Internet Marketing For Solopreneurs

Every once in a while I receive a question from a coach who has heard that newsletters are old news and web 2.0 is the way to go. Here is a question I received recently:

Question: Biana, I have been a life coach for about 4 years now. I have been publishing my newsletter for about 2.5 years. About 6 months ago I started reading articles and hearing from everyone that newsletters are outdated and that I should start using web 2.0 exclusively.

Did I make a mistake? Should I have been publishing my newsletter instead of starting the blog and doing social networking?

My answer: First of all, I LOVE web 2.0. Blogging and social networking has been bringing leads and clients to me for a very long time. However, your newsletter is a foundation of your marketing strategy. Before you blog, before you use social networking sites, you MUST have a newsletter.

Let me explain. Your newsletter helps you build long term relationships with people in your target market. It is your most important piece in your marketing strategy. When you meet people in your target market - in person, through speaking or networking, or online, though social networking, article marketing, etc - you need to invite them to get on your newsletter list.

Once they get on your list, they will be able to receive your newsletter, get to know you and become aware of products and services that you offer.

The best way to use web 2.0 is to use it to get more people to subscribe to your newsletter. When people are reading your blog, make sure that you invite them to subscribe to your newsletter. You can do that by using an invite in the blog header, including a newsletter subscription box in your menu, etc.

And when you are using social networking, make sure that your personal pages on different social networking sites promote your newsletter. That way you can use your newsletter to continue building relationships with people you meet at social networking sites.

So I recommend that you continue using your blog and social networking sites, but you should also find a way to continue building relationships with people you meet through those means.

I talk a lot about using your newsletter to get clients in the Grow Your List Home Study Course that you can see at http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/znews

Biana Babinsky

After I published FREE Web Site Traffic Series Part 1: Article Marketing, I have gotten emails from some of you asking for more information on driving traffic. Today I am discussing how to use your blog to get more free web site traffic:

- Use Search Engine Optimization To Drive Traffic To Your Blog. Search engines bring a lot of very targeted traffic to my blog posts, so I always recommend using search engines to drive more free traffic to a blog.

Search engine optimization for your blog consists of three important parts: doing keyword research, using the keywords in your blog post and getting links to your blog.

First, you need to find keywords that your target market uses when searching for materials on the same topic as your upcoming blog post. You do not need too many keywords for one blog post.

Next, you need to use a few of the best keywords that you find in your blog post.

And to get better search engine rankings you need to have links leading to your blog. You can do that by exchanging links with other bloggers, listing your blog in blog directories, etc.

- Make Each Blog Post’s File Name Descriptive. Different blogging software behaves differently, but some will call your blog posts 2.html, 3.html, 4.html, etc. As you can see, that is not very descriptive and not particularly helpful to either people or search engines. When you create a post called How Coaching Helps Business Owners, calling it how-coaching-helps-business-owners.html is a much better title than 5.html.

Make sure that your blogging software creates descriptive file names for your blog posts; it is better both for human readers and search engine spiders and doing this will help you get more traffic to your blog.

- Get Links To Your Blog. More quality links means more more traffic, it’s that simple. Work on getting quality links pointing to your blog.

- Get Your Blog Listed In Blog Directories. Blog directories are a great source of getting links to your blog. Sometimes blog directories will give you a unidirectional (they link to you, but you don’t link back to them) link, other times they would exchange links with you.

- Use Article Marketing To Get Traffic To Your Blog. As I mentioned in the FREE Web Site Traffic Series Part 1: Article Marketing post, article marketing is a great way to drive more free traffic. And you can use article marketing to drive traffic to your blog by using your article’s Resource Box to link back to your blog.

I share my system for using my blog to get free traffic and clients in my How To Make Thousands Of Dollars With Your Blog Home Study Guide that you can see at http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zbt

More articles on getting free traffic:

- FREE Web Site Traffic Series Part 1: Article Marketing

Biana Babinsky

Many of my clients have been asking me for free marketing techniques to bring more targeted traffic to their web sites.

There are quite a few methods to spread the word about your web site for free or inexpensively. However, I recommend that you first decide WHO you want to bring to your web site. This will make a big difference on how you apply marketing techniques later on.

Once you have decided who your target market is, you need to use online marketing techniques to drive your target market to your web site.

Here are my favorite online marketing techniques. All three of them are free to use to bring traffic to your web site:

- Article Marketing. Article marketing consists of writing articles that your target market is interested in reading. Once you have created these articles, you need to submit them to article directories.

Every time your article gets published in an article directory, or it gets re-published on other people’s blogs and web sites, it gets published with a link back to your web site. Thus, every single person reading your article can click on the link and visit your web site. This will help you get more web site traffic.

Read articles on Article Marketing: http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/articles/articles.html

- Business Blogging. Blogging is really big now, and this is because lots of people are now either blogging or reading other blogs, or both. Blogs are also popular because you can use them to communicate with current customers and attract new customers to your business.

Start a blog that is of interest to your target market. Post to it often. Make sure that your blog is listed in blog directories and that you optimize your blog posts for search engines.

Read articles on Using A Business Blog To Market Your Business: http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/articles/blog.html

- Search Engine Optimization. A lot of people are using search engines to find what they need. Make sure that each page on your web site is optimized for search engines, so that people who are looking for the information available on your web site can find it.

Read articles on Search Engine Optimization: http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/articles/seo.html

Biana Babinsky

I have had many life coaches, career coaches and other coaches and service professionals ask me about which blogging software is right for them.

