What you need to know and do to be a GREAT blog publisher!

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Have you noticed that blogs are popping up online everywhere? Yes, blogging is the phenomenon of the age. You just need to know how to profit from it. These suggestions will help.

1) Be clear on your objective.

The people who are successful with blogging, that is the people who are making money from it, all are very clear on what they are writing their blog to accomplish. If you’re writing a business blog your objective is crystal clear: you blog to profit and for no other reason.

Too many (particularly new) blogsters have mixed objectives. Sure, they want to make money but, perhaps even more (and dangerously) they write to get their share of the limelight.

Don’t make that mistake.

When you’re in business your blog exists for one reason and one reason only: to put money in your pocket, as quickly and substantially as possible.

2) Never forget the deal you have with your readers.

People who run successful (that is to say money-making) blogs never lose sight of the implicit deal they have with their readers, viz.

Publisher: I will email you information of value and consequence. I shall also send you (in the same issue) ad copy for your earnest and honest consideration.

Reader: So long as you email me superior copy, I shall do two important things: I will read this copy, and I shall also (at least ) glance at your ads.

This is the basis for a mutually satisfactory relationship.

3) Understand your role as a publisher.

Publishers become publishers for two major reasons: because they have something important to say and want to influence the world AND to make money. Thus in every issue you must offer superior content…and prospect-centered ad copy. The key here is keeping this equation balanced.

If you run nothing but superior content, your readers may be delighted… but you’ll make no money and, in short order, give up the enterprise.

If you run nothing but (or even too many) ads, your reader will immediately get bored…and punish you not just by trashing your current issue but trashing all future issues without even a glance.

Publishing, then, is all about balance.

4) Study the great publishers and their empire-building methods and procedures.

The minute you have a blog, you have become a publisher… and the minute you become a publisher you become a card-carrying member of the greatest professional association on earth: publishering. Now you are part of a grand tradition. Make it a point to understand what that means by studying the great practitioners of your business. This includes people like Gutenberg and his Bible (1455)… Canadian Lord Beaverbrook who seized English newspapers the better to manipulate ministries and imperial politics and his tenacious rival Viscount Rothermere… and the great publishing families of America whose names alone remind us of what publishers can do to generate wealth for themselves while shaping the course of a great nation starting with William Randolph Hearst…

The Taylors of Boston… the McCormicks of Chicago… the Chandlers of Los Angeles…. and their counterparts in every significant city on earth.

You, you!, are now one of their number, and I can tell you this about such people, they were all, to a person,

* big thinkers

* people who meant to shape events, not just witness them

* determined to have their point of view not just seen but dominant.

The small, the trivial, the inconsequential and insignificant had absolutely no place in their publications or their lives. These are the people, your professional ancestors, it behooves us all to study and emulate.

These were people of amazing, irrepressible energies and imaginations. They didn’t moan and groan about their “work”, the time it took, the sacrifices they had to make to do it. They were grateful for the opportunity to create vehicles of wealth and influence, thrilled to get up each and every day and set about their work, stamping the world with their mark… and eager, too.

Is this how you approach the business of your blog? If it isn’t, re-examine your reasons for creating and publishing a blog and once you have done so absorb these home truths about the business:

* Say something significant in every issue. We all want to “make a difference” with our lives. When you’re a with-it publisher, this is easy to do. Make it clear that yours is a blog designed to make this a better world; there is no higher calling than that.

* Always ask your readers to respond. “Bribe” them, if necessary, to do so… offer them something of value that induces them to respond quickly and meaningfully. Such people become your best customers.

* Publish to a schedule. The best way to blog is daily. If you aspire to significance and substantial rewards no other schedule should even be considered.

* Talk directly, frankly to your readers. Be for them what every great publisher must be: a candid, direct, honest to a fault advocate of humane and progressive change. Publishing, you see, is never merely about transmitting information; it is about seizing minds and changing lives… about throwing down gauntlets and taking up causes… and always informing, motivating, energizing, enthusing and transforming.

Make today the day you rethink and recreate your blog.

The most stimulating game on earth is influencing others and so shaping the world you want. This is the gift all (good) blog publishers get… but you get it if and only if you focus on providing people with blog posts of interest, significance, and value. Nothing less can or should be set before the most important people in your business life: your blog readers.

From now on, focus each day on what you want to share with them; what you know that can change and improve their lives… and how you will present it to them for maximum impact and long-lasting effect. They must see you for what you are: their great and valued friend and counselor, operating through and touching their lives in your blog.

