Small Business Blog Tips

The Threshold of Success – Why Most Bloggers Never Make It

By Christian

Success is a nasty, elusive little bugger, isn’t it? Is there a topic in the business space that gets covered more often, directly or indirectly, than “how to succeed”? If you think about it, nearly every how-to tip, every list of the “best WordPress plugins to use on your site”, every tutorial on how to get more traffic to your site, etc…it all centers around the ultimate hub that concerns us all…SUCCESS. How do we become successful?

Success is Not Defined by “Them”, It’s Defined by YOU

One of the reasons success is such a troublesome topic is because it is exceedingly personal. When we accept this fact, success becomes a lot simpler. Not necessarily easy…but simpler none the less. But unfortunately, most of us have not accepted it! The problem is that most of us, understandably, look to the example of others for how to define success, when we really ought to look no further than ourselves. In essence, we look at the accomplishments of others, and make those accomplishments our own goals. This is not the way to do it.

A Lesson from Gary Vaynerchuk – Not All Goals are Created Equal

It’s important to ask yourself if the accomplishment you’re trying to emulate was in fact a goal of your mentor’s to begin with. For example, we see someone like Gary Vaynerchuk with 800,000 followers, or however many it is these days, and we say “I want 800,000 followers too. How do I get 800,000 followers on Twitter like @garyvee?”

Setting a goal is a great thing…if it’s a great goal. There IS such a thing as a goal that steers you down the wrong path, so make sure the questions you ask yourself, and the goals you set for yourself are taking you in the right direction.

The fact is that Gary Vaynerchuk has never given a damn about how many followers he has on Twitter. Getting 800,000 followers was never a goal. It just happened as an automatic result of following his business plan.

Do you want to model his follower count, or do you want to model his success? See the difference?

Maybe you should model Gary’s work ethic and business philosophy…the things that actually LEAD to 800,000 followers, instead of just trying to get 800,000 followers on Twitter.

If you truly wanted to model Gary Vaynerchuk’s success, you wouldn’t give a damn about how many followers you had on Twitter either. This is just one of many examples of arbitrary goals we set for ourselves, that sound good but ultimately don’t lead us in the direction of success.

I’m just using Gary as an example because he’s a marketer and business man who I personally agree with a lot of the time. Your mentor may be someone else, but the concept is the same.

Why Success is Elusive

My point is that success is elusive for many of us for two reasons, and the first one is because often, we set goals that take us in the wrong direction. To take care of this first concern, make sure you set goals that will truly lead YOU in the direction YOU personally want to go, not goals that you believe possibly lead someone else in the direction they went. See the difference?

The Threshold of Success – How to Cross Over and Make Your Goals a Reality

Second, success has a threshold. And many of us, while we want the things success provides, are not willing to do the work. Plain and simple. I’ve worked with a lot of sales people one-on-one and in group settings over the years. Sales training like I’ve done puts you front and center with what it takes to make a business work. It also puts you front and center with the reasons they all too often DON’T work.

No business is successful without strong sales. Whether it’s a service, a product or whatever, you need sales, and I’m hear to tell you that the sales skills I aim to teach my clients are able to be learned by anyone.

If you do the work, you will get the sales, period. I’ve seen it time and time again. When a business person or sales person wants to know how to make more sales, the first place I look is at their daily production. And by production I don’t mean sales…I mean their daily work-related tasks…the work you can actually control on a day to day basis.

You cannot control whether a person is a good prospect to buy a certain product at a certain time, believe it or not. But you CAN learn to have complete control over the following factors:

Prospecting
Lead generation
Lead follow up
Presentation skills

If you are not making the money you want to online, or wherever your business is based, there is something broken somewhere in that list. Why? Because that’s all there is. Success is simple. The plain fact is that while people SAY they’re working their tail off every day, they’re either working on the wrong things (things NOT on the list above), or they’re not working as hard as they say they are.

What is the threshold of success? It is hard work…on the right things. And bottom line: most of us just don’t want to do it.

We have things we like to do, and perhaps we just don’t like prospecting. That’s fine, but if you want your business to be successful, you need to make sales, and if you want to make sales, you have to prospect. Period. End of sentence. That’s all she wrote. And if you don’t do it…or hire someone who does…your business will fail.

The reason most of us don’t make it through the threshold of success is not because we don’t work hard. We just don’t do the work that needs to be done. Perhaps the reason “successful” people seem to be at ease is because they realize how simple it is to make their goals a reality. There are, however, only four things on the list!

