You’ve worked hard to build your business. That includes your website and your blog. You don’t want to become the online business equivalent of a one night stand. In order to turn readers into customers, they need to return on a regular basis.

Sure, you can collect email subscribers, and keep posting to your social media accounts. These things make your online presence accessible, and create follow through.

Your efforts may all be in vein if you don’t…

Write Something That Matters

It should be no secret, awesome content creates an impact. It evokes emotion. It tells stories.

Common sense, no?

Your readers have a problem. It’s up to you to outline that problem in a way that positions your business as the solution. Once you’ve figured that out, the Internet marketing thing becomes a whole lot easier.

Marketing your business is a high stakes board game. If you can write content that appeals to your target market on a regular basis, you win.

• Solve their problems.
• Answer their questions.
• Write about their interests.
• Write about what interests them.

This is where a lot of marketers go wrong. Stop with the industry geek-speak. You’re writing to people who typically don’t have the behind-the-scenes industry knowledge that you may have. Focus on  value statements instead of technical specifications.

What makes your industry appeal to the rest of us? It’s up to you to provide the type of content we’ll want to read.

Here’s a few things you may be doing that stand in the way of creating a return audience: 

• Posting blogs that suck. Write engaging content that appeals to your audience. There’s a lot of debate about writing for people versus writing for the search engines. The two are not mutually exclusive.
• Spelling things wrong. You have spell check. Use it.
• Posting the wrong stuff. Don’t just write the same things that everyone else in your business is writing. Make it stand out. Remember, the Google search page is really crowded.
• Not posting enough. When your visitors find your blog page and see the most recent post occurred last year, they’re likely to leave.
• Not engaging them. Ask questions, have a conversation. Don’t be afraid to talk with your connections about things other than your industry. Remember, it’s about building relationships.

Matt Brennan is a Chicago-area marketing writer and copy editor. He is also the author of Write Right-Sell Now.