A lot of independent consultants ask me if they need both a blog AND a website. I always say NO. I actually suggest that you use a platform that can serve as both your blog and website because this method allows you to build your personal brand and sell your services at the same time. How?
Your Blog is a Selling Tool for Your Expertise
I would just use one main hub where people can go to read your blog and learn more about your business. When people read your blog, they are learning something from you that they might be willing to pay for later. Use your blog as a selling tool for your expertise, and then offer your readers other pages on your site where they can read more about your products and services.
Your Blog Can Help Build Trust With Potential Customers
As soon as potential clients land on your blog homepage, they are reading to see if you write like a real person, if they can connect with you. If they can, and if you’re sharing great information, they will likely come back to read more. Over time, this develops into a blogger-reader relationship that involves trust. A good blogger has readers who trust their opinion or advice on a particular subject. For example, thousands of readers place a very high level of trust in Afrobella’s hair and beauty recommendations. And since they already trust her, they would be much more likely to buy products or services from her.
The Latest Blog Platforms are Already Set Up to Act Like Websites
Reason #3,469 why I love WordPress! As their website states:
WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.
The great thing about WordPress is that your blog is just one page on the site – you can have as many other pages as you want: an about page (there is a sample one that comes with your new WordPress blog already), a “services” page, a testimonials page, whatever you want.
How has this worked out for you? Are you a consultant (or want to be) trying to figure out how you should present yourself on the web? Do you have both a blog and a website for your business or just one hub for everything?
Many people have commented, tweeted or emailed me about continuing the challenge next month. While I will probably conduct another challenge in the future, for now, this one has come to an end. yes. Sad face. But. I didn’t just wanna leave you hanging, so here are three concrete ways that you can continue the blogging challenge on your own and keep improving your blog way beyond the work we did together in August!
Repeat the Challenge
You can start over on your own from Day 1 today (September 1) or just do the assignments you may have missed. Many of the assignments, like the ones below on content, can be repeated infinitely.
Subscribe to Blogging for Branding for Future Tips
This blog will still continue on a daily basis with resources, tips and commentary on blogging for personal branding. Make sure you subscribe to get all the goodies from now on!
Enter your email address:
Subscribe in a reader
Buy Problogger’s Book, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog
Many of the exercises in my challenge were adapted from Problogger’s 31 Days to Build a Better Blog concept. Especially for those of you who like to have everything in one place, Darren’s book is an amazing resource that you can use over and over whenever you want to improve your blog.
31 Days to Build a Better Blog is a downloadable e-book designed to help you revitalize your blog by giving you 31 tasks that will all help to turn it into the page view powerhouse you’ve always dreamed of.
Click here to view more details
Thanks for taking part in my challenge and best of luck with your blog!
Here’s the full roundup of all the assignments from the 31 Days to a Brand New Blog Challenge. If you weren’t able to complete all of them this month, go back and do the ones you missed! For those who were able to do most of the assignments in this month’s challenge, I want to hear from you in the comments:
What is the biggest lesson you learned about blogging through the challenge?
So yes, we’ve come to the end of the challenge (sad face.) Now is the time to really analyze your results from your hard work to improve your blog this month. Let’s take a look at your posts, comments, subscribers and of course, go back to good ‘ol Google Analytics and see what’s what. Use August 1-31 as the time period for all of the metrics below:
- Number of posts you’re written
- Number of blog comments you’ve received
- Number of blog subscribers, if applicable
- Number of visits
- Number of pageviews
- Bounce rate (shows the percentage of people who leave your site almost immediately)
- Average time on site
- Traffic sources (shows which sites are sending you the most traffic)
- Keywords (found in the traffic sources section – shows which terms are people using to get to your blog)
- Basic audience stats from Quantcast (if applicable)
- Most popular posts (found in the content overview section)
Your assignment is to take a look at each of these metrics and blog about your results or post a comment about what you learned from looking at them. How do they compare to your blog’s metrics from the same time period during July 1-31? If you blog about today’s challenge, please post the link in the comments section!
Note: Please tag your posts with “31bnb” to make them easier to share with us.
Like blog carnivals, guest posts on other blogs can bring in new readers to your site. An added bonus is that you also get to form relationships with other bloggers in your niche and promote your personal brand!
Today’s assignment
Write a guest post and submit it to another blogger in your niche. It should be original (make it good!) and relevant to that blog’s audience. Where to submit? You might consider reaching out to the blogger(s) you highlighted on Day 6: Link to a Blogger in Your Niche. They may already be aware of your blog now and want to return the favor of exposure. Otherwise, you may want to use Google Blog Search. Just type in your topic or related keywords and click on “search blogs.” For example, here is a search I did on my niche: “nonprofit leadership.”
Here are some additional resources about guest blogging:
Tell us about your guest-blogging experience in the comments! And be sure to come back and link us to your guest post if it gets accepted on another blog.
A how-to blog post pulls in readers because it promises that you’re going to give them information they can use and apply. Similarly, a blog post series attracts readers, but the added bonus of the promise of a follow-up post keeps them coming back for more. What’s a blog post series? Well, the 31 Days to a Brand New Blog is definitely a blog post series. The idea is to take one topic or subject matter and write multiple posts about it within a particular period of time.