Your Business Blog is a Massive Asset – And Not for the Reason You Think

By Christian

I wrote a piece recently about why I refuse to depend on Google for my internet business, and in that post, I said there’s a big difference between the traffic you get and the actual business you’re building. In other words, your traffic should be able to wax and wane a bit, and your business should not be fundamentally affected. I wanted to go into that just a little bit further, because so many of us are tied into and quite literally addicted to Google traffic.

Are You Sitting on a Time Bomb?

I argue that one of the most valuable things you can do to build your business is to start a business blog. And every blog needs traffic, correct? So how can traffic be such a bad thing? Well, I’m not saying traffic is a bad thing, but anything can cause damage if it’s misunderstood and/or abused.

If your new traffic disappeared tomorrow, where would your business stand? Would your business be over? If so, you’re sitting on a time bomb!

The fact is that without traffic, you’ll never be able to build a business, but traffic is not the problem. Too many of us think because we’re getting a lot of traffic and comments that our business is doing well. These are good things, but again I ask the all-important question: What would happen if all your new visitors went away tomorrow? What are you left with?

Your answer ought to be: I’m left with a very effective blog and a powerful, targeted list of customers that I can cultivate and grow for years to come!

A Lesson From the Real Estate Business

If you follow this blog at all, you know that I have experience in the real estate business. While real estate professionals are just now coming into the internet space in force, and are just now learning how to use internet marketing competently (and I applaud them for it!), they have LONG been masters of what it takes to work a client list, and I think all us internet marketers can learn a bit from them!

Let me tell you something that might surprise you: some of the top real estate professionals in my network…I’m talking about Realtors who sell several hundred homes a year…guess how many people are in their database. Thousands? Tens of thousands? The fact is that many of them have a database of only a few hundred. That’s right. Hundred.

And these are pros that have not always been online, pulling in new leads from the internet. Internet leads to these professionals are gravy. Icing on the cake. How the HECK can you sell 500 houses a year, when your customer base consists of only a few hundred people?

The fact is that each of those people, knows other people. And if you have only a few hundred people who are truly advocates of your business, they will tell their friends, won’t they? So these savvy salespeople spend their time talking to their advocates. And those advocates send them referral business. Just one person can often refer several transactions per year!

If you have 300 people who truly believe in you and think you are the best at what you do, do you see how massively powerful that is? Can’t you see how 300 people is all it takes to make you very, very wealthy? If each of those 300 people refer you just 2 people each year on average, you will sell 600 houses, right? The average Realtor, who doesn’t understand this, sells 8 per year. This is how powerful a client list can be.

So if 300 is all you need, why is it so important to pull in a constant stream of new traffic every single day? It ought to be gravy, not the lifeblood of your business!

The Real Reason Your Blog is a Huge Asset

So many of us think that a blog is such a great asset to your business because it’s such a great way to pull in traffic and sales into your business. No doubt this is true!

But the REAL value of your blog is as a conversational tool with the base of followers you already have. When operated competently, your blog will no doubt continue to bring in new traffic to you for years to come. Congratulations for using such an awesome promotional and business-building tool!

But don’t neglect the REAL value…what you already have right in front of you…your existing customer list. Your list is your business, and your traffic is simply one of many ways to build your list.

If I have to choose between building traffic and interacting with my existing readers, which do you think I choose? Which one do you choose?

5 Books I Recommend About Business Blogging

By Christian

If you’re like me, reading is a huge way to get new creativity flowing, keep up on changing technologies and expose yourself to new ideas. I find the books I read to be invaluable, as I apply almost everything I read to my business in one way or another.

Here is a recommendation on some reading material to help you with your business blogging. Of course this is not master list. It’s my top 5 at the moment. These are affiliate links, except for #3 which is a free pdf download. Therefore, you can easily click through and check out full details on all these books right now, and if you purchase them you will be supporting Next Level Blogger. It’s a win-win-win if you think about it 😉

