Blogging is the tool of today for serious marketers, writers, and others who need to communicate information to a selected audience.

Blogging is typically used as a public journal, similarly to a diary.  But it is also used as I’m using it…to provide specific help to subscribers of my blog.  By comparison, you can say that my newsletter provides general help, whereas my blog is used to give more specific help.

One of the great things about a blog is that it can serve for two-way communication when subscribers leave comments about the posts left by the blog post author.

You don’t have to do written blogs.  You can also do video blogs and podcasts (the equivalent of audio blogs).

But before you start your blogging adventures, you need to decide what’s the best way to use your blog to accomplish your goal of “making your message unique and attracting all the clients you want”.

And of course, before you can start that process, you have to get clear about what the unique message is that you want to spread.  See my blog post of 5/31/08 about creating a unique selling proposition.

Once you know what your unique selling proposition is, you are then ready to decide the best tone and tact to use with your blog.

An example is my blog.  I want to help my subscribers grow their businesses as quickly and as large as possible.  So I decided to create this blog that answers your specific questions to help you do that.

So decide what’s most important to your customers and prospects and build your blog around that.

Blogging Programs

There are two basic categories of blogging software: the type you download and install on your own web server, and the type that you use online in a parent website. The easiest type to use when you’re learning is the second type, and a perfect example of this is Blogger.com, where you open an account, fill in some blanks, and have a blog up and running in just minutes. Other blog software offering this service include LiveJournal, Facebook, MySpace, Open Diary, Windows Live Spaces, Xanga, TypePad, and Wordpress.com. Blogger is the dominant dedicated-blogging site in this category.

If you’re ready to download and put blogging software on your own server – a difficult task if you are not experienced with blogging software – you can use Wordpress, Drupal, Livejournal, Moveable Type, SimplePHPBlog, and Typo. Of these, Wordpress is probably the most dominant, with thousands of themes available for free download and installation. I use Wordpress for my site.

The easiest way to install the Wordpress software is to have a skilled freelancer do it for you.  Depending on the features you want, you can have it installed for as little as $150.  Some freelancers will install the program for you, submit your site to the blog search engines, and even make posts for you on a regular basis.  All you do is provide the content and they’ll post it for you, so you don’t even have to fiddle with the program.  Needless to say, the cost starts going up, the more services you add. 

How They Work

Blogging software all works in basically the same way: you post articles and entries, which your community is able to comment on if you allow it. You have widgets down the side that allow for other features like the weather, a list of blogs that the author commonly references or links to (blogroll), information about you, archives, documents, categories of blog posts on the site, and advertisements, etc.

One of the things to consider is whether or not you want to run advertisements on your blog. Some of the pre-hosted blogs will have ads run on them whether you want them or not, and you won’t get any of the revenue. Blogger.com allows you to choose whether or not to run advertisements. With Wordpress you can do whatever you like with your hosted version of the software.

The most popular web-based blogging software appears to be Blogger.com; the most popular server-based blogging software is Wordpress.

Building Your Blog

Once you have your blog “shell” (template) up and running, you’re ready to create a blog. Make your entries useful and/or interesting at the very least.  If you can make them entertaining, that’s even better.

Write an article for your blog regularly, at least once a week. If you’re publishing regularly, you are clearly a live blog, and Google will give you a boost in rankings. In addition, this has a variety of effects.

First, other bloggers who like your content will link to you, giving you valuable inbound links that will increase your Google ranking. Second, more readers will subscribe to you, giving you a reputation as a reliable expert in your field. It’s that expert status that you’re looking for. With this, you will be able to develop real online relationships with your audience, who are also your likely future customers. Keep your blog focused on its topic and on the relationships that form between you and the readers, and you will have done precisely what needs to be done with a blog.

Your tools for ranking high do not end with inbound links. You should also learn a little about using keywords, so you can optimize your blogs for the search engines as well as for people.

It’s also wise to start learning how social bookmarking sites works. Services like Digg.com, StumbleUpon.com, and more specialized sites like Slashdot, allow you to post links and short descriptions of your entries and articles, giving you valuable one-way links and guiding more interested traffic to your blog.  Of course, this takes additional time, so you might want to have a freelancer make those posts for you.

As you can see, there is much to this for the purposes you have in mind.  So this is only an overview. There are literally hundreds of strategies you can use when blogging to attract more clients and brand yourself.  The best thing is to start, learn, and add strategies as you go, one step at a time.

Technorati Tags: attract clients, attract customers, blog primer, blogger.com, blogging, wordpress

OK, the three important points to keep in mind as you develop a USP are…

1. Formulate your USP from your prospects’ or clients’ point of view. Your USP can’t be something only you think is so wonderful that people would be interested. It should be something the prospects or clients want.

2. Whatever USP you come up with, deliver on its promise or promises. Do not state something you can’t fulfill.

3. Define your USP in one or two short paragraphs (ideally less than 100 words) that clearly spell out the benefits – not features – your customers will get from your product or from doing business with you.

Let’s talk about point #3 in detail.

Your USP should clearly state the benefits and not the features of your product.

There’s a big difference between benefits and features.

Features are product characteristics, such as the car has a 450 horse-power engine, seats are genuine leather, and so on.

Benefits are the financial rewards, such as saving time or money, or both. Or they can be emotional rewards like protection, peace of mind, and the security which the customers get from an insurance policy.

