The Webinar Recording from Awesome Blogging, Profitable Websites and Promoting Yourself 24 7. I love doing these to help people worldwide and of course show case what I do. Trust you will enjoy this fine content on the house!
It’s 5:56AM as I write this post (obviously I have just got up) and I was amazed at how quick transcription is these days. It was only last night where I submitted the Recording of our fine Webinar on YouTube. To date, my Webinar last night on “Awesome Blogging, Profitable Websites and Boosting Your Reputation 24 / 7” has been one of my most popular webinars. Great attendance, obviously great content (from me) and lots of very powerful questions and everyone peeled the onion on this exciting topic.
I covered the high level strategy of blogging, it’s origins, how I use it and then went quite detailed in helping people get started and the like. This Webinar too was aimed at the “Commercial Side” of blogging – that is, how you use it as an effective and profitable Marketing Tool to sell your Awesome Products and Services.
In of course walking the walk, as you are reading this fine Article / Blog – it’s proof that this concept works. Also, feel free to check out my Online Course the Awesome Marketing Vault Right Here. Full of Videos, Guides and Templates with powerhouse Small Business Sales & Marketing Success Strategies.
Enjoy the recording below with a transcript included for you word people.
Thank you everyone and drop me a line if I can help at all!
Edward Zia – Marketing Mentor and Blogger
Edward: Hello, people worldwide, and welcome to our June 2014 Awesome Blogging, Profitable Websites, and Boosting Your Reputation 24/7 webinar. It’s an absolutely pleasure have you all along. This has been one of the best turnouts I’ve ever had to one of my life webinars.
Welcome all. Thank you for coming in early. I promise to work hard for you all tonight in talking about the amazing topic of blogging, how to make it really work commercially for you.
A few quick things. If you’re watching this on YouTube, previously, make sure you check out the comments and visit my Awesome Marketing Vault and all that sort of thing. If you’re here live, it’s great to have you on here, and you can ask me questions in real time. This is being recorded, so of course you want to stay for the action; but if you have to run feel free to. You can type in your questions anytime and I’ll get up to them.
It’s a great pleasure to have you here tonight, and it is 7:00 Sunday Australian Eastern time, so I promise to work hard for all of you great people and make this worthwhile as possible.
Tonight we’re talking about not just blogging for the pure heck of it, but actually blogging for money. This is a very, very important topic for me. I know a few people on the live line tonight, and there’s quite a few people here I haven’t met. Allow me to introduce myself to you. My name is Edward Zia. I’m a marketing Mentor, and I help small businesses. I do a lot of work around Sydney, and actually worldwide now. I do a lot of marketing training, sales training, a lot of business mentoring, I am a Leader at 4Networking, and I’m also a blogger.
If you can just tell … I didn’t just make up the fact that I’m a blogger. If you visit my website and click on the Edward files, you’ll see some great stuff. I’m being prodded along. My mate, Paul Sheaffe, is on the line; he knows who I am. All right. There’s enough about me. Feel free to visit my website, it’s a lot more about me, but Paul is nagging me and telling me to get right into it.
Love it when the audience interacts. Thank you, Paul. There you go.
Tonight what I want to do is basically achieve this. I want to deliver you some amazing content. I’m not here to mess you around. I want to cut to the chase and tell you the fact … the good, bad, and the ugly. I want to teach you the proven marketing side about what I’m doing, and of course, I want to impress you so hopefully, if you haven’t already, you’ll purchase some of my fine products and services.
Again, I’m not here to sell you, I’m here to help teach you the great stuff!
Here’s a neat thing. In all my webinars, my webinars can get very, very technical. Don’t worry. It’s being recorded. Take one step at a time, don’t get overwhelmed, and take on juicy bit at a time. I’m around afterwards if you want to talk, so feel free to email me, or best thing still, just so everyone can benefit from the actual webinar, please get your questions to me in real time.
Paul is also … he’s always a good person to have on the webinars. Technical is good. I’m just going to say, if you’ve got questions, it’s great if you can please get them out on the actual webinar because, usually if one person’s got a question, chances are everyone’s got it, and then I can answer it for the benefit of the whole audience, so please get it out.
Here’s the big thing. You’ll notice from all my webinars, I’m a massive fan of Rosie the Riveter from World War 2. This is what I see in marketing all about … making a business more awesome, helping people find it, and selling more stuff. That’s really what it’s about … motivation … positive motivation.
Getting straight into the content, why are we here tonight? I want to step back a little bit, before I start talking technicals and how to write blogs and all that sort of thing so you can walk away and do it. I want to go back a little into logic and give a previous context to it.
Blogging, in my mind, is a very overused term. I’ve technically blogged for a few years, but to be straight up with you, I’ve really started heavily blogging at the start of 2014, as you can tell by my blog posts … frequency on my blog. I’ve pretty much blogged every day, sometimes more than every day, and blogging is actually a form a journaling.
As I was eating my dinner getting ready for the webinar, I was actually reflecting on what blogging is in a pre-internet context. I came up with this metaphor. Obviously blogging today is an online thing, but the way I see, imagine if the world was once a little medieval village. Blogging would be, let’s say, writing a note every day and passing copies out of the note to everyone on the street, giving a free tip while you’re selling books at your bookshop. That’s one of the best medieval day metaphors that I have.
