For the last 27 years, Bashful Bill has owned and operated a landscaping business. I met Bill at the East Portland Chamber of Commerce where over the last few months we have became friends. My first impression of Bill was quiet confidence. He didn’t talk much, but he always had well thought out input to the conversation.
After a recent chamber event where I made a presentation on social marketing via business blogging, Bill asked if we could meet. Bill’s biggest challenge he said, “was being found by prospects in his local service area searching on the internet.” Bill had looked into pay-per-click advertising but felt the costs were outside of what he could afford.
I took a look at Bill’s website and it was well built. He had good keywords with lots of search traffic and he also had his location identified such that the search engines would pick him up. Bill’s problem was the number of competitors in his area and their websites earning a better search results listing.
“Bill, what has been your primary means of finding new customers?” I asked.
Bill said, “The phone book up until a couple years ago. It seems people are no longer using the phone book to find contractors. The last time I received a phone call from someone who found me in the phone book was early last year.”
I explained, “Business blogging is delivering a business message in a human interest story format. I don’t profess to know much about the landscaping business, but I’m sure there are lots of tips and tricks, design ideas and such you could write about. The challenge you need to understand upfront is that consistent writing is mission critical. Once you start, in order to gain the full benefit, you’ll need to write an article a week and every article needs to be a new approach to something internet users find Entertaining, Encouraging or Enlightening. Do you think you could write that much about your business?”
Bill replied, “I believe so, although I’m not sure how to know what people are searching for. I assume that is what you’ll teach me?”
“Correct. I’ll teach you how to do the free research to find what is popular on the internet for your industry and then work with you to make sure you are writing in a manner that the search engines will feel is relevant enough for their users.”
Bill said, “I’ve never been very comfortable talking before a crowded room of people, but I love my profession and have lots of knowledge to share. Writing articles that enlighten people about landscaping would be very easy for me; but how would that gain me increased internet visibility?”
“Lets examine your own internet habits to see if we can answer that question together.” I replied. ”Do you ever go to the internet to find new information or a local business to meet a need?”
“Sure”, replied Bill.
“Do you search on the major search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN?” I asked.
“Yes, Google mostly.”
Sensing that Bill was comfortable doing basic searching on the internet I felt a deeper question was in order; so I asked, “When presented with a list of search results, which of the following would you be more apt to click first? The one that said ‘Buy now and save money’ or ‘My first experience with ABC resulted in an increase in XYZ’?”
Bill thought for a moment and said, “I guess the one that seems less like a sales pitch and more like something that contains information that is useful.”
“Vola!” I said, “You now know what to write. Write things that are of interest to your intended readers. If it would be of interest to you in your search for information, then your ideal customers will also find it useful. If, however, you feel what you write is too sales pitchy, then like you, your ideal customers will find another link to visit. The art of business blogging is writing about things your consumer base wants to learn in a manner that does not turn them off.”
Ed Bejarana
BusinessBlogging.net
a division of Zenith Exhibits, Inc.
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