Customer-centric blogging to kickstart sales

One of the easiest things in the world to do is to sit down and start blogging without lending much thought to the audience. But writing for the sake of writing can be a real time burglar - and the time burglar never goes anywhere without his henchman, the effort pickpocket.

Not only are you wasting time and effort, but that post is not going to be the dynamic piece of highly engaging, sales generating content it should be. Since time is money, you are effectively wasting money by creating bland, unfocused content. At all costs, avoid the temptation to settle into a dull blog writing routine for the sake of building up content.

Instead, install the integrated home security system of creativity and research to keep out unwanted guests and get excited about how your blog is going to generate traffic and help convert that traffic into followers (to increase your reach) and customers.

One of the best ways to keep a blog exciting, interesting and highly relevant for your readers (by readers, I mean revenue generators) is to put yourself in their shoes. One of the biggest mistakes business bloggers make is to approach their content from their own perspective. In other words, people tend to write about what they are trying to sell from the point of view of someone trying to sell, and not from the point of view of someone who can derive value from that product or service.

Here's an example of what I mean, demonstrated in the headers and teasers of two fictional blog posts about the same product:

Now, pretend you are an individual or small business looking to increase the effectiveness of your blog. Which headline and teaser is going to speak to you more? It's gotta be the second one, right? The first one is the type of post that most people commonly write - it talks about the product itself. The second post looks at the same thing from the perspective of the customer in the sense that it talks about the value or promise that lies within the product and not the product itself.

Ok, admittedly the second post leverages a hypothetical overnight success story that not everyone can lay claim to. But you get the picture. Approach what you do from the perspective of someone who might be interested. Once you're in their shoes it is a lot easier to write something that will speak directly to them in a way that is engaging and interesting.