Poor Paul hasn’t had dinner yet. Sorry for rubbing that in.
What blogging is in today’s world is a form of journalism. It’s very, very useful for a range of applications, be it for marketing, promoting personalities, teaching on a topic, or even selling a particular product or serve.
That lovely man who looks like Ricky Gervais is a very good friend of mine from the United Kingdom. His name’s Stefan Thomas, and he actually is the author of Business Networking for Dummies. He runs 4Networking across the United Kingdom, basically … brilliant man. I spent a good with him traveling to the 4Networking UK groups.
Even though he’s not really a blogger, he’s blogged a little bit. He’s actually got the real world blog. He’s actually written a book, which is quite amazing. What’s interesting … he’s written an amazing book that kicking butt, and now he’s getting into blogging to help sell his amazing book.
Blogging, to me, has a range of objectives. I guess tonight I want to … or today, depending on if you’re watching the recording … I want to teach you the good, the bad, and the ugly about blogging. The reality is: blogging does take a bit of time, takes a bit to get going, but the payoff of it is outstanding. That’s really what I want to share with you all tonight … a very, very powerful technique indeed.
There’s a lot of benefits to blogging. Blogging, of course, is a way of promoting yourself. You put your blogs out there. It gives you exposure and reputation. It also has a lot of other benefits beyond great sales as well. Blogging can help boost your reputation generally. It can help you get more speaking slots, get you more clients, help you get more exposure, and improve your reputation.
With me is with the amazing Moira Cameron. Moira Cameron … this is taken in the Tower of London behind the scenes … Moira Cameron is the first female Beefeater, basically a ceremonial guardian of the crown jewels. It was really through blogging that I impressed a lot of my friends from the United Kingdom, and I was able to actually consult to the first female Beefeater, the first female in an order of over 500 years.
This is only recently, so my head is still buzzing from that amazing experience. I supposed what I’m getting at is … look, I’m coming at blogging, and the reason why I started blogging, was for a commercial agenda. Commercially it has been amazing for my business. It’s been transformation, actually, from a range of perspectives in terms of getting more leads, and getting exposure, and also getting speaking gigs.
The thing I’m pointing out is that it really helps you get amazing exposure and that type of thing. There are a lot of benefits of blogging. It does take a bit of time. I’m not going to sit here and say it’s easy and you’ll make a million dollars tom … because you won’t.
It takes a lot of work to get going, but when you get into it it’s completely amazing.
I’m going to go back a little bit and go in the history and context of blogging, then I’ll show you what I’m doing and show you little techniques, but I think it’s good that we all understand this. What blogging is blogging is an abbreviation for the term “web log.” Early in the development of the internet, it was called a blog … so web log … blog. It’s where it came from.
Me being a nerd as well, blogging was originally started from nerds more of less who were basically having diaries online, or recording their own experiences. Early blogs, there was this site called Geocities, and even I had a blog in those days.
What blogging did in those days, which was just amazing, was that it’s a great way for nerds or people to get down their thoughts. It’s not only for technical nerds like me. Later on it more moved to a lot of technical people. A lot of academics got into it. Let’s say they had a blog talking about some of their research and findings so the students will find them.
Over time, blogging became a bit more commercial. People started figuring out, “Well, hang on. If I’m a fitness trainer and I write a blog about losing weight, and build up a readership around that, that’s going to create a lot of interest about me, and people might find me or buy whatever I’m selling. I’m selling personal training sessions or I’m selling an online product of some form.
Think of it that way. A blog is basically giving away free information with the goal of building your own profile. That can lead to a range of things. You might just be blogging for the sake of it. You might be blogging for the fun of it. Not all blogs have to be commercially driven. Of course, bringing it back to money, which is the name of it, “Blogging for Money,” you want to be blogging and giving information around a topic of interest.
Again, using the simple fitness trainer … and I’ve always said this … if I was a fitness trainer and I was sick of doing PT sessions, I would create a blog, I would become a massive blogger, and I would sell online products. I would have no problem doing that. I’ve basically done the same thing, but as a marketing Mentor, which is definitely where I’m still taking my business. That’s the actual context where it comes from, and I wonder if anyone can tell me the size of that disk in inches, send it through. I’ll give you a good shout down the line. Actually found that image was a good blast back in history.
This is the market psychology of blogging, and also saying this before. This goes back to the newspaper days where you’re more likely to read a column and fall in love with a particular journalist. Paul Sheaffe is amazing. He got the 3.5-inch floppy disk.
Oh, my God. I spilt hot chocolate all over me, so I’d better pay attention … getting too exciting.
I’m going back. What the journalist is, and what I’m saying here, is that … think back to … I’m going to use newspapers here as an example, pre-internet, and the way that all works with people. Blogging is basically … think of the whole internet being a newspaper, and every day you’re writing a column in it. Basically if you’re reading the newspaper, you might have seen a journalist that you fell in love with, someone you found really intelligent, someone you found really clever, and over time, over more and more time you read their materials, you develop an affinity with them.
