3 Things You Want Your Blog to Do

Do you think of your blog as a staff member of the marketing department of your business? It really is.

Here are three things you want that employee to do for you on a daily basis.


1. Provide useful information and tips to prospective ideal clients

If your blogs are random rambling musings, you are missing the marketing potential of doing a blog. And you're wasting your time in blogging as a marketing tactic. Instead, imagine a specific individual has asked you a question, and let your blog post provide a direct, immediately applicable solution to that question.


2. Develop rapport and likability between you and your niche market

A blog works best when it is a little online slice of your personality. Write like you speak. Be irreverent, if that's you. Exaggerate the absurd, if you do so in person. This is how your breathe your life-force energy into a flat, "impersonal" piece of writing. Being who you are AND speaking to your audience about their problems and easily applied solutions to their problems increases the sense of trustworthiness that blog readers need to become clients.


3. Establish you as a generous, helpful, knowledgeable, solution expert for your target market's problem

Blogs function best when they are endless sources of quick bits of education and help. Few people have time or patience to take courses or read books anymore, but we all need simple answers to our complex problems. As clinicians we know that real healing and lasting change is more complex than this. But the blog is not the clinician -- it's not supposed to provide enduring transformation, just enough help at the hungriest moment to make you the go-to solution expert for your target market niche.


Coaching question ---

To start thinking of your blog as a valued employee in your business's marketing department, what specific job description will it have? What measurable goals will you hold it accountable to achieving for you?

Ezine, Blog, or Social Media? Wrong Question

For non-writers, all this talk of having a website, then doing an ezine, and writing a blog, and sending bursts of info out on social media can feel overwhelming and confusing.

Anyone out there feeling that? Yep, thought so.

The question is not which one should you do, but why and when will you want to do one or more of these forms of writing.

From my perspective as a web-presence marketing mentor-coach, I always say that a website is your home-base. It anchors all the rest of your marketing. This is the most important more or less permanent piece of writing you'll have to do.

The purpose of your website is to tell your potential clients what they are waiting to hear in order for them to know you are the right provider for them.

Blogs seem to work better these days than ezines for getting people interested in you and your services, and getting a little taste of what it would be like to work with you. So when you are starting out and needing to generate enough clients to fill your practice, a blog is a good addition to a website.

Ezines seem to work best to keep in touch with current and former clients, generating repeat business, providing targeted help on topics your clients have expressed an interest in, and reminding people you haven't seen for a while that you are still in business. This is a different purpose than a blog, so the writing should be different as well.

Social media work best to spark interest in something specific in the moment. They can be good for sending the curious and the prospective client to your blog or website for more extensive information, or to make an appointment. But for solopreneurs in the healing arts, they don't really directly generate a lot of new clients.

So, website, ezine, blog, and social media -- which will you work on today?

7 Ideas for When You Don't Have Time to Market

When you think you don't have time to market, that's a problem. Your practice may have enough clients right now, but do you have all the things in place that you need to ensure that there are always people coming into the pipeline to replace those who "graduate" from your services?

Ideally, to get a private practice in the healing arts off the ground successfully, conventional wisdom says you'll need to be engaged in marketing tasks 4 hours a day 6 days a week for 6 months to a year.

I can hear a lot of you groaning about spending that much time.

About half of my business coaching clients aren't new at their work, just changing status from agency or clinic or corporate employment to private practice. Some are moving away from taking insurance to being completely cash-based. Your practices have been successful for a while, and you don't want to feel and act like a beginner, putting that much time in.

Okay, here's what I'd recommend when you're in transition or have very limited time. Missed and cancelled appointments are perfect times for accomplishing any of these marketing upkeep tasks.

What you'll need: a laptop and internet access in your office.
What to do: pick just one of the tasks below to fill your available time.
Assumes: you already have a website, are on some locator directories, maybe do some blogging.

1. Review and refresh your website. Make sure has strong, emotionally compelling messages on the home page. Ensure that the target niches are current. Check all the links to make sure they still work and eliminate the ones that send people off your site. Time expense: 2 hours to half a day now, and once every year).

2. Add visitor capture widgets -- some way and reason for people to provide you their email address in exchange for something they can implement immediately, like a tip sheet or a quiz. Time expense: 30 minutes or less, once.

3. Add articles you've already written. Recycle old blog posts, ezine topics, publication articles you've submitted to update references, statistics, etc. Time expense: 30 minutes or less for adding to website, 2-3 hours or less for revising each article, one per week or month.

4. Review and refresh all locator directory profiles. Make sure they are consistent with your refreshed website, and are speaking to your current target niche market. Time expense: 1 hour or less per profile, once a week until done.

5. If all updating is complete, brainstorm a list of questions your clients ask you. If you have a blog already established, and if you can post in draft mode (unpublished), start a new blog draft with each question. This forms a ready prompt for later. Time expense: 30 minutes - 1 hour.

6. Pick one blog draft prompt question, and off the top of your head start writing a conversational answer. Voila, you have a blog post. Edit for spelling and grammar, and publish. Time expense: 20-40 minutes.

7. After publishing new blog post, go to your Twitter account and Tweet it, thus driving traffic to your blog. Time expense: assuming you already have your professional Twitter account established, 5 minutes or less.