Following are five easy ways to get sales from a business blog without annoying your audience:

1. Offer exclusive discounts, coupons and sales.

Reward the people who visit your blog and spend time reading and sharing your content by offering them exclusive discounts, coupons and sales.  You can do this either by simply publishing discounts, etc. within blog posts or by emailing them directly to visitors who sign up to receive them (be sure to include a way to opt-out of future emails).  You can also create a private page of your business blog that is password protected where special discounts, etc. are published and provide that password and access to “members only”.  Not only does this method guarantee that people will visit your blog again, but you’ll also be able to collect email addresses for future offers while adding value to the user experience on your blog all at the same time.

2. Offer exclusive tips, tutorials, and how-to guides.

It’s okay to talk about your products and services on your blog, but wouldn’t it be far more interesting and helpful for your audience if you demonstrated how to use your products (via video), offered “secret” usage tips, and explained how to properly use, care for, or trouble shoot your products?  Just saying your product is great leaves a lot to be desired, but demonstrating why it’s great and how to use it to get the best experience with it is far more interesting.  By making it clear how to use your products, people are more likely to purchase them or tell friends about them.  Be sure to include links to purchase your products (possibly with a discount for people who view or share your tutorials, etc.).

3. Offer exclusive products.

Write an ebook, hold a webinar, or offer special reports that are helpful and interesting to your target audience to add value to the time they spend on your business blog.  You can either offer products for free as an indirect marketing tool or you can offer them for a fee to generate additional income.

4. Link to your online catalog.

Anytime you talk about one of your products on your business blog, you should link to that product in your online catalog or another page where it is easy for people to make a purchase or get additional information via just one click.

5. Publish customer reviews and testimonials.

Few things are more powerful in terms of moving consumers to action than customer reviews and testimonials simply because research tells us that consumers trust other consumers more than they trust marketing messages.  With that in mind, ask your customers to offer reviews of your products or interview them to learn more about their opinions related to your products and how those products positively affect their lives.  You can even link this marketing effort to a discount initiative (give a discount on a future purchase to interview participants) or referral program.

The key to business blogging success and direct sales is to think out-of-the-box.  Don’t over-promote.  Instead, pick and choose to promote your best offers that consumers are most likely to find valuable, and then subtly talk about them on your blog.

How have you used your business blog to generate sales or leads?  Leave a comment and share your story!

Image: Flickr

I run across business owners that have great businesses. They sell quality products/services. They keep expenses low. They have enough funding. They even have a solid business plan. However, even with these characteristics, they are apprehensive about business blogging.

If I get an extended time to talk to them, I give them these 4 reasons why they would make a great blogger.

1. They’re well informed.

Many bloggers spout their own opinion without much practical experience to back up what they’re saying. However, business owners are different. They have the practical experience, the expertise, and the unique insights into their industry that the average blogger doesn’t have. So, what they say usually carries more value.

Think about this way. If a professional photographer and an amateur blogger both have a blog, which one will be more informative? Yes, there are some amateur photographers that know more than most pros, but those kind of amateurs are rare.

2. They’re passionate.

Passion is definitely a characteristic of successful bloggers and most business owners are passionate about their industry.

You can see this passion whenever they talk about their business and their industry. They love to talk about these things for hours. Also, you can see their passion in the long hours that they choose to work. Almost all the business people I know work more hours per week than the typical worker.

3. They’re good conversationalists.

I like what John Battelle says:

…your site needs to be a reflection of you. You’re a great conversationalist, or you wouldn’t be running a business.

With the internet being more social than ever before, blogging is more about starting or joining a conversation than just getting information out there. If you can start or join a conversation in real life about your industry, you can blog successfully for your business.

4. They don’t have to be experts in writing.

One of the most common misconceptions about business blogging is that you have to have serious writing chops or you won’t be successful. I’ve written about this before. Basically, you don’t have to be Shakespeare to make your blog a success. In fact, most of the popular bloggers would be long shots to win a writing contest.

Here’s the big principle:

If you can talk, you can write.

By and large, the internet is an informal communication channel. This means an authentic, conversational tone is going to work better than a formal, corporate tone. In fact, I bet that the top blogs in your industry are written in a conversational tone. So, pretend you’re speaking to someone as you blog, just write down your words, and you’ll be fine.

If you still don’t think you have the writing skill to succeed, you can hire an editor or a ghostwriter. Or you can record yourself speaking and then get your posts transcribed. Also, try voice recognition software like Dragon NaturallySpeaking. That works for many bloggers.

With 2009 right around the corner, it’s really time to start blogging if you haven’t already.

One of the things I’ve noticed is how blogging is getting more and more mainstream. Blogs are starting up where I least expected it. I work in a couple industries and know friends that work in other industries. One trend we’ve been seeing recently is the proliferation of blogs in industries that didn’t use to have a lot of blogs.

