My Blog is Popular, But I Still Don’t Have Customers
You’ve worked hard to provide valuable content on your blog and the effort has been worth it. You now have a popular blog with regular readers who comment and share your content. The problem is that you still don’t have customers. Why is it that your blog isn’t getting you more sales? The reason is a simple one. Your blog isn’t supposed to get you customers. Yes, you read that right. Your blog helps you gain trust from your readers, establish you as an expert in your field, answer questions, and lead readers to your website. Your lack of customers may be because one of these steps is not properly functioning. Let’s see if your blog is the reason.
Gaining Trust
Customers don’t buy from sources they can’t trust. To become someone trustworthy, you need to make your content about the reader, not about you. Your blog is not the place to be promotional. If you spend the majority of each post trying to sell your product or service, readers will believe you only care about money. The way you gain their trust is to let them know you understand what they want or need. Next, try to speak to those needs and show that you care about solving their problems and that you truly want to help. Be willing to give valuable insight without asking for something back every time.
Establishing Authority
Before a potential customer becomes a customer, they want to be sure you know what you’re talking about. This is where your blog completes its most important task. Look at your content and ask yourself:
“Does my content show I know my subject matter?”
Are your posts full of helpful information that your readers can use now?
Do you provide unique information that is difficult to find in other places?
Or have you kept it safe and limited yourself to general content that anyone can find?
Your content must provide value to gain trust.
“Does my content speak to my customer, rather than to my competition?”
Go back and remind yourself of who your ideal customer is. What kind of person would want to buy your product or service and are you speaking to that person? For example, if you are a professional writer, you want to get people to hire you to write their content. Writing about the mechanics of writing shows readers you know how to write, but other writers could also be reading the posts. Your customers are people who want to know why well-written content is important to them. Direct your content toward how hiring a professional writer can benefit them.
Answering Questions
Users first visit your blog because they have a problem and want a solution. Does your blog answer the questions your potential customers would have? Have you included case studies of happy customers and shown how you have helped them solve a similar problem? Remember, your blog is not the place for hard selling. It is a place to introduce potential customers to you and your product or service. It is where they realize that you may be able to understand their needs and provide for them.
Moving Customers Toward Your Website
Is there a direct call-to-action on your blog? Ideally, this CTA should get readers to either sign up for your mailing list or visit your website. These are the two places where your direct selling begins to take place. Increase the likelihood of action by offering incentives or letting readers know exactly what they are signing up for. Think of your blog as the appetizer and you are now offering your readers the soup and salad.
Final Words
Keep in mind that your blog is only the first step in a process to get you the customers you seek. Go over the points above and ask yourself if your blog is fulfilling each of the things it should be. If not, what can you do to enhance the performance of your blog? Once you are certain your blog is doing everything possible to hold up its place in the sales funnel, look to the next step of the process, your website.
Originally published at https://www.95visual.com on January 13, 2020.