Benefits answer the customer’s most important question, “What’s in it for me?”

Let’s go with the feature above. The car has a 450 horse-power engine, seats are genuine leather, and so on.

The benefits are: Heads will turn when you drive by, and the girls will rush to take a ride in your new (whatever make).

If any of you reading this blog are in the insurance business, here are some USP’s I created.

For example: Let’s take the features A-rated carrier and comprehensive coverage.

The benefit of the A-rated carrier is: The insurance company has strong financial strength and stability to pay all the claims.

The benefit of comprehensive coverage is: Complete protection for you and your family.

The names of insurance policies are usually features. For instance: Decreasing term, mortgage life insurance and keyperson insurance.

The benefit of a decreasing term-mortgage life insurance policy is: You’ll have the money to pay off the house if the wage-earner dies.

The benefit of a keyperson insurance policy is: You’ll have the money to keep your business going in case your key employee dies.

As you can see, although product features are usually easy to identify and describe, product benefits can be trickier because they’re often intangible.

The benefits of an insurance policy usually are: (1) financial rewards like saving money and time, and (2) emotional rewards like protection, peace of mind, and security.

While it’s fine to talk to your prospects about the features of a policy, remember to always tell them what benefits they’ll get from the features.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• What advantages do you offer your prospects and clients?
• Do you offer them the best policies?
• Do you give them the largest selection?
• Do you provide them with more service, advice, and follow-up than all your competitors?
• Do you offer them the fastest service?
• Are you open evenings and weekends, seven days a week, to better serve your clients?
• Can clients reach you after business hours?
• Do you educate your clients with special reports, newsletters, brochures, information hotlines, or other services to help them improve various aspects of their lives?
• Do you offer a guarantee?

Listen, even though you’ll need time to think about these questions carefully, answering them will allow you to create a compelling USP that’ll knock your prospects’ and customers’ socks off.

Another suggestion I would give you is to take advantage of gifting my book, “10 Marketing Mistakes That Steal Your Cash,” to all of the business people in your town. Then call on them and show them how you can benefit them. If you missed this FREE offer I made in a previous blog post, you can go to www.kenvarga.com/report.php to learn more about how you can use the book to differentiate yourself from your competition and grow your business.

Regarding “Retention”, I gave suggestions in prior blog posts. Review the posts I made on May 23, 2008 and on May 28, 2008. One post is titled “Customer Retention”; the other is titled “How To Create Lifelong Customers”.

As far as branding is concerned, remember that what people think of you and your brand is everything. Don’t ever think that because you are not Coke or Nike that you don’t have a brand. You ARE a brand.

Your brand is not your advertising, your logo, or your product.

Your brand is owned by your customers, the people you work with, and anyone else who has an impression of you. Your brand is other people’s perception of what it is like to do business with you or work with you.

You transfer a customer four times to different departments and they never get their problem solved. That’s your brand.

You put a telephone customer on hold for over a minute. That’s your brand.

A repeat customer for many years comes into your place of business and no one greets them by name. That’s your brand.

I can go on and on.

It takes an on-going commitment on your part, to take your personal brand to the highest level. Brand becomes the way you do everything, almost without thinking.

Remember, it is all about keeping promises and creating great experiences.

Technorati Tags: Branding, Unique Selling Proposition, USP

“I’m a personal lines insurance agent, and I would like to be able to have a 95% closing ratio, high retention, and a great system for getting my clients to give me referrals.”

All I can say is WOW.  When I was in the insurance business, I created ways to prospect that were not normally done within the industry.  Of course, back then, we also did not have compliance departments breathing down our necks, as most of the insurance agents have today.

Any of my readers can massage the suggestions I’m going to give here to fit their own industry or business.

The first thing I did was to create a prospect list.  I started with 100, and then increased it to 1000 individuals whom I wanted as clients.

Then I accumulated articles and any other free information I could locate, and kept in touch with them over a period of at least one year.  My thoughts were that if after one year, they still didn’t want to do business with me, then color me gone and out of their life.

By doing this, I developed a relationship with them.  Of course I also created unique letters to send them with various forms of GRABBERS.

For instance, I created a letter like the following where I sent a shoe with the letter.

Jeff…Now You Can Increase Your
Net Worth By $1,000,000.   Effortlessly!
            (Include one Right shoe with your Letter)

Dear Jeff,

As you can see, I’ve sent you a “right” shoe with this letter.

I did it for two reasons:

First, because what I have to share with you is so important, I needed some way to make sure this letter got your attention.

Second, because I want us to start off on the right foot, I thought sending you the shoe was a good way for me to get my foot in your door.

Anyway, here is what this is all about…

(Continue with the rest of your offer)

Think of ways to adapt this letter to the product or service you are selling.

Another thing you can use is to offer my book, “10 Marketing Mistakes That Steal Your Cash” to your prospect and clients. Go to www.kenvarga.com/report.php and take advantage of the free book offer.  It’s free and will bond you with your customer.

In prior blog posts, I gave you suggestions to the last two items of your question…high retention and a referral system.  Refer back especially to the last post on “How To Create Lifelong Customers”, and to the post on April 26, 2008, “Growing Through Referrals”.

Technorati Tags: Closing Ratio, Getting Referrals, growing referrals, Referrals, retention, retention rate