1. Storytelling
Storytelling is powerful blogging. It’s also powerful marketing and sells without selling — in other words, storytelling isn’t a “hard” pressure tactic form of selling.
In my concept of Gateway Blogging, there are 2 main types of stories:
- Process/progress stories
- Customer success stories
2. Positioning and branding
In Gateway blogging, you show your potential and existing customers what you’re all about by how you blog so they can make or reaffirm a decision to do business with you. If you don’t uniquely position yourself and shine like a lighthouse in the foggy night across an ocean of undifferentiated “me too” blogs, that purchase decision will not be made in your favor.
I see 3 major paths in this:
- Blog design
- News as differentiation
- Vision posts
3. Refraining
Don’t give away everything. Give the sense that there’s more inside the gateway. If you have a membership site or a client access area, this is where some of the additional content can go, but if you take clients, make it understood to your blog readers that clients have unfettered access to all information. People who pay get the good stuff.
If what you offer is unique and of value, you are not competing against the tide of free information online, because you’re not saying or doing the same things everyone else is.
Note: My clients have access to a complete paper on this. This post contains an abridged version. If you are a client of mine, and are interested in accessing the full version, please contact me.
Hi Michael,
I like the way you’ve presented some time-tested wisdom.
I also like the way you practice what you preach
Sure would like to get the complete paper…
Cheers,
Mitch
Mitch, thanks! Sorry, only my clients have access to the complete article. However, you can look forward to a free ebook I will be releasing soon on how to plan and set up a business blog.
[...] I thought I’d give it a quick test for a term I coined, Gateway Blogging. [...]