relationship

Jul

2019

How to Make Your Business Even More Successful with Blogging

by John Onorato

Are you a life coach?

A conscious business leader?

Are you the owner of a business whose aim is not only to earn money, but to do good? For other humans, for animals or for the environment?

You are? Awesome! Keep reading, then 😃

So … how do you get your message out?

One of the best ways to market your business is through blogging. Blogging is a great way to build awareness of your brand. Blogging also makes it super-easy to serve your customers by providing content that’s both relevant and useful.

There are several more reasons blogging is good for your business.

It drives traffic to your website or store
It enhances your other inbound marketing efforts
It attracts more potential customers
It makes your search rankings better (SEO/SERP)
It can help position your brand as an industry leader
It helps you develop better relationships with your customers

In fact, according to HubSpot, businesses that make blogging a priority are up to thirteen times more likely (13x) to see a positive return on their investment.

Let’s talk a little more about these benefits!

More Traffic, Better Traffic

Blogging gives you a chance to provide relevant content for your customers. It is a very effective way to drive traffic to your website or your storefront.

It doesn’t matter if your main presence is on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest or even StumbleUpon (are they still around?). With little to no investment up front, you can start a blog. Then you’ll send notifications to these services, linked to your articles.

Doing this makes it easy to make your blog the basis of all your social media activity!

All you have to do is provide a reason for your followers to click through to your website. Your content provides this reason.

Better Search Rankings

Who wants to improve their Google search rankings?

You do, of course! 😃

Blogging will help you do just that. Fresh and original content is still the best way to beat your competitors on the search engine results page.

Liberal use of keywords is a great way to do this. Make a list of the topics, categories and keywords you want your business to be known for. When writing your posts, use these and other related words frequently.

Even if you can’t figure out how to wedge those keywords in there, a regularly maintained blog about your product, business or industry will naturally improve your search rankings. This is because Google favors original content.

Of course, being intentional about keywords will only improve your results.

Usage of keywords on your website is a great way to tell Google that your site is a good place to find information about those topics.

Once a Leader, Always a Leader

Want to position yourself as an industry leader?

Write a blog!

Want to show off your knowledge and resonate with your market?

Write a blog!

Have something to say?

Write a blog! 😁

Well written blog posts position you as an industry leader. When you post about topics that impact your market and demonstrate your knowledge, people recognize you as an authority in your field.

If you have a physical product, write about how it improves the lives of your customers. If you have a service, write about how happy people are after experiencing it. Your customers will grow to understand that you are the source for knowledge about the things they are interested in.

Blogging builds trust as well. The more relevant knowledge you demonstrate, the more your customers will trust you to provide what they need.

Not only that, but your readers will benefit from the value you provide them!

Improving Customer Relationships

A good blog deepens the relationship you have with your customers. By providing information directly on your website, you maintain control over what they know about your offering.

An informed client is a happy client. And they will appreciate the fact that you are the one talking to them — they are not having to dig up some third-party information that may or may not be true.

Additionally, your patrons want to be seen as people, not as numbers. Or, heaven forbid, as dollar signs. Who is your ideal customer? Customizing your blog for that person will attract that kind of person.

Regular blogging not only improves the relationship you have with your customers, it boosts customer retention as well. People want to buy from other real people, and a blog proves there are real people on the other end of that transaction.

The Next Step

So yes, blogs are great. There are many ways to make them happen.

Yet you can’t just snap your fingers and expect to have an effective blog.

Or can you? 🤔

ThreeOwl Media specializes in writing blogs. The information provided above comes from direct experience with the thousands of blog posts that we have written.

Maybe you already have a blog. That’s okay! ThreeOwl Media can make it better. We guarantee it.

See, I am a freelance writer. I do it full-time. I love the act of stringing words into sentences and paragraphs.

And I love serving people. I love making people look their best. I love helping people shine.

So if you don’t have time to write, let me do it for you!

If it’s not convenient for you to write, let me do that for you.

If you have more of a numbers brain, and not so much a word brain, let me write for you.

I’ve been writing ever since I could push crayons around a piece of paper. And I’ve been writing professionally since 2013.

To say that writing is my passion is to understate it completely.

Yes, writing is my passion. But it’s also my life. That’s how my brain works. That’s how I process feelings. That’s how I express myself. That’s how I relate to the world.

So let my expertise help you!

With your marketing efforts, with your manuals and documentation, with your correspondence, with your video scripts … whatever! Anything you need written, I am happy to write it for you.