For example, I read the Derryn Hinch blog, and I’ve developed quite an affinity to him. This is the way I go. A blog is constantly putting out information.
As you write one article in cyberspace it can really be there forever, permanently advertising for you. This can be good and bad. When you blog, if your blogging about something sensitive, just remember it can be on the internet forever.
Most of us are pretty benign businesspeople, we were pretty straight up, so you can blog about information. If you’re being controversial just be careful, because I can’t obviously do that sometimes. Most of the time it’s pretty straightforward, and it’s a good thing.
I’ll be straight up with you: writing a blog and distributing it will not do your business any good. Just sending out one article is pretty pathetic. Over time, every blog article you put out there … and this is the way Google put it … is an extra fish in the ocean to really grab attention and attract other people to selling your services.
For an example, if you just write one article and distribute it, or just do an article a month, it’s okay but I wouldn’t expect anything earth-shattering from it. Here the thing. Let’s say you write … I’m pretty extreme. I’m blogging once a day because I’m building myself as a full-time blogger. That’s the direction I want to take my business. I want to be a full-time blogger selling online products and doing a lot more online work, and writing for a network.
That’s always the way I wanted to go, and that’s where I’m still taking. It depends on your objective.
Here’s a good thing. Whether your blog gets read one or a million times, it takes no extra work from yourself. Once you’ve got the blog out there, it’s amazing. It’s forever in cyberspace promoting you, depending on how it’s written. That’s pretty much a good outcome of it.
Here’s a big thing, and it’s important to have the commercial outcomes in mind. You need relevant and intelligent content to help you build trust with the audience so you can offer them whatever you’re selling. I’ll explain that point in a bit more detail, and I’ll explain my own … I won’t say values, but my blog didn’t work originally quite the way I liked when I started, but not it’s working great.
When I first started blogging, I would just blog about my experiences that day and what I’ve been up to and that sort of thing. Even though it was very interesting reading, when I started blogging about what I was feeling and going through it was very good in terms of getting a following, getting exposure, and getting people liking me. It actually led to quite a few one-on-one clients because people would actually read my blogs, they’d get into me, and if someone needs my …
A lot of people follow my blog, and there’s a lot of people who follow my blog who may never hire me or buy any of my products. That’s totally cool. Some people who follow my blog, they might connect with me online and say, “I don’t mind. I’m going to buy Edward’s online products,” or, “I’m going to hire him one on one or go to one of his workshops,” … whatever they want.
The trick was I was just blogging quite randomly at the start. I was more talking about the way I felt and the emotions that I was going through, but as I’ve gotten over time … and I got some great advice from my friend, Suraj, from the United Kingdom as well. He’s actually a full-time blogging mentor and has been blogging pretty much since the start of the internet … and a big thank you for him for some of the content here … is that when you blog over time and you get better at it, you learn to tighten it.
For example, I used to blog a lot about general business and the way I feel, but now I’m blogging more about business, about small business marketing. Again, the other day … I’m a small business marketing specialist and I work with a lot of small business owners, and a lot of my products are aimed at that market. The more and more I do with blogging and that sort of thing, around the marketing topic, the more effective it is.
If I’m just talking about the way that I feel or what I’ve been through, it’s engaging and people get the know me, but how is it relevant to marketing?
Here’s a big thing. You don’t have to sell … and this is a thing I want to clarify … you don’t have to sell online product and blog. You can sell nothing, and some people just do it. Some people just blog … and I’ll phrase this carefully … some people just blog to build their profile and build their reputation, and that, in itself, sells them.
I did that originally, but now I’m a lot I’m a lot more pointed with my blogs as I’ll go through. When I write a blog, I write about a topic, and then I recommend people to check out my online product and actually buy it. I’m getting a lot more pointed and specific over time in that regard.
The trick is … a written article, it might take you three to six months of blogging until it starts working for you. Mine started working after about six weeks, to be honest. Mine worked quite well early on, but let’s say it takes three to six months to get going. Blogging is not a fast … I don’t think there really are any get-rich-quick strategies, but blogging is certainly not one of them.
I don’t know any short-term strategies that actually work without being illegal or just totally tipping over afterwards.
I hope that helps, and please get your questions through. I’m reliant on questions; otherwise, I’ll just continue my merry way.
Here we are. There’s probably about 19 million different blogs out there, so just type blogs into Google and give yourself a headache. You’ll get overwhelmed very quickly. Now I’ve got a screen shot from Derryn Hinch’s blog on the right, which if you’re one of my friends from the United Kingdom. He’s basically a shock jock journalist who’s always in and out of jail for, let’s say, breaching court orders and that. Really cool guy.
The thing is, you’ve got blogs for everything. I’ve seen blogs for dog food, to holidays to wealth-building, to Forex Trading, to Christians finding love, and even to my own marketing advice. It’s endless.
My advice is: type in “blogs,” and if you haven’t … there’d be very, very few people on this line, I think, has never actually read a blog before. There’s heaps and heaps of different stuff there.
My friend, Paul, is once again judging … Paul Sheaffe.
