Hi everyone. My name is Mike Lorence, and I’m excited about being Matt’s guest blogger entries over the next few weeks. I see biz owners flushing money down the toilet with their blog. So why do you blog?
- To become a trusted expert
- For SEO purposes to improve search rankings
- To build your list
Most understand reasons #1 and #2. But they don’t think about #3. The goal of all of your marketing funnels should be ultimately build you list – blog included. The most important asset in your business is your list of names and email addresses or customers and prospects. Then you can continually (re)market to that list with autoresponders or other media. It’s the gold mine that never runs dry.
Since every small business owner is really in the list building business, then you’ll want to use your WordPress blog as a conversion tool to build your list. But, few understand how to do this effectively. So in the next few posts, I’ll be talking about the strategies you can do to actually double the conversion rate of your Word Press blog.
For starters, change your thinking about your blog. Take the view that your blog is really a mini landing page that’s designed to build your list by using different conversion actions.
So what is a conversion action on a blog? Again, think landing page. It’s an action that the reader takes based on a clear call to action given by you in a blog post.
Here are a few examples of blog conversion actions in order of least important to most important
- Sign up for your RSS feed (least important but still valuable)
- Send you a fax to request information
- Call your office to inquire of or buy something
- Click a link that redirects to a webform to register for an ebook/webinar/teleseminar (most important and really valuable)
So here’s strategy #1: Create Blog Reader Personas Of People That Will Convert
We want more readers of our blog to take some conversion action so that we can build our list. Here are two ways to do that: Get new high quality readers that really care about what you write about. Second, write better content.
I teach the concept of creating Blog Reader Personas to help accomplish both of those. Create 4 to 6 descriptions of fake, hypothetical readers to your blog. Just one paragraph for each will do. For each persona, document a fake name, age, gender…What keeps them awake at night? What make them angry? What do they struggle with?
When you do this, you’ll get a much clearer understanding of what your blog content should be. And your content will be ‘stickier.’ Which means that your reader will be much more willing to take whatever conversion action you put in front of them.
Next post I’ll give you two strategies to increase your WordPress blog conversions that will also produce a flood of new, high quality readers who love what you write about.
Mike Lorence is the founder of Small Business Blackbelts – he teaches entrepreneurs how to double their cashflow in 9 months or less. And he guarantees that. Go here right now to learn more about Mike.
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About The Author: Mike has worked with famous national and internationally known entrepreneurs including Guinness Book of World Record Holder for Speed Reader Howard Berg, celebrity lawyer and entrepreneurial branding expert Nick Nanton, and Ghost Writer of Karen McCreadie. Mr. Lorence is an internationally recognized business scholar, consultant, speaker, author, host of an internationally distributed radio (to air on Voice America Radio winter 2010), serial entrepreneur, college professor, former U. S. Marine, husband, and father of three. He’s been named an America Society of Quality Freund Scholar, a Frank E. Genovese Entrepreneurial Fellow, and an inductee into the University of Virginia’s Graduate Business School Hall of Fame. He is the author of the smash hit Business Blackbelt Monthly Newsletter. And he is the author of eight other books including How to Get Others To Do Your Selling For Your: The Referral Marketing System For Every Entrepreneur; The Secrets To Getting More Leads Than You Can Possibly Ever Handle; and Turning Your Prospects Into Rabid, Feeding-Frenzy Buyers Who Cheerfully Pay Premium Prices. Mike appears as a regular guest expert on Our Small Business TV, and he is a contributing writer to large publications. Mr. Lorence is also a certified Comprehensive Six Sigma Blackbelt (CSSBB). He holds a Masters of Business Administration from the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia. He can be found at http://www.smallbusinessblackbelts.com. 
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