Top 10 Reasons to Use a Blog to Build an Online Presence & Establish Yourself as an Expert in your Niche

The very first thing a new coach or a coach new to online marketing needs to do is to

Build an Online Presence & Establish Yourself as an Expert in your Niche

There are many tools available that assist in this process of building an online presence, in my opinion and the opinion of many other business people online – a self-hosted blog is the best ‘hub’ for establishing yourself as an expert. The other tools such as social media play a part in your overall marketing plan and work well with your blog as “home base”.

Here are the top 10 reasons for a coach to use a blog to build their practice:

1. Your blog is a “hub” for all your other activities online. All marketing /networking efforts you do should point back to “home base” where your friends and fans can discover everything else (all your other publicized marketing / networking efforts) about you in one location.  Add links to your social media / social networking profiles where you can be found. If you produce audio or video to share your coaching message with your market – also list it on your blog.
2. Establish yourself as an expert with regular posting on your coaching method / solution.  Your posting frequency will increase your popularity two ways.
   • Face Value – the more you get your coaching message in front of your ideal prospect the more you build your credibility. Not a post that is a sales pitch – though it’s not bad to ask for the business – post something that is truly of value.
   • Google Juice – Google loves fresh, relevant, updated content with lots of internal linking – exactly what your blog is designed to provide as long as YOU post with regularity.
3. Engage your ideal prospect in conversation – the whole purpose for having comments available with every post is to open up the other side of the conversation. You will learn so much from you readers. The more feedback you get from you ideal prospect and readers the better your posts will be. Your readers will think you are reading their mind! So, write provocative posts, ask questions, encourage your readers to comment. Don’t worry though according to Jacob Nielson, 90% of online community users are lurkers (read or observe without contributing) with only 9% of users contributing “a little” and 1% actively contributing.
4. Help people – after all isn’t that why you became a coach in the first place? As you build up your readership and get feedback in the comments you will begin to see comments how helpful your post was or you might see it on a social networking site. Even better is when your readers love your post enough to re-tweet and share it with their friends & fans.
5. Market your own product and services, as well as selectively promote affiliate partners. Your blog is your online place of doing business so don’t feel awkward “selling” something from your blog. This is the place to talk about your coaching services. This is the place to announce your newest product launch. Bad idea to make every post a strong push for business, but you can “season” every post with a small dose of soft sell.
6. Connect with Your Ideal Prospect. Your ideal prospect is online searching for products and services to relieve pain or improve the quality of their lives. Every post is an opportunity to connect and engage. Your readers will discover and connect with your energy as you share your information. And as far as search engines go – the relevance of your posts is how the searcher is matched up with your blog. The more you post the more often that is likely to happen.
7. Make a difference. Your blog gives you the tools to use words to make a difference in individual lives as well as in your community of readers / followers as a whole. This is very powerful. You’ve heard the saying, “The Pen is mightier than the sword.” You power to influence your niche is limited most often by you. Be a bold idea person! Make a difference!
8. Stay active and knowledgeable in your niche. If it is credibility in your area of expertise is what you are after – then count on putting time into research for your topic. Or as Guy Kawasaki put it “eat like a bird and poop like an elephant.” Birds consume 50% of their body weight in nourishment & food – and elephants…well you can imagine how they poop. What Guy was communicating in that statement is to consume voraciously on your topic of expertise and share your knowledge generously.
9. Create product. Yes, you read that right to create product - everything you post in your blog could be put together in an organized fashion to become an ebook or a printed book. This is a great thing to keep in mind as you’re laying out your blog categories & topics. In 30 – 60 days you could have enough material for a book (depending on how frequently and at what length you post.)
10. Attract clients – Isn’t this why you’re reading my blog? It is time to start making money. Your blog will attract and then develop the interest of your ideal client, but the more he or she reads desire will develop for closer access. If you are doing your job and making the offer in a variety of ways – you will attract your ideal client with your blog.

Here’s a question for you – How often would you be willing to post, if the more frequently you posted, the faster you could be considered the expert in your niche? 3 times a week, 2 times a week? Would you make time to post more frequently?

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