I’ve got a great question from the awesome Len. Great to have you on the line, Len. What Len asked is, “How is blogging different to a short newsletter about a topic?”
It actually could be quite similar. What’s Len’s asking is … let’s say I send an email newsletter to a bunch of people about a topic, or I write a blog about it. The thing is a blog technically is a web log, which is a log which sits on the internet. That’s technically what a blog is. What a newsletter is that a newsletter is actually an email that you send out with information. Even though you might, for example … and this is where it comes in … information you can send in emails can often be very similar to email that you put on a blog.
I suppose what the difference is … through a newsletter it will get deposited in people’s inboxes, and you know their email address to begin with; whereas, in a blog, it actually sits on your website. A good way of putting it, Len … what a lot of people do very well, and I do this I particular … is you have a blog but your newsletter points towards your blog. When people open the newsletter and you just have a little teaser of an article, you click the article and it goes to your website.
Think of your website as your mini shopping mall, or if you’re from Australia or the United Kingdom, you’ll know what Westfield’s are. Think of it as your little Westfield’s. You go into your little Westfield’s … the whole idea is to bring traffic into your little Westfield’s so they’re more likely to buy something. That’s pretty much it.
A great question from Paul … and I love Paul, he asks some great points … Paul’s got a new website being built right now and includes a blog page, wondering what to write there.
This is a great question, and I suppose, this is obviously a big point of the webinar. What Paul is asking is, “What am I going to blog about? How’s it going to work? How is the content going to look? What’s it going to be made of?” Very, very, very good questions.
The best way I have in putting is … again, I’m going to talk commercially here. I’m going to talk about it from a money-making point of view. I could say, “Write about whatever you’re interested in,” but I may not make money.
Paul is a video guy. He does really good quality videos, or great quality videos. I’ve seen some of his work firsthand. In that case, doing information about videos. It could be how to use the equipment, video shoots that he’s done. It could be tips on doing your own videos. It could be production advice. It could be about his experiences in working with different clients. It could be how to do selfie videos with your mobile phone, and how to get the content right, how to word it.
What I’m getting at is Paul is actually giving away free information, but in the process of Paul giving away free information, it makes him the expert on what he does. Of course, people like hiring experts. It’s give and take. Instead of putting up banal advertisements all the time, advertising, “Oh, buy my stuff,” you’re actually putting out compelling, intelligent content so people choose to buy your stuff that way. That’s really the power of blogging.
I got a great question from Rebecca. Thank you for this one. Rebecca is asking a brilliant question. “How do you find the keywords and topics that you should blog about?”
That’s an amazing question … the keywords and topics that you should blog about. In terms of … I’ll go back a little bit, and this is where it takes a bit of strategic thinking when you’re doing a blog and that type of thing. When you do a blog … and this is where it gets very subjective … the big question is what to blog about.
Look at this from the point of view of making money. I always think: if you’re going to be an expert in something, you just can’t pick a random topic and become an expert in it. Something I don’t know much about is, let’s say, knitting. I know absolutely nothing about knitting. Why would I do knitting? If I did a blog on kitting tomorrow, it would be a complete joke, and all the pros can see through me. Whereas, let’s say programming in HTML. I don’t know how to program in HTML. It’s a language for a website. I don’t want to do that, and I’m not good at it, so I wouldn’t do it.
If it’s face-to-face selling, marketing, online marketing, using machines, I can do that really well.
The first think I think strategically, Rebecca, definitely blog about something that you’re an expert … two things, in the way I look at it … blog about something that you’re an expert in but the market is willing to pay for. Feel free to tell me what you do for a living, Rebecca, and I’ll try and give you some commentary on that. Please let me know that, and I’d love to give you some more commentary on that one.
Another good question that’s come in is Paul’s come back with a great point. Could blogging be comparable to posting on a Facebook page?
Technically not. A Facebook page technically counts as social media. Blogging isn’t really social media. Blogging is a web log. Quite often what I do especially, and I’ll show you some samples afterwards, is I’ll do a blog on my website … and every blog has the same link … and then I’ll share it through my email newsletter, such as Lin indicated. I’ll share it through Facebook, LinkedIn, that type of thing. There’s very different ways of doing it.
Here we go. Rebecca has come back. I’ll read out Rebecca’s reply. This is giving a very good insight here. Rebecca has said, “Home loans, not the most interesting topic for most. I guess I’m looking at blogging for SEO; therefore, I want to try and hit some keywords as well.” Great one.
Rebecca, let’s say … she does home loans. Very easy topic to blog about in a respect. It’s a matter of anything can be blogged about … so obvious things that Rebecca can talk about. She can talk about products. She can talk about different types of home loans. She can talk about when the interest rates come down. She can give commentary on properties. She can give commentary on properties that tend to do well. She can give commentary on what the top banks are doing. She can play business journalist. She can play educator.
What I’m saying is, even though Rebecca is selling the product of home loans, there’s a lot of different angles on it. What are the banks up to? What are the mortgage brokers up to? What’s the government up to? What’s the interest rate up to? There’s heaps of different angles on the same topic.