In social media and blogging, the first mover advantage is very real especially with blogging becoming the norm. If you’re one of the first ones in your niche to start blogging, you’ll probably earn a great reputation within your industry.

Blogging has changed the tech and political landscape. It will only be a matter of time until blogging affects all the other industries.

Also, you might think, it’s only the younger crowd that really does social media, but if you look at many of the blogs out there, a lot of them are written by people over 30 years old. Also, a quick check into Facebook, MySpace, and even Twitter shows that many of the participants on those sites are also over 30 years old.

I believe in the next couple of years most online businesses will have blogs. Internet users are becoming more savvy. They are realizing that they can easily participate online instead of just consuming information. So, they’re creating blogs and joining social media sites. I think many online business owners are seeing this. They’re starting to realize that social media users are more likely to buy from companies that also join the social media movement.

I don’t have much experience in offline business, but I have a friend that consults and helps offline businesses. I like to pick his brain whenever I get the chance. One of the things that I’ve noticed in his business stories is how often the successful businesses are ones that are able to partner with other great businesses.

He told me of a wedding planner that was able to build her client base by exchanging referrals with a local wedding store that sold dresses and other wedding products. I love his story of the car salesman that partnered up with well-known local realtor to increase his sales.

He told me the main ingredient that makes these partnerships work is trust. And to build that trust, you have to have positive face to face interaction. Yes, you can get away without this interaction if you have a good referral. But even that referral is built through a face to face friendship.

Basically, it boils down to personal interaction.

So how can we apply this principle online? I mean, it can be difficult to interact with an online business person face to face.

This is where blogging can help a lot. If you have a blog, all a prospective partner has to do is check out your blog. By reading your blog, they should get a sense of the kind of person you are. Moreover, they can do it on their own time so you don’t have to inconvenience them with a scheduled meeting.

Let’s face it, people respond to other people whereas they ignore the impersonal, faceless company. A business blog is one of the best ways to put a “face” to your online business.

Therefore, if you want to partner with someone, make your offer and then point them to your blog. If they like what they see, they’ll partner with you.

Also, to make your blog more personal, write in a conversational tone and include pictures of yourself on your blog’s about page.

I know I talk a lot about the monetary benefit to blogging. Blogging can definitely help any online business make more sales and increase traffic. However, there are also non-monetary benefits.

I bring this up because a common thread with the business people I interact with seems to be their passion for their industry. They didn’t just go into business to make money. They wanted their business to be in a field they love. They wanted to enjoy their work.

Blogging adds to this enjoyment including getting positive feedback in emails from blog readers. After you blog for a couple of weeks and with a little bit of marketing, you’ll probably start getting emails from your readers. If you’ve been publishing great posts, many of these emails will be positive. Here is an email I just received from my Magic The Gathering (strategy card game) blog:

Hi, I just wanted to say thank you so much for this site! I have played magic for a while (previously) but am getting back into it after a rather long hiatus! I’m supposed to be going into a tournament on the weekend(lol I think it is a Pro Qualifier) and I had no idea before coming here. Seriously, I googled around and this site has all the strategy etc plus it has the neat effect of showing the card without having to go into another window or tab (which saves so much time!). Anyway, just wanted to give you some feedback on how great your site is!

These type of emails are very rewarding. They show that you’re on the right track. They motivate you to keep blogging. And not only that, you can actually interact with your readers in a personal way. This is great because running an online business can be an impersonal endeavor, since you’re not interacting with customers in a face-to-face basis. I like to ask readers who email me what future blog post topics they would be interested in.

Finally, make sure to put a link to your contact page in a prominent position so that your blog readers can easily contact you. The contact page link should be one of the most visible links on every page of your blog (and maybe even every page on your whole site).

Maile Ohye, a Google employee, advised website owners to “create unique and compelling content on your site and the web in general.”

More specifically, Maile gave these two bullet points:

• Start a blog: make videos, do original research, and post interesting stuff on a regular basis. If you’re passionate about your site’s topic, there are lots of great avenues to engage more users.
• Participate thoughtfully in blogs and user reviews related to your topic of interest. Offer your knowledgeable perspective to the community.

The first bullet point highlights the importance of blogging with a passion for your industry.  This will generate more traffic because, over time, passionate people stand out from the crowd and attract other fans of the industry.

However, if you don’t have a lot of existing traffic, you’ll have to do some promotion.  Don’t fall the trap of “build it and they will come.”  The web is too crowded with billions of websites to just start a blog and hope people find you.  This is what Maile’s second bullet point is all about.

You need to find out where your target audience is.  Then, go to one of those sites and become a valuable contributing member.  Your reputation will grow as an expert.  Many people will become interested in you and visit your site.

After an extended period of promoting yourself, maybe a year to two years, you can scale back on promotion because you’ll have a critical mass of repeat visitors that will drive traffic for you through word of mouth.