The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly – In depth explanations about why business blogging is essential, the different technologies you can use and how. How to promote your blog, how to make money with your blog and a lot more. Tons of resources to find more information.
ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income – This is probably the ultimate book about blogging in my opinion. Anyone interested in blogging as a business or as a means of promoting an existing business is well-served to read this one a few times. Also if you’re not familiar with the author Darren Rowse’s blog Problogger, you better get over there and subscribe. It’s pretty much mandatory.
uuuEbook: Unique, Useful and Updated. Three Secrets to Web Traffic – This is another no-brainer. It’s a free pdf download from Seth Godin. One of the biggest concerns any blogger has is how to get traffic to their blog. This short, concise ebook says it all. Follow these precepts, and your blog will be a success, period.
Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers – A very insightful read that covers “Blogging’s Six Pillars”. It teaches you to use your blog effectively by showing you how blogging differs from other traditional media. Most new bloggers tend to treat their blog as a traditional form of marketing, which can cause you to spin your wheels for a long time. Worse, you can do more damage to your brand than good if you use your blog poorly. Like any powerful tool, it can produce either great results or do significant damage, and it all depends on how you wield it.
No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog – One of the biggest challenges most new bloggers face is not knowing what to write about. The prospect of having to continuously fill your blog up with new content can seem daunting, until you’ve read a book like this. I’ve mentioned on Next Level many times already that you have MORE than enough to talk about, and this book will help you unlock all of it. Before you know it, you can have more content than you could ever possibly write for your blog 🙂

All these books echo the ideas I attempt to express here on this blog, and these authors are all certainly in tune with how to use this blogging medium to it’s maximum potential. I encourage you to check them out!

Top Myths About Business Blogging

By Christian

Writing a business blog is a great way to promote your products or services. There’s no doubt about it. There are a large number of professionals and business owners from all different fields who are entering the blogging world, and understandably…they want to get results!

A big part of getting good results from your blog is simply writing consistently and creating content that is valuable to your readers over time. Truth be told, it’s not rocket science. Building a successful blog can give your business some very significant results. It just takes work. Like anything you build from scratch…it starts off very small and builds up over time. Eventually it will truly become a force to be reckoned with. It just takes time and diligence.

One of the biggest reasons many blogs are not successful is not because making them work is all that difficult. The reason is because most blog authors simply don’t stick with it and do the necessary work to get the results they want.

One thing that can help you stick with it over time is simply having a realistic perspective on what to expect when you launch your blog. I’ve come across a ton of misconceptions over time, and these seem to me to be the most prevalent. I hope that reviewing these Myths About Business Blogging will help readers know a bit more about what to expect.

Myths About Business Blogging

You can always make money from advertising. This really isn’t true. Unless by “money” you mean a few bucks a month. You need a lot of traffic to make any meaningful amount of money from advertising. A LOT of traffic. Most adveristing methods will pay out somewhere in the range of $1-3 per thousand visitors. I’ve tweaked Adsense modules to average $5 per thousand visitors, so if you’re getting 50,000 visitors per month…you’re making $250. If your blog is getting 50,000 visitors a month, you’re not going to be excited about $250 🙂
Blogging is easy. Blogging is simple, not easy. Many people approach blogging, unfortunately, with a traditional media mindset. In other words, they want to set something up and watch it grow, but they don’t want to tend to it much. The fact is that blogging is simple, and it doesn’t have to take all your time. But if you want significant results, you need to work on it a bit every day. It is that consistent effort and hustle that will make the difference. Think of all the millions of other websites out there. You have to stand out. The process is simple, but it requires consistent effort over time.
I can automate this sucker! We’ve all heard this before, and there are more tools out there now than ever before. Search engines and humans alike reward original and valuable content. Trust me, I’ve explored em all…automation is definitely doable. I could show you tools that will fill your blog up with awesome articles every day without you having to lift a finger. You will have an awesome looking blog that takes almost no time at all…and it will never go anywhere, because at the end of the day there are no short cuts. Tread lightly with any sales copy that claims to be able to make your blog or blog marketing automatic. Nothing replaces diligence and hard work.
This sounds like too much work. I don’t really need a business blog. One of the biggest mistakes is to assume that because you’ve not had a blog before, you don’t need one now. Your customers are online…you need to be here. Yes, it will take work, and you’ll have to learn some new things. But the alternative is not being here…where your customers are. The alternative is losing business more and more. There are no good alternatives to having a good blog for your business. You need one.
I should be able to have a thousand visitors a day or so within a few months…or any other completely arbitrary number you’ve pulled out of the air. Everyone wants a lot of traffic. It’s only natural. But the fact is that not every niche is a high traffic niche. That’s first off. Second of all, if you’re running a blog for a small business, especially a very small business like a home based operation, you likely don’t NEED a lot of traffic to meet your goals. Don’t get wrapped up in arbitrary numbers. Yes, Yahoo! gets 300 million visitors a month or so…you don’t need that much. I’ve had more than one very profitable site that gets less than 3,000 a month. It’s not always about high traffic. As more and more people get involved in internet marketing, and as it becomes essentially mandatory for all small businesses to have a strong internet presence, it’s less about volume and much more about high quality and creating value for your readers.

