10 Tips On How To Write Content That Sells On Business Blogs

It is a proven fact that blogging is a great way to promote and get more traffic for any kind of business site, but, of course, the results depend on the quality of the content and posts. Not all sites using blogs for promotion are successful, because not all marketers know how to write content that sells.

If that is your case, or you just want to make sure that you are on the right track, here are a few tips to guide you along the process of writing high converting blog posts.

1. Focus on business goals – Why are you blogging, what is your main goal? No matter what it is, avoid personal subjects, keep it to business, and provide useful information that goes above and beyond. 

In order to help you to define your goals, answer these questions:

• Do you want traffic within the shop or just online?
  
  
• Do you wish to increase sales or just traffic?
  
  
• What clients do you want to attract?
  
  
• Do you want to educate clients and prospects?
  
  
• Do you want to focus on the company, to build a brand, or just on the products fast?
  
  
• Do you want to bring more organic traffic?
  
  
• Pick a maximum of three objectives and stick to them for better results.

2. Target a well-defined category of customers – Do the research and think about what is the ideal target audience for your business. Who is interested in your products and what they would be looking for, this is a common practice known as market research. Write the posts in a language that would suit the education level, the age and the interests of these potential customers.

3. Choose the subjects of your posts carefully – They have to awake the interest of your potential customers, to entice them to read more, and to establish you as an authority in the niche. Expertise is of utmost importance because it will increase sales and carve you into the “go to” entity for that industry. 

4. Well-written posts – Make sure that the content is well written, poorly written articles do little to portray your business as an authority or to convey professionalism. This includes proofing carefully for typos and grammar errors. 

5. Make posts easy to read – People like to read between the lines, they like short and concise sentences, they like bullets and headings, so make sure to structure your post accordingly and do not forget to leave some space between the paragraphs, to give the reader the impression that he or she has more “air”, more freedom of choice, more time to process information.  

6. Use keywords in post titles – The best way to be sure the search engines place your content in relevant search engine page results is by optimizing your page’s titles tags. This will bring targeted organic search traffic, as opposed to, generic titles that no one is searching for.

7. Provide useful and practical information - Give tips, advice, examples, include videos and photos if you can. The more problems your posts solve and the more questions they answer, the more sales they will bring, as well as, establish your business as an authority.

8. Be persuasive - Do not try to sell the products directly, but rather to show people what they need and where they can get it from safely and at affordable prices. Solve problems. Bragging about how great products are and blogging in an overly promotional manner is a run off and lowers the trust level that the audience will have in your company. It is much more effective to be useful through the content.  Think of customers first, consider what sells you when you shop online? Provide as much helpful information as possible and not with the intent to sell, but with the intent to help your customers.

9. Be original - Neither the search engines nor regular readers like repetitions or copied content, so, even if you use someone else’s ideas or information, give them a personal touch, rephrase them in your own style. It is a sign of respect and appreciation for both visitors and search engines and it will pay off in the long run.

10. Think of the audience first – Above all else, when it comes to business blogs think of your readers first, when you impress leads and provide the utmost value you set yourself as an indispensable resource, which, in the long run leads to loyal lifelong customers.

3 Steps To Make An Infographic And Top 5 Free Infographic Creation Sites

 Over the last couple of years infographics have become more and more popular. That's because they provide marketers with a great way to get their message in front of the masses. And while many people have jumped on the infographics bandwagon, very few have been successful with it. Most online marketers believe they can just post an infographic and the audience will just magically appear. 

This isn't the case. Your infographic has to be appealing and provide valuable information for it to be effective. So with this article I am going to share with you 3 simple steps to how you can create an infographic that will help you promote your products and services.

I will also show you 5 sites where you can make your own infographic or have one created for a great price. 

Step 1

The first thing you need to do is think of an idea. You can't have a good infographic without a good idea. So sit down and think. Make a list of possible ideas. You can also look online at other infographics for inspiration.  Below is an example of what an infographic looks like.

Infographic Example

Step 2

Gather the data that will be used for the infographic. This can be statistics, or snippets of information that pertain to your subject. You need to make sure the information on your infographic is accurate. Provide the facts and bring it all to a conclusion. Make everything simple and easy to read. 

Step 3

Step three is to create a skeleton of how you want everything to flow. This will be your initial draft and will really get the ball rolling. Figure out what you want at the top, in the middle and at the bottom of the image. 

Step 4

Step four is to actually create the infographic. Be careful with the colours as you don't want to overdo it. Stick with the pastels and bright hues. These colours tend to be eye friendly. It might seem like a challenge at first, but, it will get easier once you learn the program that you will choose to make the infographic.

