14 December 2009
by 
When James asked, “Are Bloggers Creating Their Own Sweatshop?” we discussed what a blog is, and what it isn’t. Ok, so our blog isn’t our product, it’s our platform, right? Why put so much time into maintaining a dynamic site? Couldn’t a static website be just as effective as a business card, portfolio, or sales rep?
Yes… & No…
A site’s effectiveness is measured on many scales. One must consider visibility, function, conversion, and return on investment. All of these factors are influenced by your readers and your content.
A Static Site
- The Business Card
- The C.V. or Resume
If your site offers your contact details and a description of your services/business, it is a business card. But, as with the cards you keep in your pocket, the best way to get your card into the hands of your potential customers and clients is to give it to them. This is 100% “push” marketing. Almost everyone who visits your site already knew about you and what you do. They may even be existing clients/customers.
If you’ve added details of your past success, gigs, clips, testimonials, etc. you’ve taken your business card site one step further. Now you’ve got a C.V. or Resume. This is where you not only give your existing contacts a way to reach you but also a way to see what you do. With this additional information they can evaluate your services/products and decide to contact you to get more information or place an order. 80% “push”, 20% “pull”. You’re still doing the majority of promotion but the site is making more conversions and your portfolio will begin to bring “loose change” traffic based on key words (ie. keywords) in your services and products.
A Dynamic Site
Now you’ve decided to step up another notch. This is where you can take one route or the other. The first maximizes your return on investment, it puts in place your potential income streams, and begins promoting product from the beginning. The second is usually done first, because most people don’t realize they need the first to make the second’s ROI (return on investment) profitable or they begin as a hobby and later realize their hobby could make them money.
- The Catalog
Before you develop your blog, I recommend you establish your catalog. A catalog site is not necessarily a list of products with a fully integrated shopping cart. In the simplest terms, a catalog is a showcase of marketable goods and services. Each good/service should have its own sales page, optimized for search with clear calls to action and compelling copy.
Your products/services don’t even have to be your own. If you can recommend useful things to people who would be interested in your CV/Resume you can affiliate and make money in commissions.
Once you have a solid catalog your site is ready for a fourth dimension.
- The Blog
The purpose of the blog isn’t to sell content. It’s soul reason for being is to give your potential customers exactly what they initially arrived at your site seeking. Your blog content is written in a way that encourages indexing and sharing. You want to maximize your blog’s reach.
A blog has the greatest potential for “pull” marketing. You can spend less time actively handing out business cards because your customers are handing them out for you. You’re giving each visitor exactly what they want and word-of-mouth fires up with positive reviews and natural testimonials. Friends tell friends, who tell friends, to the full six degrees of separation.
And, because you update frequently, search engines tell everyone who asks about something you write about that you’re in the know, right now. Search engines LOVE fresh content, in the eyes of those little bots if it’s new its news. If your site was established ten years ago and hasn’t been changed since the search engines don’t come back to look at you. It assumes you’ve said all you’re going to say. It wants to see what people are saying today, not ten years ago.
And, because you’re giving away your blog content for free, customers are getting what they need, loving what they get, signing up for more of what they want, and giving you free access to the upsell.
Building On Firm Foundations
Blogs have the potential to grow larger still. They break out of blog bindings into networks and communities. Every stage increases visibility, functionality, conversion, and return on investment. But you can see why blogging for free isn’t really blogging for free at all. If you approach your site with the mind of building a marketing platform, you build a business, not just a blog.
Want to take your site to the next level? Yep, that’s the business I’m in. Contact me to find out how to put together, the best showcase for your products and services, the best web solution for your business.
Well, I participated in a Warrior Forum discussion that addressed this very thing. Some people say that the only thing that really makes a blog special to the search engines is the fact that content gets updated constantly. If you have a static site but are loading 2-3 new articles into it a week then doesn’t it serve nearly the same purpose according to the search engines? I guess in that context, would it really be considered a static site? Since it’s getting updated constantly, it seems like it would be a dynamic site, right?
.-= Katherine shares: Getting My Freelance Writing Business Organized =-.
That’s right, Katherine. A site that is frequently updated would be a dynamic site. Publishing new articles rather than a blog would make it less interactive but still dynamic.
Of course, I didn’t get into the TRUE secret.
Having a static site and linking to it from dynamic sites! You can have your static portfolio site or even just a business card site, and raise it’s appeal to search engines by writing content for OTHER people’s sites and link back to your own.
Because the sites you choose to write for are already high profile, it gives your own site greater weight but cuts down on the amount of maintenance and legwork you have to do. You don’t have to maintain a blog and build your own readership. You can hit an established readership and build your static site’s credibility much faster by writing for other people instead of for yourself.
I’ll have to write more about this and follow up this post with that information.
Just think, writing one post for Problogger would give your portfolio site more traffic in a few days than writing a month worth of blog posts for your own site.
That’s why WRA is the only site of my own I write for. Whenever I’ve got something I want to say about a different topic I write a guest post for someone else.
.-= Rebecca Laffar-Smith shares: Your Blog Is Not A Sweatshop, It’s Your Sales Rep. =-.
Rebecca so what you’re trying to say is .. build backlinks to your static site by commenting on other people’s blog by leaving a link in the comment that points to your static site?? Correct me if Im wrong. I’m a total noob and I need things explained to me on a 7th grade level.
Not in comments doo, although commenting on other sites does help but when you do that you should only ever use the URL section of the form to link back to your own site. I recommend writing guest posts and articles for article markets. In those you can refer to your static site within the content of the post/article.
By writing posts on OTHER people’s dynamic sites you’re leveraging their traffic rather than trying to build your own following and you can do it at your own time and pace instead of being tied down to a blog schedule.
.-= Rebecca Laffar-Smith shares: I Suck at Writing Headlines =-.
Great post. Very refreshing given all the duplicate content out there. Thanks for doing something original.
Thanks. So often when people decide to have a website they go into it uncertain of what their websites purpose is. It’s important to have a purpose clearly in mind so that you can build the best styled website to serve that purpose. A good Web Designer can help you do that.
Very engaging. Continue to keep these reports flowing.