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5 Reasons Why Blogging Is Here To Stay

July 25, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Blogging

The term blog is easily one of the most popular words uttered every day, probably even in the same breath as Google when referring to searching for something online. It doesn’t come as a surprise that blogging is probably the most widely used form of content marketing today. However, we must first ask ourselves what a blog is. A blog is simply one’s personal site. Others have labeled blogs as the modern version of a diary where one shares content about what they are most passionate about.

The law of the universe dictates that people are bound to outgrow certain things and habits. It is no wonder that some have started to question the ability of the blogging industry to withstand the test of time. Rest easy if you’ve wanted to start your own blog for the longest time but hesitated because you felt too many people are doing it already. Blogging is more alive than ever and here are five reasons that back up that statement.

1. Love for Blogging

As earlier mentioned, human beings love to share information and especially information on matters that they are very passionate about. According to WebsiteBuilder.org there are 1.5 billion blogs in existence today all over the internet. If you compare this figure with the total number of internet users worldwide it means that nearly a third of internet user’s worldwide blog. This number is only going to grow because the number of internet users increases exponentially on an annual basis. Additionally, the statistics also state that a half of the top 200 fortune 500 companies have a public corporate blog.

Furthermore, 6.7 million people use blogging sites to blog while 12 million people blog via social media. Information is power and that is why the love for blogging is at all-time high.

2. Huge Impact on Businesses

It’s no secret that businesses are leveraging the benefits of blogging so as to stay ahead of the competition. Any online marketing strategist today will point out the fact that blogging is the most important tool for content sharing. A business’ brand awareness automatically increases once they appear on a blog or have their own blog. Experts at Website Builder state that 70% of potential customers learn about a company through articles as opposed to ads on the web. It is also worth noting that companies that own a blog receive 97% more links to their site thus increasing traffic and serving as a brilliant search engine optimization strategy.

This automatically translates to more visitors to their websites and more sales with 92% of companies who blog several times a day acquire at least one client from the blog. Using the statistics from Website Builder SMEs allocate 42% of their marketing budget to content marketing. Return on investment is also factored in with SMEs that blog getting 126% more lead growth than those who don’t. Online business have perhaps been the biggest beneficiaries of blogging.

Potential clients will obviously feel more confident about a product have reading about on their favorite blog. The statistics also show that 51% of blog readers are also online shoppers with most customers having been swayed by recommendations that they read on a blog. In fact, most businesses are advised to make at least one blog post at least once a week on the same day.

3. Sharing Content

The beauty with blogging is that its foundation isn’t professional expertise or being tech savvy, it relies on interests, passions and the inquisitive nature of human beings. Content has to stay simple, interesting and exciting! Blogs on cooking, sports, politics and entertainment are some of the most popular topics out there. This does not in any way mean that one should limit themselves to those particular topics alone.

The key is to find your niche because out there is your audience who are most likely interested in the same thing as you. Statistics collected by Website Builder show that 94% of people who share blog posts think that it could be informative to others.

4. Make a living off your blog

Freelancers and professional bloggers will tell how they managed to make money simply from being consistent on their blogs and slowly building an audience. Display advertising is still among the most commonly used techniques of online marketing. Several blogs have taken advantage of this and sold space on their blogs to different businesses and people seeking to promote their own sites or products. Writing recommendation articles or reviews about other people’s products or items is also a great way of deriving income from your blog. Additionally, there is also affiliate marketing, promoting offline businesses and many more that we shall look at some other time.

5. Readership

While true that people do indeed love blogging, the same goes for readership. Our friends at Website Builder offer us certain statistics to back this claim up. 23% of time spent on the internet is on social networks and blogs. They also tell us that 77% of all internet users read blogs. It is narrowed down further to students who have been noted to spend most of their time on the internet reading blogs. Additionally, people tend to read about 10 blog posts per day. With readership at an all-time high there is absolutely no way that blogs can become obsolete, at least not any time soon.

Now Let’s Infer!

We are sure of one thing, people around the world are always going to be interested in something. The beauty with blogs is that they can always be tailored to suit the interests of the particular audience. It has been said that with advancements in technology the blogging industry might be revolutionized in future. However, the one thing that everyone seems to agree on is that while the way in which we blog may change the existence of said blogs cannot be questioned.

Finally, starting a blog is one of the easiest things to do today with several blogging sites available all over the internet, some even free. With that in mind, don’t rest on your laurels, your audience is out there waiting to listen to you.

