My blog’s not working! Common blogging problems solved

Antonia Chitty and Erica Douglas of www.aceinspire.com share their blogging experiences with SVA…  They’re also inviting all UK virtual assistants to join their free blogging e-course too!

If you have started a business blog filled with great intentions, yet a few weeks or months down the line are depressed and uninspired about blogging, read on too get some trouble shooting advice:

Problem 1: I don’t know what to blog about!

Think of 3 or 4 main topics or keywords you want your blog to cover.  For example if you sell diaries for mums your topics might be – getting organised, stationery and dates to remember. For each of these write as many different sub-topics as you can think of.  So for getting organised you could cover – tips for remembering things, clearing clutter, having a system for remembering birthdays, creating a family schedule or chores rota etc. Each of these sub headings is a blog post. For more on coming up with endless ideas for blog posts watch this video – 40 Blog Post Ideas in 5 minutes

Problem 2: I’m not getting visitors to my blog

If your blog is new have you registered it with Google?  You can do that here – http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl Think about what promotion you’ve done to spread the word about your blog.  Have you been promoting your blog on Facebook and twitter?  Have you been commenting on other blogs in your niche? A good way to raise your profile and attract visitors back to your blog is to do some guest posts on other blog’s in your niche or in complementary niches.

Problem 3: I’m not getting comments on my posts

Firstly check how many visitors you have, if you don’t have many visitors then it stands to reason that you won’t have many (if any) comments. If visitors aren’t an issue then review your content, is it engaging?  Are you finishing your posts with a question?  Perhaps your audience feel they need to be invited to comment. Finally, when you do get a comment always respond and encourage further debate.

Problem 4: My blog isn’t bringing in more business

Firstly, how do you know that your blog isn’t bringing in business?  Are you monitoring it? If you are monitoring it then look first to your traffic, do you have a lot of visitors?  If visitors aren’t the problem check your stats package and look at pageviews, and time spent on your site.  Are people engaged with your content? If so do you have a product funnel in place that invites people to join an email list so you can contact them directly?  To increase sales via your blog you really need to ensure that each part of the flow of visitors and customers is working correctly.  It’s a bit like making sure there aren’t any holes in your bucket.  Too many holes and by the time you get back to your sandcastle there’s nothing left! It’s the same when you’re trying to get clients from not knowing you at all to becoming a loyal customer, you have to navigate them from social media, back to your blog, then onto your email list and then finally offering something that they want to buy.

If you want to learn how to blog for business success, join Erica and Antonia’s free 21 week ACE blogger eCourse, which takes you step by step through what you need to do to build a great business blog. Join today at www.aceinspire.com