blogging for business – Halona Black

October 7, 2013October 7, 2013

The Truth About Writing Original Blog Content

Entrepreneurs often work very long hours — particularly in the beginning stages of their business. You find yourself not only responsible for serving your customers, but all the stuff that goes on in the back office as well. You are doing the marketing, the accounting, you’re going to network events, etc. The work never ends. As a result, you may be thinking about shortcuts that will help you to get more done in less time. Marketing is often one of those things that can be systemized to save you time.

Your blog is a marketing tool that many healthy brands either love or hate. If you’re a prolific writer, blogging may be right up your alley. Non-writers would rather scoop their own eyeballs out with a melon baller than to write something that other people will read.

Blogging is an important marketing activity because it builds credibility and it helps potential paying customers find you during online searches. However, as an entrepreneur building your healthy brand, you may feel like using pre-written content — or PLR (private label rights) content — is the way to go.

What is PLR content?

PLR content is pre-written blog posts or articles that can be sold to business owners to use on their blog. The same content can be bought by anyone who has the money to pay for it. It’s sort of like going to Macy’s to shop for a blouse. You may purchase a blouse you like, however it doesn’t mean you have exclusive rights to that blouse. Others are free to purchase a copy of that same blouse in Macy’s stores all over the world.

Just say no to pre-written content

When it comes to content for your blog, you want to make sure that the content you use is original. Why? For starters, one of the purposes of a blog is to differentiate you from others who may do similar work as you. Second, each blog post you write is another opportunity for search engines to rank you using certain keywords and phrases. The better quality of the content, the higher your chances of being ranked on the first few pages of Google’s search function. How will Google know that your blog posts on liver detoxification are quality if you and 100 other coaches used the exact same blog posts?

If you absolutely need to use PLR content for your blog, you can use it to inspire your own original blog posts. Don’t just copy and paste the material and slap your name on it.

Alternatives to PLR content

My advice is to avoid PLR content for your blog at all costs. If you really want to have a successful blog, you have to make the space blogging in your marketing calendar. Some tips to help you find the time to blog are:

Decide how often you want to blog. Once per week? Five times per week? What matters most is that you are consistent.
Look for guest bloggers. If your blog has a bit of a following, you may be able to attract quality guest bloggers who can write relevant content for you during the times you are too busy to write something for yourself.
Hire someone to write for you. Partner with a profesional writer who knows you and your business.

Have you ever used PLR content on your blog? What would make blogging on a regular basis easier for you?

October 4, 2013October 4, 2013

How to Win New Clients with a Guest Blogging Strategy

Have you thought about using guest blogging as a strategy to grow your audience? Guest blogging is the act of writing guest blog posts on another blog with a similar target market as your own. For example, if you are a health coach who serves people with stress management issues, you may want to seek out a popular blogger that caters to professional women in corporate America. This can be considered to be a complementary relationship in that it helps the both of you to expand your work to a new audience.

What can healthy brands gain from guest blogging?

Guest blogging is a great strategy to increase your ranking in search engines by creating links that are directed to your website. When another legitimate, authority website links back to your website, it tells Google that your site is also a reliable, professional website.

Guest blogging also allows you an opportunity to grow your audience. You are reaching out to bloggers that write about topics that complement your business, making it more likely that they will be interested in clicking on the link to your blog to join your email list.

Guest blogging increases your authority in the eyes of people who are looking for experts. Conference organizers, magazine writers, TV producers, and web writers are looking for experts every single day. They need these experts to give weight to the stories they produce. After blogging about fibroids on my other blog, I have gotten phone calls and emails from ABC News and many other health websites looking for quotes related to black women and fibroids.

Guest blogging also doesn’t cost you anything but maybe a couple of hours of your time. In some instances, you may even be paid to write a guest post. What more of a reason do you need to add guest blogging to your marketing plan than that?

Strategic Guest Blogging

It’s important to take a strategic approach to guest blogging because, let’s face it, time is money. You don’t want to waste your time blogging in places that don’t make sense for your business model. Here’s a few questions to ask yourself before approaching other blogs for guest blogging opportunities.

#1 What will guest blogging help you achieve?

What do you hope to achieve by guest blogging? Are you looking to add to your email list? Do you want to drive traffic to your blog? Do you want to introduce a new product or service to those who are likely to be interested? Your goal can be any one or a combination of these. Just be clear on what your goals are because that will influence what bloggers you approach and what you write about.

