Blogging, Make It an Open Invitation to Customers

Blogging is simple way to boost sales. If you design your blog to be an open invitation into your business you will immediately accomplish two of the main ingredients to a sale--trust and accountability.

Blogging brings your customer into your business--not the lobby, but the chair next to your desk, the break room, the closing room. This is the relationship Internet customers want--demand. They want to know who they are working with and assurances that you will be accountable to there needs.

Trust in Blogging

Blogging the right way is more important than blogging. Don't use dry PR-speak, eloquent prose, or marketing hyperbole--be you. This is a conversation. So, plain language and letting out the little nuances of your personality are critical.

You will misspell things, you will say things you shouldn't have, you will get mad sometimes, you will share your joys, you will show what it is like to have a beer together. This is authentic, this is what attracts an audience of customers.

Customers want a conversation when they ready your blog. They want to talk back. They want transparency. Don't tell them you want to help them--show them.

Blogging is a great way to showcase you solving real problems for clients. By blogging tips, solutions, opinions, or showing pictures of you in action you're giving new prospects a taste of what it is to work with you.

Traditional marketing and websites are so easy to hide behind. A skilled web designer and programmer can knock you out of the visual appealing competition overnight. However, months and years worth of valuable blogging will give you relationships and trust that are unbreakable--not to mention hundreds of SEO rich sale landing pages on the Internet.

Now Be Accountable

You have invited people in, now you have to live with the accountability part. Like any relationship you will have to live with these people. Some will challenge you, other promote you, and occasionally you (being human) will disappoint them.

These are all good things if you deal with them head-on. It is apart of any relationship. Working through things together, in a good way creates huge value to everyone. Be accountable to your customers. Show them they are important. Nothing is more powerful than good customer service played out publicly on the Web, even if it was fixing a mistake.

As uncomfortable as this might be it is essential to a solid, loyal, trusting relationship. If you create a blog that blends transparency and accountability you will ignite an amazing response in your customers.

Blogging can transform customers into an auxiliary sales force auxiliary. They will defend when your attacked and refer you readily and repeatedly to friends and colleagues.

Successful blogging works best when not confused with traditional web publishing. It is not marketing to customers--it's about having conversations with customers. The result lots of great relationships and sales.