And if you already have written material, I guarantee I can improve it.

Contact me to arrange a call or meeting! Use the Contact Me link, found under About Me.

I look forward to helping you with your writing projects!

Oct

2018

Sharing, Don’t Overshare: The Key to Making Friends Fast

by John Onorato (ghostwritten for SpeedFriending Events)

Stacy Jules didn’t know anyone in Austin after she moved. She had spent 38 years in San Francisco, and making new local friends was a priority for her. “It was pretty devastating to be so anonymous,” the 66 year old artist says.

Jules made herself leave her house every day for the express purpose of meeting people. She visited a tea house, took yoga classes, went to senior centers, joined a gym and a community garden. She describes herself as being a shy person, but she still compelled herself to strike up conversations at the grocery store and on the bus.

Lasting relationships were still a problem, though. Most people were nice, but they had nothing in common together. Others simply didn’t want to get close.

Then, a short time ago, a woman complimented her blouse when Jules was in a store. They began to chat, and discovered not only that they both liked to write, but they liked to work with textiles as well. After a few minutes, Jules asked a risky question. “Would you like to come over to my house for coffee … now?”

The other woman accepted the invitation, and now the two are extremely close.

Jules thought that all good friendships had to be “slow cooking,” based on years of experiencing life together. This contrary experience was a marvelous revelation.

Is it really possible to forge such an intimate relationship so quickly?

Yes it is, say research psychologists. “Fast Friends” is a protocol that many use to study friendship in the lab. It takes about 45 minutes, and helps strangers attain a certain level of interpersonal closeness. The key is for both parties to disclose personal information – and do it gradually.

Curious? People working in pairs are given three sets of 12 questions. The questions must be answered in order, with partners taking turns. Questions in the first set are only slightly personal, like:

“Do you ever rehearse what you are going to say before making a telephone call?”
“When did you last sing to someone else? To yourself?”
“What small things make you happy?”

In the second set, the personal-ness is edged up a little.

“Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?”
“What is your scariest memory?”
“Which of your possessions could you not live without?”

And the last set is the most personal:

“When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?”
“Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find the most disturbing?”
“What are your top 5 most beautiful things in the world?”

Each set of questions also includes an exercise, for instance “Tell your partner what you like about them,” which is intended to
build the relationship.

The idea is to grow the connection slowly and organically.

Arthur Aron, professor of psychology at Stony Brook University, developed the protocol. “You want to be slow and reciprocal,” he says. “If you disclose too much too fast, you put someone off.”

If you’re not sure how to find that sweet spot between disclosing too little and way too much, just think of this: Remember how desperately you wanted to get off that plane the last time someone in the next seat did a brain-dump into your head?

Yeah, that.

Dr Aron says that oversharing is often seen as overwhelming, one-sided and generally socially inappropriate. If the other person seems tense, shifty, fidgety or at a loss for words, then you might be oversharing.

There are a plethora of situations that the Fast Friends technique can be used in, to great effect: Improving business connections, romantic bonds, and relationships between neighbors. Researchers have also used it when studying how to create closeness between groups that typically distrust each other, such as police officers and residents of low-income neighborhoods. It also helps between people of different ethnic backgrounds.

I’ve made friends quickly while waiting in line to vote, talking to homeless men outside of Target, and delivering packages to offices. Sure, I strike out from time to time. There has to be some chemistry there in the first place. When I meet someone I might like to know better, I like to share something about myself that is both personal and slightly self-deprecating. People often appreciate it when I tell them that I’m divorced. That tends to spark their curiosity and opens them up some.

If you want to establish intimacy, the only way to do that is to be willing to open up about yourself. It’s easy to open up about more intimate details, once each person sees the initial connection.

When Jules’ new friend, Susan Simmons, came over to her house on the day they met, they talked about their creative projects. The more they talked about themselves, the more they realized that they were very much like each other.

It wasn’t long before Simmons alluded to a sad time in her own life. Then Jules shared a story she usually keeps under wraps, about how she had to rebuild her life after the end of her first marriage. The sharing was careful, a consciously building thing.

The two now describe their friendship as as unexpected gift. The sharing and spontaneity are beneficial in a mutual way. It has been exciting for the both of them to discover that they could forge deep a friendship so quickly.

“I learned that life can be shared in the moment and be just as alive as if it had been experienced together,” Simmons says.

Published Link:
http://speedfriendingevents.com/the-key-to-making-friends-fast-speed-friending-events-reports/