#2 What kinds of blogs or bloggers will you partner with?

Write for a blogger that has a complementary business or audience who reaches a similar market. For example, if you work with women who are long distance runners, you may want to approach women bloggers who write about running. Pay attention to the kind of following they have. Many of these lifestyle bloggers have thousands of subscribers and followers on social media. More importantly, they have a group of responsive followers who buy everything they recommend. Keep a list of all the bloggers you think you may be interested in writing for and why.

#3 What should you write about?

It makes great sense to do a bit of research on the blog to find out what kinds of posts are useful to their readers. What does the blog or the business aim to do? What kinds of posts are most popular as demonstrated by the number of comments, questions, and shares on social media. This is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to getting taken seriously when approaching other bloggers with ideas for guest posts.

It is also important to know that you should NEVER approach another blogger to write a post making a hard sell to their readers. You want to offer their audience information that gives them great value and will compel them to click over to your website and learn more about your services and products organically. For example, if you are an herbalist, you may choose to write about how certain herbs can keep you from getting sick during the cold and flu season. That is the type of article that will demonstrate your expertise. If the reader is interested in learning more about you, they will click on the link in your “about the author” piece usually at the end of the blog post.

#4 What are the requirements for writing the guest blog post?

Once you identify your list of potential bloggers to approach for guest blogging opportunities, be sure to check their blog for guest blog requirements. Many blogs will have a page on their website menu detailing what to do if you are interested in writing a guest post. It’s important to pay attention to those instructions as every blogger does it differently. If they don’t have any details on guest blog post requirements, you can contact them directly via email to inquire about how to do so using the technique in step #5.

#5 How do you write a guest blog query or proposal?

Again, it is essential that you pay attention to what the blogger is asking for in your proposal. If you choose to do your own thing, you risk your email getting deleted without so much as a “thank you for applying” note. Some bloggers require that you send them your piece completely written while others ask for a brief synopsis of what you plan to write. You can send an email that looks similar to the following,

Dear (Blogger Name),

My name is __________ and I do (your profession and website). After doing some research on your blog, I think that your readers would be interested in learning more about (give one potential topic with a tentative title). This topic is important to your readers because __________. I can be reached at (your email and other contact information.

Keep it short and to the point, making sure to focus on the value you are giving to your readers and NOT how you writing for them will do so much for your business.

Have you done any guest blogging? What gave you the biggest headache?

September 13, 2013September 26, 2013

Why Your Healthy Brand Needs a Blog

There are literally millions of blogs and even more blog posts out there on the internet. Why should your healthy brand invest the time and energy into creating one?

Blogs help build relationships with customers

Some businesses only reach out to their customers when they have something to sell. This can be a major turn off for a lot of consumers. Blogs are a soft way of knocking on your customer’s door and reminding them that you exist.

People or businesses that have bought from you — or those that may want to buy from you in the future — want to stay in contact with you. They want to know your opinion on relevant topics, the latest on your new products, they want first dibs on coupon codes and sales, etc. Help your current and future customers stay in contact with you by offering a blog subscription via email or rss.

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Looking for an email subscription service? I highly recommend Aweber to help you create your money making email list.

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Well written blog posts can help your business rank high in Google

Blog posts can help potential customers discover you during their internet search for your product or service. For example, if I am looking for monkey trainers in Wisconsin, I would type in those keywords in my Google search and perhaps review the first two to three pages of results. If you are a diligent elephant trainer who blogged regularly, you would use the keywords, “monkey trainers Wisconsin,” often in your blog posts, making your site pop up in the Google results (alright, the algorithm for Google searches is way more complicated than that, but you get my point…). I’d be able to read the posts you wrote and decide if you were the the type of monkey trainer I was looking to hire.

Good blog content sets you apart from your competition

Blog posts are a great way to set your business apart from your competition. Just about every health company with a web presence will write a mission statement somewhere on their site. However, who really reads those things and commits it to memory? It is much easier to express your mission and values in your blog posts.

If your company sells iron pills, you may want to blog about why your iron pills are better than others. Are your iron pills suitable for pregnant women? Does your company refrain from using animal by-products or artificial binders? Are the pills easy on the digestive system? Your answers to these questions say a lot about who you are as a company and your values, much more than any dry mission statement can convey.

Are you ready to get your blog started? Do you already have a blog and want to know how you can improve it? Write your thoughts in the comments below.