I have chatted with many different people on the right way to use blogging to recruit, sell products, and create a bigger online presence for their home business.
I want to help you realize that blogging is an extremely powerful tool to build your business.
So, here’s how to do it the right way…
Let’s first discuss the #1 mistake I see people making in their early blogging efforts.
Most people don’t understand “why” they should use blogs.
Most people just look at blogging as a primary traffic source for their business, and although it definitely can be, this is not the BEST use of a blog in our line of business.
Instead, begin to think of your blog like the cherry on top.
The most powerful use of starting your blog for your business is its ability to form a very powerful testimony for you.
Let me lay this out for you…
In one of my earlier businesses, here’s what I would do. I would blog very consistently on a daily basis about different topics relating to my niche.
At the bottom of the blog, I would include the number of people in our team at that point in time.
Then, when we had new recruits, I would write a post welcoming them to the team and making them feel excited to be with us.
Or, if there was a certain product that was appropriate or related to the post, you can bet that I included that in the post as well!
Why would I do this?
Well, I haven’t explained to you how I used my blog to recruit, yet (relax, I’ll get there).
But, along with using a blog to recruit new prospects, I would also constantly refer my team members there for any and all updates on our business.
Just like a message board.
It was like the break room for our business. As a result, my team always checked the blog to see what was happening in our biz.
This was important for two reasons:
First, they had easy access to important current information pertaining to our team.
Secondly, it was the perfect social proof for our team.
They would land on the blog and see the number of people on the team growing, and they would see the welcome messages to our new team members.
Subconsciously, it helped raise their belief level about the business they were involved with.
It’s sometimes easy for a new recruit to get discouraged without consistent encouragement, and the blog helped give them that encouragement they were seeking.
As a result, they “believed” in the business, and took more proactive action to go out and do what we were doing to grow…which translated into a higher rate of duplication in the business and produced longer retention.
So let’s recap what we’ve discussed so far.
We’ve got a blog where we’re blogging about our team, what we’re doing to advertise, and we’re “training” our team members to check the blog often for advice and encouragement.
The team then uses that motivation to go out and build.
This causes the team to grow faster, stronger, and better.
Now, what have we created here?
It sounds like we have created a pretty solid testimonial, right?
So this is the primary use of our blog for recruiting purposes that I was mentioning earlier.
The big mistake people make, however, is they only want their blog for traffic.
You can definitely do this, and I’ll share a few tips here in a bit, but it’s not the best use for gathering traffic for recruiting purposes
If you can’t get rid of the idea of just using your blog for traffic, then consider using your blog for selling affiliate products. Keeping the testimony method in mind, you now have a central hub to drive tons and tons of eyeballs too.
Now, let’s get back to using your blog for recruiting…
I generate leads directly into my own lead capture page using Lead Pages.
Back in the day, I would use my company’s lead capture page, before I understood the power of using your own.
After my lead opts in, my autoresponder sends them a quick email telling them a little about our team, our business, and myself.
In that first email, I always include a link to my blog so my prospects can get an inside look at who I am and what things I am involved with.
This is super powerful for recruiting.
First, people are inherently voyeuristic.
People want to be spies. Let them! This is a good thing for marketers.
By sending people to my blog, they now are being exposed to my blog and my team in this example, without me even being there.
When that prospect decides they want to connect with me, they already know all about me!
I’ve always had way more success with this rather than just cold calling leads. It gives them the chance to get to know me before we even communicate.
The second reason this method is so powerful is based on the old principle called “The Power of Documentation.”
This principle states that we as good ole humans tend to take things that we read as much more truthful and legitimate than things that we just hear.
To put it another way, a prospect that is diving into your blog and checking at your team is receiving everything at face value.
It’s sometimes the opposite when your are on the phone with them, and they’re thinking to themselves, “yeah right.”
If you’re like me, you’ve had plenty of encounters with prospects on the phone where they have asked, “Well, why should I join YOU?”
This is where sending them to your blog, first, will virtually evaporate any objection and spark a powerful curiosity about you and what you’re all about.
So, when we’re talking about using a blog to recruit, it’s best to find a different traffic strategy.
(P.S. Many people ask me what I do for traffic. Comment below this post if you are wanting more info on my favorite traffic sources! Or check out one of favorites here.)
Now, I can almost hear the question welling up from inside you.