Is your blog software working for you? Are you getting a stream of clients and newsletter subscribers from your blog, every single day? Do your blog readers come back to read your new blog posts all the time? Does your blog bring in people who want to buy your e-books and register for your teleseminars?

Continue Reading Is Your Blogging Software Right For You?

Many coaches have told me that they want to be authentic when marketing their coaching business online. One of the best ways to do that is by creating a blog and using it to promote your business. Learn more about how to make your authentic self shine through and get clients in this article:
Read Get Clients With Your Blog By Being Authentic Article

Biana Babinsky

After I posted the Blogging For Life Coaches post here on the blog, I have heard from other coaches asking me to post more blogging tips to use.

A blog is a great way to connect with your target market, get more newsletter subscribers and sell more of your products and services. It is also a wonderful tool to get more traffic from search engines.

Here are some of my articles to help you get started with blogging:

- Blogging for Business: Blogging 101, if you are just starting out this is a great article to get acquainted with blogging and what blogging involves.

- How To Use Your Blog to Market Your Business. Many coaches start a blog, but are not sure how to use it to market themselves. They spend a lot of time on blogging, but don’t get any results from their blog. Read this article to discover how to use your blog to promote your business and your expertise.

- How To Optimize Your Blog For Search Engines. Did you know that over 70% of Internet users use search engines to find products and services to buy? Read this article to discover exactly how to bring more search engine traffic to your blog.

Biana Babinsky

P.S. For more in-depth information on using blogging to get coaching clients, take a look at the Make Thousands Of Dollars With Your Blog Home Study Guide

If you need a simple web site and you are just getting started, you may want to look at free software available from WordPress.org.

Word Press is actually blogging software, but there is more! This software also provides you with the ability to create static (non-blog) pages for your web site. So with this software you can have both a web site and a blog.
Updating a WordPress site is very easy - you do not have to know anything about web design to do that. You just type your post in and press a button, and your post or your page will appear on your web site.

I really like how all the pages are interconnected as well - this connectivity helps you attract more web site traffic using search engine optimization.

Biana Babinsky

Are you thinking about starting a blog to promote your business? There are many places to host it, and here are my recommendations to help you choose the best blogging platform for your business.

If you want to have a blog hosted by someone else, and not by your own web host, try WordPress.com. It is very easy to use and you can set up a blog and start blogging in just a few minutes. However, since the blog will not be hosted on your web site, you will not own all the search engine rankings and other things that will come when you promote your blog.

If you are serious about blogging, and want to use it as a long term strategy to promote yourself and your business, you should get your own blogging software. I recommend getting blogging software from WordPress.org and installing it on your own server. The
software is available FREE and it is easy to install and use.

There are dozens of advantages of having a blog on your own web site:

- You can control everything on your blog, from the marketing aspects to technical aspects

- You can use any template you want and you can create a template that fits your web site, your brand and your image. There are lots of free templates available online as well.

- You own the hosting, so no one can kick you out and shut down your blog one day

- It looks much more professional - when people ask about your blog you can direct them to your own web site address, not some blogging site.

and there are lots more.

For more information on marketing your business with your blog, take a look at my Make Money With Blogging Home Study Guide at http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zbt
In the Home Study Guide I discuss how to market your blog and how to use it to get clients for your business.

Biana Babinsky

There are many ways to find your target market:

- Online networking is a great way to get in touch with your target market. You are already networking on Ryze, so explore other online networking venues. Yahoo groups, LinkedIn, Xing, Ecademy and others are great places to reach out to your target market.

- Publishing articles and submitting them to online directories is another great way to reach your target market. When you write articles that are of interest to your target market, your target market reads them and visits your web site. I have gotten many newsletter subscribers and web site visitors through my articles.

- Search engine optimization is fabulous for this. Over 70% of online users are using search engines to locate the products and services that they need. This means that your customers are searching for your products and services every single day. You need to find the keywords that your target market uses, and make sure that your web site can be found in search engines using these keywords.

- Business blogging can be used to show your expertise, attract your target market to your blog and get more search engine traffic.

My Complete Step by Step Online Marketing Course discusses, step-by-step, how to these and other online marketing methods to reach your target market online.

However, it is not enough to get your target market to come to your web site - you want to keep in touch with them and market to them in the future. For this purpose I recommend having a newsletter on your web site, that your target market can subscribe to.

Biana Babinsky

My blog is an excellent marketing tool for me, and it brings leads and clients to my business.

Sometime ago, my recommendation to clients was to have a web site, that has information about a business (services, products, newsletter, articles, etc), and a blog, used to communicate with potential clients. However, now some blogging software (Wordpress, for example), let’s you create web pages, as well as a blog. This really blurred the lines between web sites and blogs and let’s you create whatever you need, using that software.

My recommendation is to start blogging, and provide useful and interesting posts that your target market would want to read.
The purpose of your blog is to get people who are in your target market to read your posts and enter your sphere of influence. Traffic from search engines does not cost any money, and it is a great way to get potential customers to your blog.

Treat each one of your blog posts as a separate file to be optimized for search engines. Use a keyword research tool to find phrases that are related to the main subject of the post, and weave them into the content of the post.

My e-book, Complete Step by Step Online Marketing Course contains lessons on effective business blogging, as well as keyword research and search engine optimization.

Biana Babinsky
Learn How To Promote Your Coaching Blog and Web Site Online With the Complete Step by Step Online Marketing Course