How Not To Lose Money On Side Hustles

July 23, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Whether you are looking to set up a trading account or become a freelancer or a contractor for a marketing firm, it is important that you are prepared for the challenges. You might invest money in your business or your property portfolio and see no return, or even make a loss. Below you will find a few tips on how not to get burned when setting up your side hustle in order to increase your earning potential.

Know Your Trade

Whether you are getting started with property investment or copywriting, you need to first study the market. Be the best version of yourself and improve your skills. You will need to learn how to manage your time and money, keep an eye on your projects, and seek advice. Being professional can help you avoid some of the mistakes amateurs make when starting up a part time business. Learn how to calculate your costs and find funding options.

Learn About Your Industry

No matter if you are entering a copywriting market or the property investment world, you have to do your research. There are several free online industry reports you can use to find out more about the trends, the most common mistakes, the chances of success, and the regulatory background. You need to know the political, economic, and market conditions of your industry before you decide whether or not your business idea will work.

Study the Competition

Instead of simply brainstorming and coming up with a business idea, you will have to find a way to differentiate yourself in the competitive marketplace. You must study your competition and offer more value for less if you would like to succeed. Collect quotes, price lists, and feedback scores from companies involved in the industry, so you can find a way to differentiate yourself.

Team Up with Experts

Nobody is born knowing everything. Chances are that you are not an expert in commercial properties, so why not seek expert advice? There are plenty of great companies offering help with commercial investment properties so you don’t feel like you are shooting in the dark when trying to make the right decisions. They will do the research on your behalf, so you can maximize your profits and minimize your risks.

Invest In Your Education

No matter which business you would like to get involved in to earn money as a side hustle, you will need to invest time and money in your own development. There are fantastic free and low cost courses available that will help you open your horizons and improve your knowledge. Alison, for example, has a number of great business-related courses; from money management to marketing. You need to learn how to budget and manage your time, no matter what your chosen side hustle is.

To maximize your chance of making a profit on your side hustle and reduce the risks, it is important to learn how to gather information and improve your skills needed to succeed.

Simple Ways to Make Your Business More Profitable This Year

June 5, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Increase Profits

Whatever your business does and no matter how much money you make, it is always possible to increase your profits, and doing so should be a no-brainer. With that in mind, here are a few things that you can do to increase your gross profits this year and beyond…

Make Your Design Cycle Faster

If you run a business where you manufacture your own goods, a really effective way of increasing your profits is to speed up your design cycle. If you can so this, you can develop many more products in a shorter amount of time, which should help to bring those profit margins up. How do you do this? You could use greater automation and better software to speed things up or you could outsource to a company who specializes in designing the kinds of products you sell – only you will know which option is likely to work best for you.

Ditch Tasks That Don’t Add Value

If you want to make bigger profits, you need to be more efficient and one thing that will really help you in this endeavor is cutting out those tasks that don’t add value to your company or to your customers. Every cent that you save by ditching processes and procedures that aren’t valuable are cents that you can add straight to your bottom line without having to do any extra work – what’s not to love?

Create More Value

Speaking of value, finding ways to add more value to the products and services you offer, so you can charge a slightly higher price for them is a great way to add more value to your business too. For example, you could bundle your content writing service in with some basic seo, which won’t take you too much more time to work on, but which will allow you to bump up the price and make more money.

Outsource

Outsourcing tasks like bookkeeping and administration to freelancers is a great way to cut your staffing budget and add more money to your bottom line, and since there are so many great freelancers out there right now, you’ll still get the same great service you’ve always benefited from.

Invest in Stocks

If you run a small business, it’s seriously worth thinking about investing some of your profits in stocks to maximize your bottom line. There are few restrictions on doing this when your business is small, and if you invest in something like the best lithium stocks, which are in high demand now due to the increasing use of lithium-ion batteries in tech, it can really pay off. Of course, investing does not come without risk, so you should not place all of your eggs in this particular basket.

Retain Your Customers

It can cost as much as 3 times more to bring in new customers than to retain existing customers and existing customers have already shown that they are interested in what you do, so if you do anything you can to keep them sweet, perhaps by offering them special discounts of valuable bundles, you will save money, make more sales and increase your bottom line.

Do you run a business? How have you made your company more profitable this year?

