Grow Your Business with Tips from Growth University

As a writer, blogger, and small business owner who enjoys writing about topics that help businesses succeed (it’s a very symbiotic topic for me to research and write about!), I enjoy working with companies that help other companies continually improve. That’s why I’m happy to report that I’ve been recently contributing to the Growth University small business tips blog for Future Simple. The blog publishes regular small business tips and articles from a variety of sales and marketing writers and business experts.

Future Simple, who runs the blog, is the company behind Base (formerly known as PipeJump). Base is a cloud-based sales pipeline tracking and customer relationship management tool that has recently been re-released with a free starter edition. If you’re a small business owner, entrepreneur, or a freelancer, Base presents a great way to manage your pipeline and your relationships. Check out the Base Starter edition for free. (Referring others can help you get more free deals, too.)

(I’m working with it and plan to do a detailed Base CRM review soon.)

Meanwhile, feel free to check out some of my posts at Growth University at http://www.futuresimple.com/blog/author/dana-prince/.

Some recent small business tip blog posts include:

I’m not just writing small business tips for Growth University. I’m now a subscriber, too. Since starting to write for the site, I’ve read some very helpful articles by several talented sales and marketing writers and CRM / sales experts.

Hire an Internet Marketing Writer and Increase Your Revenue

SEO-IM-WriterAre you looking for help succeeding with your internet marketing efforts? It’d be helpful, at times, to be able to clone yourself, wouldn’t it? (Without your clone turning all evil like they inevitably do in the movies, of course…)

Hire an Internet Marketing Writer

Consider hiring a writer who has worked extensively in the world of online marketing to help you. It could have significant return on your investment.  A writer who is well versed in internet marketing, professional blogging, affiliate marketing, or whatever other area of internet marketing you’re focusing on can be the next best thing to a clone. A good IM writer / affiliate marketing writer will be able understand what you’re trying to accomplish and will be able to help you get there through great web content.

An IM writer should have the following skills:

  • A solid understanding of the world of internet marketing and affiliate marketing
  • Good knowledge of SEO
  • Sales writing skills
  • The ability to write informative articles with enough of a call to action to compel readers to act.

Here are some of the areas you could have a writer help you with:

Blog Writing Services

Blogs can be an excellent internet marketing tool. If you blog, you’ve got the ability to continually draw in new traffic as well as build a list of subscribers. Blogs are easy to monetize and search engines love sending traffic their way. But it takes a lot of effort to continually publish good blog content. An internet marketing writer can write in a way that speaks to readers and to search engines, too. Hire a blogger to help you and you could start seeing steady growth for your blog’s traffic and your conversion rate.

E-book Writing

Whether you’re writing an e-book for the purposes of building a list or want to write a book that you can sell on your website, on Clickbank, or elsewhere, a professional e-book writer can do this for you. This could be very profitable as you pay the writer once but you could make an indefinite income from the e-book or use that e-book as a free giveaway to build a big and profitable e-mail marketing list.

Article Marketing / Syndicated Articles

Hiring an Ezine article writer could be another smart move to help you promote your internet marketing or affiliate marketing efforts.  Syndicated articles can drive backlinks and traffic to your website where you can work to help you in your efforts. Many links pointing to your content with carefully structured articles and good anchor text could help you in a big way. Not all freelance writers are able to appease picky Ezine editors and help you reach your goals. Look for  someone who understands algorithm updates such as Google Panda and who knows how to write effective Ezine articles.

Web 2.0 Properties

Various articles online, such as Squidoo lenses and HubPages can help you drive traffic and backlinks to your online marketing efforts as well. A skilled IM writer can help write informative and compelling Squidoo lenses and HubPages for you.

Press Releases

Press releases can be a great way to get attention to your website. Use them to announce product launches, to share giveaways, and to help you hit the ground running with new internet marketing and affiliate marketing efforts.  A good press release writer can help you.

Web Writing is a Balancing Act…

An internet marketing writer knows how to weave keywords into text and knows how to write in a way that helps you reach SEO goals and pique the interest of readers, too. By implementing a quality content-driven strategy, you could succeed with your internet marketing efforts.

Need help with your writing? Contact Dana Prince, SEO writer. I’ve helped many internet marketers reach their online goals.

Anatomy of an Effective Blog Post

tips for blogging successBlogging sounds like a simple solution for getting more website traffic, for continuous keyword optimization, and for strategic authority and relationship building. But not all blog posts are great. Great blog posts have quite a few good attributes. Get as many of those attributes into each and every blog post you write and your blog could become a great source of success for you.

  • You have to appeal to search engines and people.
  • You might have to appeal to many different kinds of people.
  • Your blog should be interesting, smart, engaging, and strategic.

It’s a lot of work. That’s why you might want to hire a freelance blog writer. But anyway…here are some of the things you’ll want to integrate into your blog posts to make them work effectively — for all your audiences.

Title, body, conclusion…

The title should grab readers’ attention and make the urge to click irresistible. It should also be written in a way that helps search engine spiders associate that title with your subject matter, thereby making your page easy to index. Once readers get to the page, the body of the content must deliver on that title promise. Grab the reader in the first paragraph, hold them through the body of the article, and then come to the same conclusion. It’s a bit like seduction  with a mutually beneficial conclusion. Don’t forget to optimize your meta description, too, so that readers finding your blog post in search engine results will know what the post is about.

Brains, Brawn, Beauty…

Is your blog awesomely written but on a drab site? Is it weak and does it lack substance? Or does it kick ass with brains, brawn, and beauty? If your blog post encompasses brains, brawn, and beauty, you’ve got a better chance of getting people on board with what you’re trying to say and sell.

Brains – Write intelligently. Give value.

Brawn – Be confident and demonstrate that you are a source of valuable information.

Beauty – Deliver information in an eye-friendly manner with a great blog design. Choose a design for readers and for conversion.

Pique, Grab, Convert…

It’s not always easy to attract people and hold onto their attention before online attention deficit disorder kicks in. You need to pique their interest, grab their attention, and hang on long enough to convert them from a visitor to a buyer (or at least a subscriber). Every page of your blog should pique, grab, and convert — even if it doesn’t always try to sell something. You can convert a post so that it becomes link bait, or a great source of new subscriptions, for example. Regularly analyze your bounce rate so you can fine tune your strategies and reduce that bounce rate.

Keywords, Images, Links…

Each blog post will have the potential to do good things for you if you optimize each and every one. Every page on your site has the potential to bring in a customer so don’t make the mistake of focusing all your SEO attention on the main page alone. Don’t think of your blog as just working in the background of your static website, for example. If every blog post integrates useful keywords, this will bode well for your organic traffic levels.  If each blog post has an optimized image, it will help add further weight to the page from a keyword perspective. If each page links to another page within your site, you increase the chance of the reader staying longer and clicking deeper within your site (which could increase the conversion rate of your site).

Quality, Quantity, Consistency…

Quality posts and good quantities of posts will contribute to your success. The more often you post, the more traffic you’ll get. But don’t skimp on quality for quantity. Each blog post has to be able to stand alone as well as to fit into the puzzle that is your value added proposition.

Need help succeeding with blogging to promote your business? Contact Dana Prince, SEO blogger.