This is Day 23 in the 31 Days to Become a More Efficient Virtual Assistant Series
Previous post: 9 Tips to Help Get Your Website Found
People can’t hire you if they can’t find you—and just having a website is not enough. How will people find your website? And how do they know you’re still in business? How do you showcase your knowledge?
Blogging consistently can help you address all of the above… and it’s so incredibly easy (especially if your website is built on WordPress!).
Help People Find Your Website
If you’ve implemented some ideas on yesterday’s post to help people find your website you’ll also increase your odds of your website being found by blogging frequently. Each time you publish a blog post your content can be found by subscribers to your RSS feed, email list, and search engines (and it adds another indexed page to your site). When you take those same blog posts and share them on your social media networks (such as posting them on Facebook or Twitter) you are going to potentially get more subscribers too. These repeated actions will help increase traffic to your website. (ProTip: Want a free and easy way to get weekly reports on your website traffic? It’s super easy to do by having Google Analytics installed on your site and signing up for Visual.ly’s weekly email infographic alerts.)
Submit your posts to social bookmarking sites such as Stumbleupon, Inbound.org, BizSugar, etc. (Word of caution: do not just post your content – be sure to share other people’s content too or it will appear you’re only being self-serving.)
Are You Still in Business?
Unfortunately most small businesses fail within the first year and virtual assistants are no exception. Just because a website is live doesn’t mean the business is still operating. Because most blogs show the month and year a post was published you’ll be able to let people know you’re still around and in business. Just by blogging!
Blogging Gives You a Platform to Showcase Knowledge
Three of my favorite websites are Shelly Kramer’s, Charlie Gilkey’s and John Jantsch’s. Why? Because Shelly, Charlie and John are constantly sharing knowledge that helps me better service my clients and to become a better small business owner.
There are so many things you can blog about! Even if someone else has blogged about the same topic, which is incredibly likely, you’re giving the topic your unique perspective and voice.
I’m not a writer. I hate writing. I’m not very good at it and I don’t offer writing services. But I force myself to do it, for all of the benefits I list above. As counterintuitive as it may be, blogging can help you become a better writer and assist you in developing your own unique writing voice. Don’t let pursuit of perfection stop you from writing.
ProBlogger has a lot of resources specifically geared towards blogging and how he’s earning full-time income from it.
What other benefits have you experienced from blogging? If you’re not blogging, what’s holding you back?