concentrate on the other person.

It is also possible to have people prepare blogs and videos on your behalf, so that may be an option depending on budget.