21 Day Online Business Launch – Day 10

April 19, 2018

Day 10 – Set up your blog

In this module you will be creating the blog for your online business website. By the time you finish this lesson you should have your blog live and on your website.

A blog is a major part of every online business. It can serve as a hub for all of the free content you put out into the marketplace. Having content on your blog makes it not only good to generate leads but also nurture leads and take them from prospects to buyers.

Another great thing about a blog is the fact that it is an owned asset. When you put content on other platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, iTunes, etc. you are at the mercy of the platform. By also having your content on your own blog you have a hub of your content on a platform that you own! If any of those platforms ever get shut down you will still be in business.

In this lesson you will be making your first blog post and properly optimizing your content.

Make your first post

The content on your blog has a few primary purposes.

Draw awareness to your business and offers
Turn cold traffic into followers and fans
Convert prospects to customers
Nurture and educate existing customers

To do this you can create strategic content that will help you achieve 1 of the 4 objectives mentioned above. If it doesn?t fall into any one those objectives then chances are it’s not something you should be blogging about.

For your first post think about one specific thing your customers are struggling with. What is something you can write about or record a video on that will help them with that one specific problem?

Once you have your idea come up with an appealing title for it. For example:

?How to lose weight with a daily calorie counting routine?

?One big secret to getting more targeted eyeballs on your Facebook advertisements?

With your headline you want to speak to what they want, make it irresistible and leave them curious for more.

Next outline the 5 to 10 main ideas you will cover in your post. These will become the headings for your posts. Once your ready write the content for the post. You can write your blog post right inside the WordPress editor or do it in a word processor document and paste into WordPress later.

To add your post to WordPress login to your WordPress Dashboard and go to Posts ? Add new.

This will bring up the WordPress post editor:

Enter your headline in the post title section. Enter your content in the body section. To add headings click the dropdown box that says ?paragraph? and changing to the heading tag you prefer. In the example above a ?heading 3? tag was used.

Next add relevant images to your post. Images make your posts more exciting and easier to read. A good rule of thumb with images is to add an image at every scroll part of the screen. So every time your reader will have to scroll to read more add an image to break up the text.

Once completed select or add a new category that is relevant for your post and add tags. Last but not least add a featured image for your blog post. Featured images are good for WordPress themes that display post images on your blog archive pages. Using featured images can make your blog look a lot more appealing to readers.

Formatting

Here are some formatting guidelines for your blog posts:

In your posts be sure to use lots of white space and break up the text.
Break out main points into headings.
Use bold and italics to highlight important points
Break up text with images
Use short paragraphs to improve readability

Related Posts

Adding related posts to your blog is a great way to get people to consume more of your content. The more they consume the more trust they build the more likely they are to buy your offers. You can add widgets to the sidebar for related posts or even use plugins to add related posts at the bottom of each of your posts.

Optimized Hero Section

Some WordPress themes allow you to add a hero section. The hero section can be a great place to add an optin form or a banner to your squeeze page. In a later lesson you will be creating your squeeze page which you can link to here.

Optimized Sidebar

Your blog sidebar is another place you will want to make sure you have optimized. Your sidebar is a great place to have a banner leading to your optin page as well as banners for any products you are promoting.

Your blog readers will all be at different stages of the customer journey. Some will be existing customers, some will be prospects, some will be traffic that is brand new to you. You want your blog to have something for each of them. That is why linking to both your optin page and products is a good start.

Optimize Blog Post Footer

Your blog footer is another great place to optimize. After someone has consumed your content they are a prime prospect to offer them even more. This is a great place to add a promotional banner for your optin page or one of your offers.

Optimizing Content

You blog content itself is another great place to optimize! As you write content find ways to include relevant links to your optin page, products, and services.

Maybe you mention a client story and share a link to learn more about your coaching. Or maybe you mention something related to what you giveaway in your lead magnet. These are great opportunities to promote within your content.

Action Steps