Rebecca has made a good point. She said SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimization. When you blog, the idea is, as you blog about your topic … this goes without saying … if you’re … I’m making this up. Let’s say Rebecca is based in the part of town where I live. I live in Ashfield, which is an Inner Western Suburb of Sydney.
Let’s say Rebecca hypothetically is my next door neighbor, and she came over and she’s getting all pissed at me for being loud. Let’s say Rebecca does home loans in Ashfield. She might write a blog, and she constantly says, “home loans,” and she makes reference to the fact that she is in Ashfield. Over time of doing repetition, repetition, having that keyword density on the site, which should appear in Google.
These are great questions, by the way, people, so feel free to get through. I’ve been giving you all a bit of context out there.
Heath asks a great question. “I’ve never read a blog. Who does read these?”
It’s funny actually. There are several answers to that, Heath. I actually read quite a few blogs. What a lot of people do is people opportunistically read blogs. Let’s use Rebecca. Let’s say someone types in “home loans Ashfield,” or wherever you’re from. When people type that in, quite often a blog article might pick up, and people might click a blog and go, “Okay, who’s this Rebecca woman who writes home loans. Okay, I’m on her website. I might send her an inquiry.”
Some people might get into it. After a while, people might enjoy Rebecca’s articles, and they might check in every few weeks and read it, or even every day. I have some people that read my blog every day. I’m not kidding you.
Heaths asks a very good question. What are blogs? Why would people read them? Great devil’s advocate question.
At the end of the day, if you’re writing content it’s great that people read it every day, like in my own blog … and I’ll show you some numbers … last month I had over 1200 unique people read my blog. That’s only in four months of blogging … or five months of blogging. That’s an amazing readership.
The thing is: people that read my blog ultimately are interested in small business marketing, and they can follow my blog to learn some great tips on the house. I’m giving away a lot of information free, and people are getting to like me; but also as well, it gives me an opportunity to sell my products to them.
Just to quality the sell … it’s a bit like I do these webinars. Sure I might sell my services in webinars, but I’m very quick and respectful about it. I don’t sit there and say, “Here’s a blog. Buy my stuff.” “Here’s a blog. Please buy my stuff. Here’s a list of free content, and please buy my stuff.” You want to balance it out that way.
Lin made a great point. You can add a short video, like 20 seconds, to add to the written content. What’s actually a good example is this webinar I’m blogging. When the recording finishes, what I’m going to do is get it transcribed. I can get it transcribed for a dollar a minute with reasonable accuracy, and then I’m actually going to put this out as a blog article … so my webinar about blogging will go out as a blog article for all you guys to read.
There are several motives for that. One is that I only have to do the content once and it goes out as a blog. The second motive is I’ve got quite a few awesome clients on the line, so they can appreciate my knowledge, and too, people who don’t know that maybe want to hire, which I would totally love, they can see that I know what I’m on about and that type of thing.
Absolutely. What we’re talking about is … Paul Sheaffe’s made an amazing point. Anna Porter is a very good friend of mine. She’s an amazing property investor, and Paul videotaped her today. Absolutely I’d put that on the blog. Rebecca … I’ll come back to that … Anna Porter is a property investment expert and interviews with her will be amazing, definitely bloggable material.
Going to Rebecca, Rebecca made a good counterpoint, and I’ll answer both. “Love the transcriptions. I believe in having video blogs, but I hate watching videos.” Exactly. The trick is: everyone’s different. You get visual, kinesthetic, and word people. I’m actually a word person, which isn’t surprising when thinking I’m a blogger … not quite a visual person. The trick in the way that that works is that it’s good to do both. You’ll see from the blog I do for this is the content, and I’ll have the video, and will have the transcription beneath it.
Some people will sit there and watch the whole video, and some people will actually just skim through the transcription and that’s enough for them. You also have to cater to all the different audiences and types.
Greg says it’ll be great for Paul to blog. I couldn’t agree with you more. That’s definitely the way it is.
This is the hard bit. I’ve just sat here and spoke to you about blogs. With blogs there’s heaps of different ways you can do it. You can have a blog as part of your website, or you can go to webpress.com and create your own blog. I certainly recommend having it part of your own website, because like the Westfield shopping mall analogy, you want to bring traffic into your website. There’s no point in bringing traffic elsewhere. That’s the way I tend to look at thing; but again, it does depend on your objectives.
The hard bit of blogging is actually writing blogs … is learning how to write. Setting up a blog can be a pain in the butt … WordPress.com is very good. Once a blog is set up, after that it’s pretty straightforward. You just pay someone to set you up if you’re having trouble yourself, which is what I did eventually.
Your first blogs are going to be a bit rough, but you only need 250-300 words. Your first blog is going to be rough, and again, take ages. I can pump out a blog in a half an hour these days, and it sounds very good. My blogs, I think, are very high quality these days; but six months ago they didn’t sound that good. Six months ago, still a vile thing my writing style.
Here’s a big thing. My advice to you is … to get blogging, is read a few blogs, try and work out your writing style and your angle, and work out your strategy. Start writing articles.
