I’m running ‘X’ business. How can blogging help?

Feature: Episode #5 continues with our 7 part series titled ’7 Misconceptions of Blogging’, and reveals Misconception #4: "I’m running ‘X’ business. How can blogging help?".

Sherman exposes this misconception and provides 3 reasons to help you understand why blogging will help your business – regardless of your industry.

As he’s ending off his vacation with a week stay at Dave Taylor’s (AskDaveTaylor.com) lake home in the Lake of the Ozarks, Sherman’s broadcasting this episode from the dock. You’ll hear birds chirping, sea-doos and speedboats zooming by in the background too. And tune in till the end of the episode to discover how Sherman ends off this podcast episode in a most refreshing way!

Download and enjoy this podcast episode right now.

Transcript

[intro music]

Announcer: ShermanLive.com: Simplifying and demystifying technology, so you can profit from it. Welcome to Shermanlive.com, presenting time-saving tips, short-cuts, how-to’s, bleeding-edge techniques and money-generating strategies! Here’s Sherman Hu.

Sherman Hu: Hello and welcome to episode number five of ShermanLive.com. This is Sherman Hu, your host, broadcasting to you alive from the Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, USA, where I’m spending the last leg of my vacation, with my family, and with very good friends, Dave Taylor and his family.

Dave Taylor can be found at AskDaveTaylor.com, an influential blogger and brilliant marketing consultant and speaker.

It is a beautiful Friday morning, post July 4th, by this lake house here. So if you hear any lake or water sounds, it’s because we are just right at the edge of the lake actually. And if you hear any motor sounds, that’s because you have the occasional SeaDoo-er, motor boat or cigarette boat, flying by the lake house.

And we are enjoying bird chirping this morning. This is gorgeous. This is a wonderful way to spend the last leg of my trip, and my family is really enjoying the time away in the vaca and having me not work. [laughs] Except for this podcast.

But I just want to let you know that if you are considering a podcast yourself, it doesn’t have to be just in your office. It can be just anywhere that you believe will work well for your type of podcast.

Anyway, today we’re going to bring you Misconception No. 4, which is, "I’m running ‘X’ business. How can blogging help?" So stay tuned as we present to you, today’s podcast.

[break]

Sherman: All right. So Misconception No. 4. You have a business and you are wondering how blogging can help your business. Well, if you see Misconception No. 1, it covers part of the answer. Now here’s the other part. Imagine blogging or having a blog for your business just like having a website. Really, it’s just a tool.

Anything that you can do with a website, or want to do from a website, can be done on a blog; or a blog can augment your main website very well for all the reasons in previous Misconceptions that we have broadcasted so far. Now blogging can help your business through three very specific solid benefits. And here they are.

Number one – Personality. If you will offer your personal voice to your human visitors, that is a special opportunity and benefit there, that your website cannot offer. Now, typically on a blog, people that write on the blogs share their personality, share their voice. So, you would be wise to share some personality. Keep it real. Let your voice shine through your writing on your blog.

Here’s where you can really show your heart to your readers and draw them closer to you, instead of using corporate-speak. Now, if you draw them closer to you, you can eventually offer your offerings, and that will be embraced a lot more effectively by your readers.

Now John Maxwell, a renowned leadership coach, once shared, "People will buy into the leader first before they’ll buy into the leader’s vision." And I believe that strongly. So, your visitors will read your blog. They get to know you, they will like you, trust you first, before they’ll buy into your offerings. Make sense? OK.

Number two – Average Time On Site. Now let me share with you this case study that was conducted in 2006 by a company, a metrics and statistics company called ClickTracks.com, and the they conducted this case study of their client LuckyOliver.com, a stock photography website.

And this case study shows that there was a significant increase in sales from visitors who read the blog. Now the founder of LuckyOliver, realized a metric called "Average Time On Site", and this metric increased after they began publishing to the blog, and this metric was a real indicator of how interested people are or were in their product or service.

Now his team was very disappointed that they were blogging and nobody was commenting on the blogs, but when this founder discovered that people who read the blog spent 60% more time on a site than people who didn’t, and that people who stayed on the site longer, actually converted to better sales and profits, then they continued blogging regardless of a lack of comments.

Now the result was, a visitor who saw the blog, was 22% more likely to sign up for an account than the one who didn’t. Additionally, the average time on site and number of page views for the newly signed-up blog viewers was double that of the average visitor.

So blogging does improve your readership and average time on site, which leads to conversions of sales and profits. It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it?

Well, let me bring you benefit number three – Search Engine Marketing power. Now, more of this will be covered in Misconception No. 7, but a short of it is this. Your blog will attract the search engine spiders a lot faster and more regularly than your traditional website can. And that’s a whole lot of power.

OK, now that you have "personality", now that you have "stickiness", and now that you have "power", let’s get blogging.

Well, that brings us to the end of this podcast. Thanks for staying tuned.

In our next podcast Blogging Misconception No. 5, I will reveal a misconception where people say, "Don’t I have to blog all the time to get results?" And I will reveal a strategy on that podcast, that will really make your blogging task a lot easier and more effective. And for those that form a camp of "ambitiously lazy", you will really, really enjoy the next podcast.

Well, thank for staying tuned. This is Sherman Hu signing off. I’m going to jump off the dock into the lake and enjoy the rest of my vacation, and you enjoy the rest of your day. Cheers!

[ending music]

Announcer: You have been tuned into Sherman on ShermanLive.com. Want to call Sherman, or send him some love, go to ShermanLive.com today.