Top 5 Infographic Creation Sites

Now that you know the 3 simple steps to creating an effective inforgraphic let’s talk about the top 5 sites you can use to create your very own. 

1.  Easel.ly 

This is a pretty cool little program that allows you to create your own infographic. You can either do it with a blank canvas of you can use one of their templates. 

2.  Infogr.am

This one is very easy to use and it comes with five free templates you can use to create infographics. 

3.  Piktochart.com 

With Piktochart you can sign up for a free account or a paid one. I think you will be pleasantly surprised with what you are able to do with the free account. However, if you want to use more than six images you will need to upgrade to a paid account. 

4. Visual.ly

This is great for those who have no design background. You can create amazing infographics in a matter of seconds. 

5.  PowerPoint

This is not an infographic creating site, but, Microsoft PowerPoint is a powerful program where you can create magnificent infographics and images that you can use to place on to it. PowerPoint also has graphics built in, charts and various Smart Art that can be very useful in creating a gorgeous graphic to display your data.

What Is Content Marketing and Its 7 Benefits

These days traditional marketing just doesn't cut it anymore. Long gone are the days when people actually had to sit and watch commercials in between their favourite shows. Now they can set their DVR and skip all the television advertising. Magazine advertising isn't as effective as it once was anymore either. People just simply ignore it. And those banners and buttons that used to get clicked online, well web traffic has become somewhat immune to those too. 

Smart online marketers know this type of traditional marketing is no longer effective. And that's where content marketing comes into play. Content marketing is a simple marketing technique that requires website owners to create and distribute valuable content on consistent basis. The objective is to get visitors to take a specific action, such as, sign up for a mailing list, make a purchase or simply to develop brand and establish expertise in a given niche or industry. 

Benefits Of Content Marketing

As you can imagine there are a ton of benefits associated with this type of marketing. Below I will share seven benefits of content marketing with you. 

Benefit #1 – It Generates Sales

As a business owner you depend on large sales to survive. The problem is the average small business doesn't have the customer base of their large competitors. That means they have to do much more to generate any sales they get. Content marketing is without a doubt one of the most efficient ways for any business to draw in more customers and ultimately more sales. 

It is a fact that being of value to customers, and offering content they can actually use builds relationships, and loyalty that can last a lifetime.

Benefit #2 – It Establishes You As An Expert 

Content marketing is a great way to separate yourself from all the other businesses in your market. If you are not afraid to say something bold and to express a different point of view on a particular topic it will really make you stand out in the crowd. It will make you look like the expert everyone should follow. When you establish yourself as an expert there is no limit to the amount of money you can make. 

Benefit #3 – It’s Cost Effective

When you compare content marketing to other forms of marketing you will see just how cheap it is. While it won't cost you a lot monetarily it will cost you a lot as far as your time goes. It takes time to create content and it takes patience to continue to do it on a regular basis. If it makes sense for your ROI (return on investment) then outsourcing is always a great option.

The rewards from content marketing won't be instant. It will take some time before you start to see any returns. But once the ball starts rolling it will all be well worth it. 

Expect to spend at least 40 hours a month creating content. If you can't do that you may want to consider hiring someone who can. Again, the results will take time but it will be well worth it in the long run. 

Also, it’s important to think outside the box when it comes to content, sometimes we instantly think of written text, but, did you know that video converts 80% better than text on sales pages? And, YouTube has millions of views each month? People love video and so that is a great form of content.

 Benefit #4 – It Makes You Money

This is the best benefit of all. Content marketing is one of the most effective strategies on the internet. It delivers your message in a very quick and efficient matter. If done
correctly a good content marketing strategy can bring in quite a bit of money in conversions for calls to action on your site. 

Benefit #5 – Brand Building

Brand development is another important benefit of content marketing. The fact is that when people get reliable, useful and accurate information the payoffs for establishing brand reputation can be significant. A smart strategy is to go beyond how the content serves the company or business, but, to consider how it serves the user. Make sure to consider what are and how to solve their problems as they pertain to your niche and industry, and once you do so on a consistent basis you will establish long term and prosperous relationships from a grateful audience. 

Benefit #6 – It Brings Traffic

The simple fact is that the more site pages you have the more traffic you will get. Content brings search engine bots and the more pages of a site those bots index the more traffic they can bring back and traffic means more opportunities to convert any calls to actions that are on that site.

Benefit #7 – Social Media Benefits

Content marketing is the food for social media campaigns. High quality can go viral, it gets shared and it can be posted on the various popular social platforms, in turn, social media marketing campaign brings more traffic, more leads and allows companies to build relationships with their customers.