Going back to Rebecca, who does home loans, she should start early. I don’t think Rebecca should just start writing a blog every day, but what she can do is just write basic articles, maybe once a fortnight, just around the housing industry. Start to get a feel for it. Ultimately it depends on what you’re doing and how much you want to blog.
I’ve got a great one here from Sara, from Treetop Adventures. Great to have you here. Thank you love your work. What Sara has said is, “How do you take client confidentiality and write writing about your clients publicly.”
It depends. You don’t always have to name your clients. For example, with the clients I work with, I have a very good gauge of what’s private and what’s not. If it’s one of their strategies or some of their logic or their private details, of course I won’t share it; but if it’s something that’s complimentary to my client and it makes them look good and makes me look good, I’ll gladly blog about it, so you’ll definitely know that.
Again, you want to be sensitive. If you’re writing about something sensitive, like one of my amazing clients, she was fighting cancer. I wanted to write a blog. I knew she’s be fine with it, but I wanted to write a blog about her and her resilience in fighting cancer. She just said that’s fine.
If it’s pretty straightforward, you don’t have to mention the client. If it’s straightforward, it’s good not mentioning them. If it’s complimentary they shouldn’t have a problem, but if you’re feeling a bit funny, I’d just ask permission, just to be sure. At the end of the day, you’re only going to say positive things about your clients. You’re not going to sit there and say, “My client’s a dimwit.” You’re doing to say, “My client is wonderful.”
That makes a good point. I’ve had a lot of people in business rip me off and take financial advantage of me, and not so much in 2014, but I got screwed a lot in 2013. I had a lot people … I think it’s my business naiveté. A lot of people took advantage of me. I haven’t named any of them in my blog. I might have blogged about people doing that behavior on me, but it’s very important that you don’t get sued for defamation or anything. If you say something negative, just don’t name the person. I just don’t go there.
Some people do name people publicly. I just stay out of that sort of thing. Your blogging to help people and help promote your business. It’s not a weapon. I just generally stay out of that sort of thing.
Lars asks a great question. “How does one segment up a blog for the web?” Heaps of different ways to do it. One of the most common ones is using WordPress.com. If you go to wordpress.com, it’s owned by WordPress, and anyone … it’s basically a do-it-yourself blogging site. That’s a great way of doing it. You can up great blogs through there.
You’ve also got … I think its called Blogger or … I think it’s called Blogspot, which is the Google product. Again, the reason why I don’t know them too well … I’m actually not a fan of doing that. I’m really not a fan of WordPress.com, and I’m not a fan of Google Blogger. My view is: the best way to do it is build your own website and have a blog in there using the WordPress platform.
Again, I think you should have it in your website. I once had a separate blog, and I just didn’t like it and commercially it didn’t work that well for me.
Greg’s asked a great question. “Is it good to have a blogging plan, or write about a relevant topic of the time?”
My view is that … have a blogging plan and write about relevant topics associated to your business. For example, Greg, for example, works in telemarketing. He’s an amazing telemarketer and runs a telemarketing agency. If there’s law changes in the telemarketing industry, go for it. Let’s say a lot of it’s moving offshore so go for it. You’ve got to have some flexibility because some of this stuff will happen, which is just amazing and suits your industry perfectly.
Again, when you start blogging you’re going to seem pretty cumbersome at the start … like if you go to my own blogging, go back a few months. I do sound a bit rough, but over time I get more eloquent and sophisticated … hopefully, I’m sophisticated. There you go. Very powerful stuff.
Here’s the whole thing. I’ll show my website at the end, but the Edward Files is my own success. Like all thing, I like to lead by example, so feel free to visit my blog and see exactly what I’ve done. It’s called the Edward Files, and I blog on my website. I usually do daily or at least daily. I’ve always done daily except for the odd occasion where … what will happen is in one day I’ll have no blogs, and next day I’ll have two blogs. Sometimes I was on a plane somewhere and that sort of thing. Some days I blog more than daily, so I’m going to say I’ve been a daily blogger for five months. I think that’s technically accurate and I’m not being too misleading there.
The point is that I blog a lot because, again for me, my own goal in my own business … I love my one-on-one consulting. I want to do more of it, and really I want to be a full-time blogger who’s got one-on-one clients and that sort of thing. I’ve always wanted to be a full-time blogger, and I sell online products, which I illustrate … that sort of thing. Feel free to check out my blog and get a feel for it that way.
I blog every day, and my blog is on my website. I constantly share my blog. Writing a blog on our website and it just sitting there isn’t … it’s good, puts more content out for Google, but it’s hardly a strategy that will work that well. You want to write blogs on your website, and then you want to share those blogs, so you get the link and share it.
For example, this is straight from Google Analytics … for the last month I had 1200+ users to my website, and these are individual unique, so very flattered with that. I had a really good response to my website. A lot of people know who I am. They’re getting involved with me. From that point of view I’m very happy with how my business and my website and that’s going.
That’s a very important side of what I’m doing. It’s very good.
Here’s an example which is loading up. This is how I write articles. Again, go to my website, have a look around, and you’ll get a feel for it. When I write articles I write them naturally, and they’re in my style. I’m not here to pretend I’m someone I’m not. I’m here to be me … and illustrate that. I have very compelling headlines. This is an article written about my friend, Chris Waters. “Is It Worth Your Time? Tips on Awesome Money-Making Potential.”