Today’s assignment
Plan a blog post series for this week. You can start the series on Monday and go through Friday to make it simple. The first step is to figure out a blog topic you can write multiple posts about. Perhaps something that has several layers that you can peel back one by one as different aspects of the subject matter. Then, sketch out your posts for each day of the week, or maybe several days out of the week. Or you could even do one post each week on the selected topic. I’d suggest doing at least 3 posts in the series to make it worthwhile for readers.
Let us know what you come up with for your blog post series in the comments! Was it tough to come up with a topic to write a series on?
With 500 million people on Facebook, it’s a huge pool of potential readers for your blog! But if you’re like me and you don’t want your readers to friend you on your personal Facebook page, you can create a fan page instead where people can keep up with your blog updates. I started a Facebook fan page for my blog last year and I’ve been able to use it to connect with my readers, brainstorm new topics, and share updates from not only my own blog, but posts from other bloggers in my niche as well.
Today’s assignment
Create a Facebook fan page for yourself in the “writer” category and link to it from your blog so people can keep up with your updates. You can use the Facebook notes function or Networked Blogs application to automatically pull in your blog posts to your Facebook wall. You can also use your Facebook fan page to build community by posting questions and other articles related to your niche.
Here are some resources to help you create or improve your Facebook fan page:
Once you create your Facebook Fan page, link us to it in the comments! For those who already have one, share your experiences. Has it increased your blog readership?
A great way to connect with your loyal readers and keep them coming back is to acknowledge them as much as possible. Of course, you should respond to all your blog comments and you can even turn a comment into a blog post. Another thing you can do is email your subscribers. It takes a pretty enthusiastic reader to actually give you their email address so they can be notified of all your new blog posts. So you definitely want to keep subscribers at the top of your mind as you build your blog readership and community.
Today’s assignment
Email a new blog subscriber to thank them for subscribing to your blog. If you use Feedburner, you can find the email addresses of your subscribers by going to the “Publicize” tab and then clicking on “Email Subscriptions” on the left hand side. Click on “Subscription Management” and scroll down to where it shows you the total subscribers and click on “view subscriber details.” This will show you all the people who have subscribed to your blog by email. Choose one of the first email addresses in the list as those will be your newest subscribers. You can also email an older subscriber or even several subscribers. It’s up to you and how much time you have.
What if you don’t have any blog subscribers yet? You can email a recent commenter on your blog to thank them for reading and commenting. This same concept applies to encourage them to keep coming back to your blog.
What should you say? Be gracious and simply say thank you. You can also ask them for their feedback if you want.
Here’s an example of the email I sent to a few of my new blog subscribers this morning:
Good morning,
I just wanted to drop you a note to say thanks for subscribing to my blog! I really appreciate you taking the time to read what I have to say. I’m always open to new topics to explore in my posts, so if you have any ideas, send ‘em my way. And please feel free to leave your comments on the blog! I’d love to hear your voice as part of the online conversation.
Hope you enjoy the weekend,
Rosetta
Tell us about your experience connecting with your blog subscribers in the comments. Did anyone write you back? If so, what did they say?
By now, you should already know how to analyze your blog traffic and use Google Analytics to find out more about your blog readers. But if you want to know more about your audience, there are ways to dig even deeper into the stats of who is reading your blog. Quantcast is a free tool that I’ve been using on my main blog at rosettathurman.com for the past few months to see the demographics of my blog readers. What I found was very interesting and somewhat surprising as I think of ways to engage my specific audience.
In the chart below, you can see that my blog readers are mostly female (63%) of all ages. My blog readers are well-educated and 75% of them earn $60,000 or more per year. I can also see that I have a higher than average percentage of African American readers, with people of color making up almost 30% of my readership overall. Cool huh? This information is priceless to have in terms of coming up with blog posts that would appeal to this demographic. And it’s free!
Today’s assignment
Sign up for a free Quantcast account and follow the instructions to “quantify” your site. Like Google Analytics, it will take a few days before your data starts showing up, but be sure to check back in to the comments section of this post to let us know your results.
For those who already use Quantcast, how has it affected your blogging experience?
For many of you, blogging is not just a hobby, but a means to an end. Lots of bloggers begin sharing their thoughts and ideas online in order to build a reputation outside of their 9 to 5 job. The hope is that they can eventually craft a new career for themselves doing what they really love – writing or being a part of whatever industry or niche they blog about. Blogging can and does bring about unexpected opportunities for people – just look at Gabi Gregg, the young fashion blogger who was recently selected to work for MTV as its first “Twitter Jockey.”
I know once I added a “Hire Me” tab to my blog years ago, I did begin receiving more speaking invitations that were paid gigs instead people asking me to do stuff for free all the time. It could definitely have the same effect for you!
Today’s assignment
Add a “Hire Me” page or tab to your blog to let your readers know that you are open for business, whether it be consulting, freelance writing, speaking engagements, side gigs, or new job opportunities. You never know who might come across your blog, whether it be potential clients or recruiters for certain job fields.
Here are a few examples of “Hire Me” pages that you might use for inspiration:
Let us know what happens, if anything, after you add your “hire me” page to your blog. For those that already have one, has it had any effect?