But that initial marketing push is critical to gain traction and brand yourself as an industry expert.

Also, he got an email that said:

Gary, the place in my heart that was occupied by Grey’s Anatomy has been replaced by Wine Library TV. I can only be a one-watcher kind of person and it’s the only thing that I watch now.

Amazing, right?  In the mind of the email sender, a business site was worth her attention more than a popular primetime TV show.

Become Part of People’s Lives Like Traditional Media

The internet has leveled the playing field.  Much of the world’s population is interacting and buying things online.  And it’s cheap to produce online content – even video and audio.  Therefore, any online business can now compete with traditional media for attention.

You can produce a video blog like Gary and start building your own following.

Or you can start an audio blog, or podcast.  Many people have their favorite talk radio station.  Your podcast could become like a talk radio show that people in your target audience look forward to.

Or you can start a traditional blog based on text.  Think about the many people with magazine subscriptions.  Your blog can function like a magazine subscription.  It gives people an incentive to return to your site on a regular basis.

If you publish great content on a regular basis, you won’t need to rely on traditional advertising to get traffic.  Your content will be building an audience of fans that will support you and recommend your content to other people. This will increase your traffic, which will lead to higher sales.

1. Google likes updated content.

The problem with many business sites is they don’t publish new content on a regular basis. Just having a home page, an about page, and product pages is not enough today. You need a section on your site that is regularly updated with fresh content.

My friend Ryan, the owner of an internet firm that does web marketing, wrote about his experience with static sites versus regularly updated sites:

One thing we’ve noticed over the last year is that static websites are at a disadvantage. Over the past few years, search engines have added elements to their algorithms that often prefer fresh data. Or, at the very least, the search algorithms of today tend to prefer domains that provide a steady stream of new content.

Many online businesses have greatly increased their Google traffic by starting a blog. They publish on their blog a couple of times a month and Google rewards them with many new visitors.

2. Google likes a lot of content.

Google and other search engines look at many factors to determine their search results pages. One of those factors is looking at the keywords on a page.

If you have a blog, you’ll be publishing a lot of content. This content is what I like to call “Google fodder”. Each blog post you publish is a page that Google can send traffic to (based on the keywords on the post). The more posts you publish, the more keywords you target. The more keywords you target, the more traffic Google will send you.

3. Google likes links.

The biggest factor for getting more Google traffic is links. If you can get quality websites to link to your site, you will greatly increase your Google traffic.

Reputable search engine marketers will tell you that the best way to build links is through producing quality content and promoting it.

On a blog, you share your knowledge about your industry. If you promote your blog, you will build links in no time.

Also, the way Google works is links pointing to any section on your site increases traffic to the whole site. This means even if all your links point to your blog, your home page and product pages will receive more Google traffic.

In a recent blog entry, Jason Fried, the company founder, talked about the multiple income streams created by their company blog.  He wrote:

Money One: A lot of our ideas originate on this blog. We post articles which generate traffic. We make money off the traffic by running Deck ads in the sidebar. We make a few thousand a month off The Deck ads.

Money Two: We bundled up the best blog posts about our software development philosophy and turned it into a PDF book called Getting Real. We sell the PDF for $19. We’ve made a few hundred thousand dollars from the PDF.

Money Three: We take the Getting Real PDF and turn it into a paperback at Lulu.com. We sell the paperback for $25 and we make a few thousand a month on royalties. The paperback is currently ranked the 4th best seller on Lulu.

Money Four: We took the content from Getting Real and produced a Getting Real conference series. We held a few conferences a year and made about $50K per conference. We’ve produced about 5 of these conferences.

Also, he didn’t talk about this, but if there are two links on top of the blog.  One points to a job board and the other to a gig board.  Those are two other income streams that were made possible because of their popular blog.

What about traffic?

Some of you may be thinking.  37signals’ blog has a lot of traffic.  That’s why they can have multiple income streams.

Yes, that’s true.  You do need traffic or your blog income streams will produce very little income.

However, if you’re producing quality content and marketing your blog consistently, your traffic will grow.  It may take a while (6 months to 2 years) to build your traffic to respectable levels but the rewards are definitely worth it.  You’ll increase sales and be able to create other profitable income streams.

But it’s not enough to just know a lot of people. Building a relationship with a high quality contact is better than having many low quality ones. Go for quality over quantity.

I was fortunate because my very first client was well networked. He knew a lot of people and was able to refer me to other high quality clients.

If you want to build relationships that lead to new clients, you can try blogging.

Here’s an example of how blogging can be used to build to profitable business relationships.

Some of the best contacts to network with are the popular bloggers in your niche.

Aaron Wall, one of the most popular SEO bloggers, wrote:

About 5 people a day ask me to recommend an SEO or link builder or site designer…

If you do freelance services in any of those three fields, you could get a lot of work by networking with Aaron.