You want a really good headline. You want to tell a story. What I do … and you’re not going to see it here, and you’re going to have read my blog, I can’t do an internet walkthrough on a webinar because the bandwidth can’t keep up with it. What it does is that, when I write a story, I write articles about small business marketing and sales or something like that. In the early part, I have a reference to my online product, The Awesome Marketing Vault. I write an article about a given topic, and I say, “By the way, feel free to check out my online product, the Awesome Marketing Vault. People can click it and go straight there.
I then give away the free content, and I then have an invitation saying, “Hey, if you like what you’re seeing, feel free to purchase my online product, the Awesome Marketing Vault.” That could be anything. Let’s say you don’t have an online product. You might write an article at the end saying … going back to Rebecca doing home loans. She may write an article on home loans, and at the end she just clicks and she says, “Feel free to click here to ask me any questions,” and what it does is that it might just open an email and send her an email.
I’ve got a cat chewing the cable, so I’ve got to be really careful. My cat is very naught. This is Miffy here … always causing trouble.
Here’s a big thing, and this is where I think blogs are a good give and take. A blog is free content. To me a good blog is informative and free content. Yeah, I do see on my blogs. I say, “Look, please buy my online product,” but end of the day, I give away way more content than I ever sell. You’ve got to keep it all fair that way.
Like my webinars. Do I sell on my webinars? A tiny bit, maybe 5%, but the rest of it is all just content, content, and content. I think that 95/5% format works really well. I used to give away 100% content. It’s good, but it’s not fair on the person giving away the content, because quite often, unless you invite people to do business with you they won’t do it. Very much. Hope that bit really helps.
Just a quick thing. A few people may not be able to hear me at times. It really depends on the internet connection, but I can assure the recording is very good, so feel free to bear with me and thank you for that one.
Here is the next one. Apply it to yourself. Think about what kind of topic you want to talk about it, what you want to do. Think about a topic you love. Think about a topic you can sell. As we said, Rebecca, who I’m going to talk about … with Rebecca her topic is home loans, so there’s no point in blogging about cats or dogs because it won’t sell the home loans, so I think link it to your business is the way to do it.
Here’s a big thing. You can sell anything. You can sell your own services, you can sell books, and whatever the case may be, but here a big thing. If you’re doing online products … and this is another wealth-creation strategy which is another discussion for another time … is go to the site called Clickbank. It is full of probably limitless affiliate products, so you can write a blog about weight loss and you can find ten different weight loss products you can sell through your blog; and if someone buys it, you get a cut of that. Heaps and heaps of different strategies.
If you create your own online product, which is something that’s quite amazing … so heaps and heaps of different strategies out there, so feel free to apply it to yourself.
Sharing the content. I’m just going to run through a few things, and I’m … said before, just blogging isn’t going to be that helpful. You want to ultimately blog and share the content. If you’re in the medieval village, if you’re writing articles on bits of paper, yes, you want to hand them out to people so people find them and come back.
Here’s the big thing. A lot of people do blogs separate to their website. It depends on what you’re doing. I’m not a massive fan of this as you really want to have a blog on your main website. In that way you’re bringing traffic back to your main shopping mall.
I’m going to go through a few of the quick strategies for sharing content. I personally love … just putting blog articles up does help in itself because it’s more content for Google to index and for you to get found by the search engine. Facebook is awesome, LinkedIn, Twitter, and email marketing is great means of sharing my content … such as Len picked at the start.
Here’s a big thing you’re probably picking up. All the strategies cross over. It’s not like, “Oh, well, you’re just use Facebook only.” Blogging and a lot of these strategies are very complementary to each other. As an example, this is a post I did on Facebook. This was quite recently. I did an article, come out through Facebook. The article was seen by 670 off people, and I’ve spend basically … it’s a $5 Post. That’s a great strategy, great way of getting traffic to my website.
Here is LinkedIn sharing … same article but expressed through LinkedIn, so putting a link through there and people picking it up that way.
The next article we have is going through Twitter. You can see a range of articles I put through there. Obviously Twitter doesn’t have much text, but it does look very good here, and a great way of getting my content out.
As Len said at the start, he’s email marketing, so as my … this is just a cut from my newsletter. There’s a panel to my newsletter which goes out, so people can get my information that way.
That’s the way it goes. Here a big thing … and this is big in blogging … and please get your questions through because we’re coming to the end … is you’ve got to make sure that your website … in converts. What I’m getting at there is that, when you do a photo … I may need some hot chocolate, losing my voice … that’s better. Pardon me.
When you’re doing your website, you want to make sure that it really converts. I’ve had this problem on my website, but it’s improved a lot lately. You’re going to make sure, if traffic goes to your website, your website is good enough in itself to capture leads / results. You want to have a good chat with your web developer, your website person. I’d definitely recommend getting a website person. Doing it yourself … unless you’re a web person yourself … I don’t really recommend doing it yourself.
