If you sell products or services and you want people to buy them, don’t offer your opinions. Nobody cares. People care about themselves, and as far as you’re concerned, they care about what you can do for them.
Blog about what you do, not what you think. This is one of the simplest and most effective bits of advice I could ever give you. Your blog is a gateway to your sales and conversion funnel. Never forget that. Its purpose is to get people down that funnel, resulting in a sale. No matter what business you’re in, you’re actually in the business of helping other people conduct their business better, faster, or cheaper than their competition. What you do, not what you think, is what has an impact on people.
When you write about what you think or your opinions, you are forcing your readers to make a choice: agree with you or disagree with you. Those that disagree will not buy from you.
When you blog about what you do, future customers who read your blog will imagine themselves in the place of the customer you’re writing about. They will see themselves as benefiting from your product or service, because you’re writing about how someone else benefited. If you write customer success stories, other people will want that story to be their story. If you write about how you’re innovating in the market and what’s coming up, you are taking your readers along with you on that trip. Your readers see action, results, and benefits, and they will want those benefits for themselves.
This is not to say that you shouldn’t ever do an opinion piece or a review or industry news. These are expected to show your involvement and expertise. It provides variety and well-rounded subject matter for your blog. Just don’t forget that when you’re blogging to help your business, people want to know that your business is doing something and that you are helping people get what they want. Because when your readers see that you help other people get what they want, they will know that you could help them get what they want, too.
And that puts them closer to the buy decision.
Note: I updated this post by adding the last two paragraphs on Oct. 27.
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Hi Michael,
What you say is very true. I don’t own a blog, but a website. My site does not say how good a product is but rather offer advice from the product they can buy. By doing that, visitors would realise how good an product is, and is more likely to buy. What you say in this post is the foundations of affiliate marketing.
David, thanks for commenting. I think a non-blog website often has a better chance to have content that converts than a blog does, because much of the advice out there on blogging misses the mark when you’re blogging for a business (even when that advice is supposed to be aimed at business bloggers). But someone who has their head on straight and doesn’t lose focus or get distracted can really rock a business blog in a way that beats a straight information site. How? By getting readers to keep coming back for new posts and moving them closer to the buy decision. Each new blog post is a chance to convert, but you have to be smart about your content focus, and that’s really what I’m trying to get at with this post.
The way you’ve got so much content on your PUA site and how it’s arranged, it’s damn near a blog already. Something to think about.
Hi Michael,
Thanks for visiting my site. I do agree with what you are saying. Having a information site is like giving a lecture from an authority position, and a blog is like an interactive workshop lesson. There is more personalisation in a blog. My site does retain readers well because of the sheer amount of information but I believe I could increase that by adding comments onto the pages just like a blog. Its something I am planning to do.
Wow, this is a GOLD! One of the rule we forget a long time ago!
Maybe we get too much guideline from the guys who selling ebook such as “you need to tell what need to be done rather then how to do it”, then you can sell your information about how to do it.
Well, it’s really a totally different ball game here for selling your service online:)
Great post, Micheal!
Thanks, Ken! Yes, things are different when you’re selling something and have a blog.