Sales Come First

Plain and simple, You’re Reading It!

That’s right. The articles I publish on my blog are in fact the most important weapon I have in my arsenal.

And it doesn’t matter what business you’re in, I bet you can publish your own articles and get tons of new business, and KEEP your current clients for longer.

Here are the best reasons I have for writing articles.

#1. Its free. OK, sure. I just mentioned this. But seriously, when you consider how much it costs in time and money to do your other marketing, this one makes perfect sense. Anything you can do to improve your business which costs nothing, and takes you very little time has got to be a good thing. Just go to www.wordpress.com or www.blogger.com and get started.

#2. Google loves you! Google just loves fresh content, so by frequently publishing articles on a blog you can keep climbing up and up the page rankings in Google so you get noticed.

#3. Demonstrate your knowledge. I’ve talked about credibility in the past, and what better way is there to PROVE that you know what you’re doing than by publishing articles about your business. An accountant could publish tax tips, a mortgage broker could publish tips about the property and loans market, tradies can publish articles about caring for your home and so on.

Here’s something I do often. I refer new prospects to my blog so they can check out my knowledge and skills. Just having a whole lot of published articles that people can look at does wonders to your credibility.

#4. I love this one the most! You can save time by sending people links to your articles when you’re communicating with them. For example, if I’m writing a proposal on direct mail for someone, I can send them a link to my articles on getting your mail opened or getting great testimonials.

This saves me so much time, and I can give them top quality information without having to rewrite one word of it. It also helps prove my credibility because they can look at the other articles I wrote too.

#5. Reuse your articles in different places. I’m about to start publishing my articles on a few different sites, and they’re a great way of generating traffic. In fact, if you can find someone willing to publish your articles, then you can get access to so many more people than before. You can even use your articles in offline publications too, and I use this strategy from time to time.

#6. The best way to learn is to teach someone else. So one of the side benefits of writing articles is that it re-enforces what you already know.

OK, as always I want to leave you with something you can use. So here are a few rules I follow with my articles.

First of all your articles should be full of killer content. I see so many people write articles that are just mindless waffle. Its almost as if they don’t want to give away any good content in a free forum. Well, that’s a huge mistake. If you want people to follow your articles and use your services, you NEED great content in your articles. Otherwise nobody’s going to read them, and you’re just wasting your time.

Second, if you’re want a mailing list that outside people can subscribe to, you’ll need a way of managing it. I use www.worldinternetoffice.com

But if you’re just going to publish without notifying antone, or want to send out articles to your established contacts then you should be fine without this. That’s how I started out after all.

Second, keep it conversational. Your articles aren’t going to be published in a scientific journal, so keep it in a conversational tone. You can find out exactly how to do this here – http://salescomefirst.com/a-simpler-and-more-effective-way-to-write-your-advertisment/

Did you see point #4 from above in action there? Pretty neat isn’t it!

So in the coming week have a think about how you can benefit from a blog. Then, without delay go to one of the websites I listed above, start up a blog and publish something. The first one’s always the hardest, and once you’ve got it going, it should be easy and fun.

If you want to talk about anything from this article, feel free to email me at hugh@salescomefirst.com.

Next week, I’m going to discuss how original you should be in your advertising. This is a real eye-opener, so dont miss it.