What you want to do is think about if someone visits your website, how does your website go in guiding someone interested in your services to actually coming in. If you’re selling an online product, be it they click by or be it they send you an email saying, “Hi, Paul, I’m interested in your video services,” … so you really want to think that through.
Again, I’m not here to talk about websites too much tonight. This is obviously more aimed at blogging, but I want to give you a few free tips on website conversion. Again, this is a conversation to have with your web person. A good web person … a very mediocre, or a very poor web person might be interested in technical work. A great web person gives you strategic advice and actually helps you sell online.
Here are a few things, and feel free to get your questions through. Make sure … here’s a few things on website conversion tips. Websites are endless. You’ll be forever updating them. You’ll never ever get them perfect.
Number two: You want very clear messaging and working on your website. You want to be absolutely clear on how it works.
Three: A beautiful layout looks crisp and professional.
Four: You want to make sure that your strategy of your website is intelligent, so you would even buy it. If you look at your website and it makes you sick, it makes the market sick.
Five: A great video … I’m sure Paul does.
Six: Clear simple flow.
Seven: The writing makes sense and it’s well-written. I’m a copy-writer, and I do a lot of copywriting myself. It’s a secondary service I sell to a lot of clients. What I will say, though, is make sure that it’s well written. If you can’t write, you don’t have to hire me, but feel free to get yourself a copywriter and hire them.
Eight is fair prices. Make sure you’re not ripping people off and everything makes sense.
Nine: A great external campaign to warm people up. If you’re sending traffic to your website, please, please, please, please, please make sure that you’re sending great posts. If you’re putting your blog through Facebook, doing posts on Facebook of your blog to send people to your website, make sure it’s the right context. If you’re going to blog on home loans, make sure you say it’s a blog on home loans so people who are clicking with the right expectation get the right experience.
Rebecca is asking for your website, so please send it to me and I’ll send her a website, so Paul’s going to get some business.
Ten is a strong call to action. If anything, on my website … my website is actually going through a few upgrades now, criticism of my website has been, the call to action hasn’t been as strong as it should have. I haven’t quite gotten the sales … that I am getting now, for example. Call strong to action, which basically means buy, buy, buy.
There you go. There’s some of my main tips. If you’ve got any questions, love you to send them through, as reaching in to this presentation, and here’s the big advice that I give you: work out your next step in taking some action. As I always say, the market doesn’t pay for ideas, but effective implementation of those ideas. Like what I always say, please, please, please test and measure. If something is not working, so less of it; but if something is working well, back up the truck and really get them … always cut losers and ride winners.
I hope that helps. Feel free to get me the questions. I’m right here help you. Oh, you’ve got a great one. “How long do you make the blogs?” A good question. Sometimes, Heath … and Heath Thompson’s asked this question … sometimes I’ve made blogs about a thousand words, because I’m writing about a topic I’m passionate about; but to be honest, just talking more commercially, 250-350 words is fine. As you remember, usually a quick point with relevant content works pretty well.
It depends. Some write a topic which you just love, but sometimes it’s quite quick.
If you guys liked tonight’s webinar and you need some help, I’m a small business marketing mentor. I help out my clients in many ways. I’ve got free webinars, as you’ve been on. I’ve got networking events, online products, and personal mentoring, which is available. Feel free to check me out on that one.
Here we go. Len’s got a great question here. Facebook presence, should this be linked to blogging?
Great point. Actually photographers and artists is a great example that Len’s brought up. What can actually happen is that … let’s say you’re a photographer or an artist. There’s two ways of doing it. In fact, one of my clients is a premium catering company. I can’t say who they are because we’re doing some confidential work, but they’ve got a blog and they’re doing some email marketing.
Those guys, they’re absolutely amazing. They actually have a blog which showcases their products and their products are amazing. They’ve got a Facebook page and a blog. They might put a photo of some of their amazing food or events that they do out on Facebook, and then they might blog on that as well, and then they might share the blog through Facebook as a great way of doing it. Thank you Donna. I’m glad you liked it.
Get all your questions through. I’m just talking through where I can do … just so you guys know as well, I’m an active blogger. There’s the link to my website there. If you just go to my website, and at the top it says, The Edward Files. If you click there, you’ll get my blog.
Feel free to check out my blog. We did speak about blogging today. Also, as well, it’s got some great tips in there … my trip across the world, which I’ve just come back from a trip … and also business selling, marketing, and all those great areas.
The other thing I’d love to mention while I’ve got you is the Awesome Marketing Vault online course which captures tons of my knowledge. It’s perfect for entrepreneurs and small business owners who want to learn more sales and marketing strategies. Visit my website … excellenceabove.com.au. Like always, if you need me for one-on-one mentoring or consulting or anything like that, please let me … I do one-on-one mentoring for a lot of great people and can help you too with public speaking and consulting. There you go.
I’ve done enough selling to you … a little bit of selling; but that’s pretty much it. My email address is there. Love to have you along. Thank you very much. It’s been a great webinar. Feel free to check out my products and services and ask my any questions. I’m going to stop the recording now and just pass a few details afterwards.
Thank you so much for an awesome time. I’ve loved it. Keep up the great work, everyone. This is Edward Zia signing off. Thank you Australia and worldwide.
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