Trust me, you can do some serious damage with your small business blog over time. ROI is difficult to measure if not impossible, which is another hurdle we need to get over as business owners. We’re used to getting a fixed or predictable result with each marketing piece we put out. Blogging is marketing, but it’s more like networking. You’re contacting and communicating with your readers and customers through the use of this medium. This work, when you do it well, leads to more business coming your way.

As a business owner, you don’t demand a specific ROI from a social event in order for you to attend. You understand that getting out there and shaking hands, meeting people and talking about what you do is essential. You do it because it’s a good, necessary business practice. Blogging, likewise, is a necessary business practice.

How Much Time Should You Spend Blogging?

By Christian

Clearly, I talk to a lot of people about using a blog to market their business. One of the most common concerns expressed by business owners is that it will take too much time. It’s not too much of a secret that blogging can be a very, very powerful tool in your marketing plan. Here are some reasons why:

It’s highly cost efficient.
It enables you to reach a huge number of people effectively, personally and quickly.
It gives you the power to reach NEW customers that you would not have reached otherwise.
It makes possible NEW revenue streams that you may not have ever considered before.
It puts a powerful publishing tools at your fingertips…you can promote your business 24/7, as often as you want, and the cost doesn’t increase the more you use it.
A well-designed and maintained blog will establish you as an expert in your field, building credibility and trust with your audience, an invaluable asset to your business.

These are just a few ways that a blog is a highly recommended marketing tool for your business. So it’s easy enough for me to argue, can you afford NOT to have a blog? And that really should be enough. However, it’s reasonable to consider the time issue, because no tool is going to work for you if you don’t use it. In other words, a blog doesn’t write itself, and if you don’t do it, it’s not going to do you much good.

So, How Much Time Should You Spend Blogging?

Here’s the bottom line: you get out what you put in. The fact is that most highly successful blogs with an immense amount of traffic, making big money from advertising, etc…are powered by individuals (or even teams of individuals) who put a LOT of collective time and energy into the site.

Do you even WANT a high traffic blog…one that is considered to be highly successful by traditional standards? It’s an important question. Here’s why: I’ve argued from the beginning of this blog that high traffic is only one of many ways to make money with your blog. It’s very possible that promoting your blog doesn’t have to be a big deal at all. It’s very possible, in other words, for you to have a very successful business, make a lot of money and have a blog at the center of it all…powering a lot of your sales, without it having to be a very big time commitment.

It’s very important to have accurate expectations however. If you do not work your blog every day, build your community every day…if you do not moderate comments and respond to inquiries aggressively and promptly, and if you do not do these basics every day over time, it’s unlikely you’re ever going to have a blog that gets 100k visitors a month.

What Are Your Goals?

When considering how much time you want to commit to blogging, it’s important to consider what results you want to get from your blog. You can probably tell at this point that there’s not going to be a hard and fast rule about how much time it takes to be successful blogging. Simply, you need to do as much as is necessary to reach your goals. So what are your goals?

Do you want to have 100k+ visitors a month and make several thousand a month in advertising revenues? If so, you’re going to need to work it full time, period. Blogging is going to have to be your full time job. It doesn’t mean you cannot start part time and build up to that point, but to acheive that type of traffic, it’s going to require a concerted effort on your part.

Do you want your blog to simply serve as a powerful and convenient way for you to interact with your customers? Do you want to build a good, targeted list of customers over time and use your blog as a way of gaining market share, getting new customers and building your brand? All of this can be accomplished over time with only a part time effort. Let me be clear, it will still require a consistent effort over time. But it hardly needs to be something that consumes all of your time.

I believe most professionals and business owners fall into this latter category. Blogging can be an absolutely impressive and powerful way to extend your business and market your products or services. And it doesn’t need to take a lot of time.

What About You?

What are your goals? Do you have a blog already? How much time do you spend using your blog to market your business?