“Rob, what should I put on my blog to start?”
It’s much more simple than people make it out to be.
Start with talking about yourself and what you like to do. Then, move on to talking about your company, your company’s products and services, why you love your company, and your team.
Here’s a little tip for you…
Try asking your upline or downline to write you a quick note about why you’re great to work with and put that on your blog.
You do this, and you’ve covered it all.
Not only are your prospects learning all about you, why you love what you do, your personality, and your team…they’re also seeing these people saying awesome things about you.
Third party validation is huge!
After I started doing this consistently for about 3 or 4 months, I was blown away with the new traffic I was getting.
At the time, I was focused only on blogging, but because I was posting valuable content regularly, I was receiving around 100 visitors per day mostly just from search engines. (Before the social media aspect).
That’s pretty darn good for just starting out with a simple blog.
After some time passed, I started receiving calls out of the blue from people wanting to know about my biz, and that my friend, is where it starts getting pretty exciting.
So, let’s agree that simple search engine ranking isn’t EVERYTHING these days, and that social media presence is becoming much more important.
Let me share a few things with you, then, that can boost your blog and enhance your free traffic.
Start a fan page on Facebook that is congruent with your blog.
You can set it up so that it’s just your name if you’re focusing on network marketing.
Or, if you’re an affiliate marketer, maybe use your avatar that you have for that specific product.
Use whatever content you’re posting on your blog and copy it right to your Facebook page. Then, link to your blog right out of those FB fan page posts.
Can you see the potential and scalability here?
You can then do this for Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, and whatever other social media platform you are into.
One ninja strategy that’s really increased my blog traffic and edge rank on Facebook, personally, is using images in my blog.
On my blog posts where I inserted an image to correspond to the blog post keyword, I find myself getting a lot more traffic. So find a few images related to your blog post keyword.
Find a few other blogs in the niche and comment on a few post and link back to your blog post.
You should do this on Facebook as well. Find similar pages that are related to your specific niche and like or comment on their pages. (They usually end up returning the favor ☺ ).
The social media platforms don’t take anymore of your time, but give you way more eyeballs on your content.
(Quick little tip: try using sites like hootsuite.com
to post to all of your social media accounts at once or at different scheduled times).
You start doing this stuff, and you’re ahead of like 99% of marketers out there today.
So, now that we’ve got traffic covered, let’s talk about the fun stuff…
Money.
You now have a blog successfully established, but how do you make money?
Well, if you’re not just focused on prompting your network marketing company, you’re most likely going to be doing some kind of affiliate marketing.
I personally use clickbank.com
to find products that are related to my niche and audience.
It’s free to become an affiliate and they make it super simple to find products and post them on your blog.
Once you start making a few commissions off of your blog from things that you love to post about anyway, you will start to get very excited.
This will be a powerful positive reinforcement that will make all of your hard work worth it.
Here’s one last thing that I’m going to close with…
The best long-term move you can make to make money from your blog is to integrate it with your email marketing efforts.
I love using the one two punch of email marketing and blogging from the same post because it allows you to change the dynamic of your email messages.
Instead of people just reading your blog post, an email gives them an opportunity to reply to your post and engage with you in conversation. And all you did was send the same content from your blog post!
Getting people involved and commenting on your blog is a powerful way to build rapport.
Begin to think of your blog as a conversation wall, and you’ll see the bond between you and your prospects growing stronger day by day.
And guess what will also grow stronger? Yup. Your bank account.
There are two powerful benefits of turning your emails into a blog conversation.
First, when people get involved and proactively comment, they’ve taking a powerful step into your world.
The second benefit is a little more sneaky, but still extremely effective….
Let’s say that you send a prospect to your blog to share an important post today and 13 people comment on that post.
Awesome!
Well, what if you take the email that you sent people to your blog and add it to your auto responder?
Now, those leads that join your list 4 months down the road from now will receive that same email from your auto responder sequence and will get a link to that post on your blog.
Not only was that automatic and took no effort on your part, but when they get to the post they’ll already see lots of engagement and comments on that post!
I hope this was helpful for you to see that power and potential in creating an effective blog.
With so much information out there today, it’s easy for us to be smothered on the internet.
Make sure your stuff is exciting and refreshing, and most importantly, just be you!!
I appreciate you,
Rob Thomas
The Internet Marketing Idiot 