You could email him, “Hi, I’m an awesome web designer. Can you recommend me to the people that ask you daily for web designer recommendations?” However, if Aaron doesn’t know you, he’ll be hesitant to recommend you.

But what if you had a blog with design content like Photoshop tutorials, CSS tips, and even links and screenshots of your previous work.

Your blog shows that you are serious about providing value to your industry. It is a dynamic, “living” resume that people can read to learn more about you. It increases your credibility with other bloggers because you’re one of them. They can empathize with you about the hard work of consistently producing free quality content.

If you’ve got a great blog, you could write something that connects web design with SEO. Maybe something like “The 10 Most Common SEO Mistakes Web Designers Make”. Then, email high profile SEO bloggers like Aaron and point them to your article.

This method is much more effective than “cold-emailing” them because you’ve created something interesting their readers will enjoy.

When they get asked to give recommendations for web designers, you’ll be on their radar.

Also, there’s a chance the bloggers will link to you. If you get links, you’ll get a lot of high quality, pre-qualified traffic. And your reputation will improve since links are the social currency of the web.

If you can capture these people’s attention with useful information, you have a good chance of getting them to come back to your site when they want to buy something.

For example, let’s pretend you’re a online video game retailer.  Instead of just having an ecommerce site, you decide to blog about the video game industry.  You publish content like video game reviews, news, and strategy.

As you promote your blog, you’ll start getting traffic from video games fans looking for the information on your blog.  These fans are probably are not looking to buy a video game.  However, through your blog content, they’ll remember your site.

Not only that, but many of them will come back to visit your blog.  Blogs are great at attracting repeat visitors.  Blogs are chronologically arranged with the newest posts showing up first.  This means people will want to return to the blog regularly to see if there is new content.

Through your blog, you’ll gain the attention of video game fans.  Whenever these people want to buy a video game, they’ll probably think about buying the video game through your site.  They have a favorable impression of your site because of your useful blog posts.  Also, they “feel at home” on your site because they’ve been there before.

To succeed long-term in your business, you’ll have find ways to reach more people on a consistent basis.  Adding a blog extends your influence to video game fans that are not looking to buy at the moment.

Also, think about the advantage you have over your competitors who don’t have a blog.  Where will people more likely buy video games?  From a store that gives away quality free information on their blog or from a store that only has product descriptions and a shopping cart on their website?

Finally, by targeting all video games fans including those that are not in a buying mood, you’ll receive a huge increase of word of mouth recommendations.  The video game fans that don’t buy have friends that do want to buy.  The non-buyers will recommend your site to their friends as a place to buy video games because they received value from your blog posts.

Whatever you want to call it, there is a big shift happening on the internet. Instead of just consuming information, more and more online users are become publishers.

Web 2.0 sites like forums, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube attract many amateur publishers. Also, these sites are taking away eyeballs from mainstream media sites like Yahoo, New York Times, and MSN.com.

In the rush to get the attention of these web 2.0 users, companies are posting in forums, commenting on blogs, creating Facebook pages, and producing YouTube videos.

There’s nothing wrong with this. In fact, companies that do participate on web 2.0 sites have an advantage over companies that don’t. However, many of these companies don’t have a blog. This leaves money on the table, because in the long-term, it’s more effective to send Web 2.0 users to a blog rather than to a business home page.

Web 2.0 users are usually not in a buying frame of mind, so sending them to a sales page will not give you a high conversion rate. However, if you send them to your blog, you’ll enjoy these benefits.

1. You’ll start building a good reputation because your blog provides free, useful information on a consistent basis.
2. Web 2.0 users will be impressed with your company since most business sites don’t have a blog. Having a blog shows them that you understand the importance of web 2.0.
3. You will get useful feedback through blog comments.
4. Over time, as visitors read your blog, many of them will trust you enough to subscribe to your RSS feed or your email list. This subscription lets you communicate and sell to them over and over again.

Here is the problem with only relying on an about page.  An about page tells visitors what your business is all about, but a blog builds trust that what you say in the about page is actually true.

Just saying something about yourself doesn’t mean people will believe you.

Let’s look at an example.  Pretend you have a business that offers home installation services.

On your about page, you say these things:

• We have a quality service.
• We’re better than our competitors.
• We have experience.
• We’re experts.
• We have an awesome staff that’s friendly and competent.

Aren’t these the same type of things most businesses have on their about page?

But with a blog, you can provide evidence for your claims.

What if you had a blog with regularly updated content?  You could publish content in topics like these:

• Testimonials
• Pictures of installations you’ve done
• 10 common installation mistakes
• Home theater industry news
• Reviews of different home theater products
• DIRECTV vs cable

As you build your blog with valuable content, people will realize that the things you say on your about page are true.   This increase in trust will build your brand and increase sales.