Advice For Increasing Online Sales

June 1, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Online Sales All new entrepreneurs should know that the internet is the best place to target their efforts when it comes to boosting sales and increasing profits. Still, those just starting out in their industries are sure to make mistakes and overlook the best strategies. With that in mind, there is some advice on this page that should help you to make the right decisions this summer. While this is not a complete guide, the ideas below can be used alongside your broader promotional strategy to ensure you achieve the best outcomes.

Invest in online banner ads

Firstly, you need to make sure you drive as much traffic to your website as possible. However, there is no need to ditch your offline marketing plans. Google Adwords is the most popular banner advertising tool in the world at the moment, and thousands of businesses use it to gain attention online. You’ll have to employ the services of a freelance designer or someone with the right skills to ensure your banner ads look attractive and catch the eye of people who see them. Hopefully, those folks will click the ad, visit your site, and make a purchase. Make sure you conduct lots of market research because that is the info you will use to target your adverts.

Provide a straightforward online payment system

Secondly, it is imperative that you don’t lose out on any sales because your website doesn’t enable the customer to buy using the payment method they wish to use. For that reason, you need a reliable online payment gateway like BlueSnap or something similar to ensure that your customers can always spend their money and complete the payment process. There are hundreds of different solutions out there today, and you just need to read some reviews and perform some comparisons to ensure you can sort the wheat from the chaff.

Offer live chat customer service

Lastly, customer service is the backbone of any sales or e-commerce business according to LiveChat Inc and their competitors. You have to ensure your customers can get in touch with your team and resolve their issues in a manner that creates the least hassle possible. Live chat is perfect because it allows individuals to speak with your employees while they’re still on your web page. That should help you to sort any issues and ensure the person does not click over to a competing website and spend their money elsewhere. You should also enable people to get in touch by writing letters and using the telephone. So, ensure you publish a “contact us” page with all the right information.

Now you know the basics of increasing online sales and boosting your profits this year’ it’s time to put some of the advice into action. Hopefully, you can use the tips from this post to improve your strategy and guarantee you never miss out on any potential sales. If you want to go a step further, why not create a questionnaire for your customers to answer about their experience? You can use the results to identify problems and refine your approach as much as possible. Good luck!

Creating Content: How Specific Should Your Niche Be?

March 1, 2018 by Guest Post Leave a Comment

Content Creation | Defining Your Niche — Photo by LinkedIn Sales Navigator on Unsplash

It is vital for freelance workers to become experts within a niche so that they can connect with their target audience. But, this leads to the question: How specific should your niche be? Here’s a guide to help you decide on how narrow your niche market should be, so that you can create content for that group.

When In Doubt, Narrow Your Focus

Narrowing your focus is key to the success of your content creation. A person might have an idea of promoting a product to ‘people who like yoga’ for example. This won’t work! This target audience is way too general.

The content for this market would be all across the board: you might have content about a cutting-edge yoga studio in Brooklyn, NY, alongside a content piece about a traditional yoga training center in India. This broad focus will confuse your audience, and you will have trouble developing a loyal following.

Instead of targeting a broad group, narrow your focus down. You can do this by adding more criteria. In our yoga example, we could start with “people who like yoga’ and add in the following two parameters: ‘live in New England’ and ‘are passionate about the environment.’ By narrowing down our niche, we now have the opportunity to create highly specified content pieces our target audience will find valuable.

Imagine Your Ideal Client

If you’re having trouble narrowing down your niche, picture your ideal customer. Imagine what they look like, what kind of music they listen to, where they live, and what kind of clothes they wear. Ask yourself about this imaginary customer’s educational background, interests, and where he or she spends time. These insights may help you develop your niche.

For example, an eco-conscious cosmetic company might envision a client who is in her twenties, eats vegan food, and hangs out at animal-rights websites and forums. This ideal client gives the company insight into their niche in the industry: vegan cosmetics.

Avoid Physical Locations

Can you ever drill down so much that your niche becomes unprofitable? The answer is yes; if you add a physical location to your niche. For example, you may specialize in something highly specific, like how to live with a particular disease or condition. If you add in a physical location to your niche, you will drastically cut down on the audience that you are appealing to.

For example, there may be millions of people over sixty living with rheumatoid arthritis worldwide, but only fifty in your targeted area. Instead of making a niche that is too narrow, consider segmenting your audience so that you can give them the right content.

Remember, the internet can reach around the world. You can get very specific with your content without ever capping your audience unless you add in a localizing element. When in doubt, narrow your focus. This will ensure that you are delivering content that your readers are interested in.