To date, I have over 1,600 articles on my site, dondalrymple.com. It has been a place I use to clarify my thoughts, help people and keep a repository of content that is evergreen and reusable.
I wanted to share a bit of process that helps in both selling as well as business development that you can use.
By the way, my wife, Sonya, helps build out websites for clients and set them up to have platforms to keep their content personal, optimized and continuous as well. This is especially important as you want to be in the business of helping people and standing out in the noise. You need marketing or else you are not relevant.
Touches
I like to start my day with daily touches. Every day, I am out there helping people solve their personal and business problems. So, I use my blog in this way:
- Listen and care. Everyone is trying to solve a problem. Usually it’s around money, health or their children. Never Eat Alone is a great read to focus your mind on problems that people share. I listen, take notes and think about solutions.
- Write an article. You should use your blog much like you use email. It should be easy to get in and out of. You can post a thought like I am doing now. Instead of writing an email that is discardable, why not write an article around the concept. If someone does not know how to start a business, for example, I might write a quick article on “5 Steps to Start a Business … Fast”
- Share the article with your friend. Now you can send the article as a hyperlink with a specific, thoughtful comment, “________, I was thinking about our conversation and I wanted to share these steps to help you get to your next step.” It’s personalized and you are sharing a resource. Furthermore, you position far differently than sending a text or talking.
- Share with others. You may think of 2-3 other people to share the same article with. Send it out immediately. Have them read and comment on it. See if you can initiate conversations. You can also post on social media with the link and have a relevant, rather than generic, post with an inviting thought.
- Search. You can find content and share in the future when the same problem with different people come up. Your blog has built in search to find past articles on your site to copy and share the urls. You can also search using Google’s site search with this convention:
This keeps your mind focused on helping people and using your blog as an ongoing way to easily share your knowledge, ideas and insights.
The key is to make writing a blog post as convenient and habitual as writing an email. So, be sure to have that work process as frictionless as possible.
You will find that you get the following benefits:
- You position more professionally with a stranger
- You write once and use it in many places at many times. It’s leverage.
- You can use your articles and even create short Youtube videos to cascade your content
- You can coach people with an information asset.
- Repeatable advice becomes packaged to be reused and save you time.
- Your site increases in authority based on continuous publishing.
- You have a living site versus a mere sales brochure.
Type once. Share many times. Grow your sales and consulting this way.
