Why Don't You Blog About It?

I spend a lot of my time these days trying to help writers and people with small businesses succeed. While my expertise lies in the area of blogging, publishing and speaking, I can help just about anyone with a business. Let me explain why.

I hear that unemployment has improved. Yet, every day I’m told of individuals who continue losing jobs and remain out of work. Recent college graduates also can’t find jobs. As recourse, millions of Americans are turning to entrepreneurship in the hopes of taking financial control of their lives. But many find themselves unprepared for the path that successful entrepreneurs must blaze. With the right information and correct practical tools, however, it's possible for small business owners to build successful businesses and find financial stability.

That information and those tools must keep up with the times. These days everyone searches for everything—even business, products, services, and experts—on the Internet. That means if a potential customer or client needs to purchase a product or service, they turn to Google, Yahoo, Bing, or some other search engine to find the right person or company for the job. If you or your company do not come up on the first search engine results page, you probably won't be the person they call. That means businesses need an online presence. As a business person, you need to understand the power of an online presence and how to get one.

The easiest and fastest way to place yourself on the first search engine results page, or even in the #1 Google search result spot, is to blog. A blog gives you an online presence and fresh content on a regular basis. That new content gets cataloged regularly by search engine technology, called spiders or bots, and raises your website or blog up in the search engine results pages. Why? Because your content is filled with key words and keyword phrases--or search terms--being used by your potential clients and customers to search for your business or product.

How does someone who finds you on the Internet know that you can be trusted or that you truly are an expert? You become an expert author. A book serves as the best business card you could ever hand out. As soon as a potential client or customer sees that you are an author, they consider you an authority and much more credible and trusted than someone else with a similar business--someone who handed out a plain old paper business card. In fact, you become a thought leader. Your book also becomes searchable on the Internet; it will be listed on Amazon and will come up when people search for something related to that topic as well; it may even come up in the #1 Google search engine results page spot.

Thus, when a business person puts a blog and a book together, this combination not only makes you more easily findable but also makes you more trusted and credible. That means you will have more leads, more clients and more customers, and your business will make more money.

Additionally, because you are more findable and the expert in your field, the media will begin to seek you out for interviews. Organizations, too, will want you to speak to their members. You have now become a professional speaker. As a speaker, you can bring in added revenue. Plus, you get to peddle your wares--your products and serves, including your book--to all the people who attend your talks. You can also give workshops, teleseminars and webinars. You can do this locally to the chamber of commerce or all around the world, such as on cruise ships or to international groups. You might even find that you enjoy speaking and want to pursue this as a career. Some speakers earn $10,000 and up for each speech they give.

That's why when I coach entrepreneurs who want to boost their business or authors who want to sell more books—or even people who just have a passion or feel a sense of purpose and want to figure out how to channel that into a business, I tell them they need a blog, a book and a speech. These three elements give them an expert platform that provides a sure fire way to boost a business or around which to create one.

Anyone interested in developing this type of expert platform and boosting their business—or starting a brand new entrepreneurial venture--with speaking, a published "calling card" and an online presence, has a great opportunity next month.

You can join me at a full-day workshop called Expert Platform Building 101 on May 19 in Santa Clara. If you don’t know me, I’m the author of How to Blog a Book, and I’m a blog-to-book coach and an author and book coach.

I’ll be teaching along with Sunnyvale resident Bill Belew, author of How Wilby Got 20 Million People to Read His Blog and a blog consultant, and San Jose resident Rick Deutsch, author of One Best Hike: Yosemite’s Half Dome and a professional speaker.

Bill and I also speak at numerous events and conferences. Our goal is to have every attendee leave this workshop with the skill to start blogging, a plan to write a business-boosting book, and the knowledge to begin speaking professionally. By developing an expert platform with all three of these elements, entrepreneurs can propel their businesses to success. You can get all the details about the workshop here: http://www.copywrightcommunications.com/Workshops.html

Plus, here’s some great news for entrepreneurs and business owners about this workshop. In an effort to help business new business owners succeed, Bill, Rick and I teamed up with Campbell resident James Herrera, chief entrepreneur at Perceptive Insights, which runs the Make America Prosperous (MAP) conferences.

If you sign up for Expert Platform Building 101, you get to attend a second full-day workshop FREE offered by MAP: Entrepreneurial Fundamentals 102. Day 2, which is on May 20, is focused specifically on how to use essential tools to become a successful entrepreneur and to be the best CEO possible.

The MAP conferences feature another group of experienced entrepreneurs who bring a new style of entrepreneurial education to the marketplace. The MAP conferences are founded on the principle of Collaborative Capitalism, a practical business philosophy employing proven business principles, pricing policies and negotiation strategies. Each of these things encourages sustainable long-term relationships with customers, which are more important to successful business enterprises than short-term, one-off deals.

All four of us are all determined to find ways to increase the profitability of as many small business owners as possible—and to do so in an affordable, efficient and sustainable manner for the entrepreneurs. In this way, we hope to create successful business people that will rebuild the local economy as well as America's ailing economy.

So, check out the workshop (http://www.copywrightcommunications.com/Workshops.html). Don’t wait too long. If you hurry, you can take advantage of the Super Saver savings.

Here’s all the information on the event:

Expert Platform Building 101 + Entrepreneurial Fundamentals 102

May 19-20
7:45 am – 6:30 pm The Ground Floor – Silicon Valley 2030 Duane Avenue,Santa Clara, CA 95054

Cost: $597 per person
Super Saver by April 8: $347 -or- Register 2 people for $297 each ($594 total)
Early Bird by April 19: $497 -or- Register 2 people for $447 each ($894 total)

Questions? 408-888-4752

More info and a schedule: http://www.copywrightcommunications.com/Workshops.html

Info on the speakers: http://billbelew.com/workshop/workshop-bios/

Register: http://expertplatformbuilding.eventbrite.com/

I hope to see you at the workshop.