When you are producing a blog of value and influence, your entire outlook on life shifts; no problem is too big, too oppressive, over powering: problems are merely challenges which you can help your readers surmount and conquer, one step at a time.

You see, publishing, all publishing, is about the business of improving lives. That is what publishers do; that is what you as a publisher must do… with your ever-improving and life-transforming blog the vehicle to hand. Do this and the golden benefits of blogging, not least the systematic and continuing improvement of lives, will all be yours.

How to get thousands and thousands of responses to your blog… and what to do when you get ‘em.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Of course you already have a blog, right? You are, I mean, on the cutting edge of the Internet, yes?

Well, if you are still blog-less today is indeed your lucky day, because I am going to show you right here, right now how to use your blog to get not a few but a positive avalanche of the best prospect leads on earth. And the great thing is, you can start today, this very minute.

Now affirm and reaffirm this: when you’re in business, running a business blog, the objective is and always will be to generate terrific prospect leads… and follow them up to make money.

It’s easy to forget the objective when you’re publishing a blog which can all too easily be seized by the shear joy and vanity of seeing your name in print. Folks, if you need lovin’ and crave adulation get a dog. They give unqualified affection. But don’t subvert the purpose of your blog.

Nothing sells itself, absolutely nothing.

I have amongst my marketing students some of the very brightest people around… and when they make a mistake, I know the pedestrian run of mankind and marketers are making it, too, in spades.

One of the most rooted errors of these folks is the pernicious, invidious notion that their blog and its contents will sell themselves; that what they are promoting and selling in their blogs needs no introduction, nor powerful words of recommendation; it’s good enough on its lonesome.

In a word: rubbish! In two words: complete rubbish!

Dear friend, there is nothing in this world, not the policies and messages of presidents, popes, and sovereign kings; not the very finest example of the most potent of salubrious medications; not the safest swiftest modes of transportation…. absolutely nothing sells itself.

Once you have realized this essential truth of business, you enter a new, higher level of commerce and marketing… for you are now a puffer in the Great Age of Puffery…. and your daily objective is clear: to puff better, more artfully, more carefully, more successfully than any other puffers on this planet. He (or she) who puffs the most, the best, reaps the most.

Thus, say you intend tomorrow to publish a jim dandy article on some subject of note and significance. The duffer puffer, the one on the bottom of the marketing heap, merely publishes the article, with this unvoiced sentiment: “Here’s the article. Make of it what you will. I can’t be bothered to tell you why you should read it… perhaps I don’t even know.”

And some dare call this marketing.

Now, try this instead…

(puff the day before you publish the article.)

Tomorrow, you readers have an incredible gift coming. I persuaded internationally known author and commentator Dr. Jeffrey Lant to let me have, in advance of publication, his latest article. It details the truth about the relationship of Snow White with those with-it guys, the 7 Dwarfs. You won’t believe what one of the most perceptive commentators around has discovered about Snow… and those Dwarfs. Can you say ‘Happy.’ You certainly will tomorrow….”

With these fast-moving words, you are keeping your audience, your present and future customers all, on the very edge of their seats. You want them in a pother of anticipation and excitement about What Happens Next. You, cleverkins, are ascending in the crucial business of puffery; selling the sizzle, not the steak. And you’re frolicking all the way to the bank.

Remember, puffing is not something occasional or episodic. It is not merely one essential thing in marketing; it is the essential thing and it must be regarded accordingly… from this moment on. Let me make this point absolutely, crystal clear:

If you want to sell a product, you must puff it.

If you want to sell your service, you must puff it.

If you want a person to read your blog, you must puff it.

If you want that same person to read an article in that blog, you must puff it.

Get the picture?

A few more hints

Your puffs must appear prominently in your blog, at least 1 at the top of the first page.

They must be short, enticing, action oriented. They must radiate a single imperative message: Look at all you get, look how delicious it is, grab it, grab it now…’

Here’s another example.

“Wow! I’m ecstatic to tell you that I’ve snagged another one of Dr. Lant’s superb articles. Yesterday nearly 400 of you smarties emailed me with your thanks, congratulations, and sincere appreciation for his last insightful article. Now I’ve got another for you. Stay tuned… you’ll have it in just HOURS. Make sure to email me at once with your reactions and compliments… it’s another winner!!! You can reach me by email (email address here); cell phone (number here)… or land line (number here.) And I want to hear from each and EVERY one of you!”

You must get on with the essential business of puffing each and every day, without exception, that you want money.

And, I guarantee you, that as you improve in your puffery, you will improve your prospect responses, dramatically.

And your bottom line? Why that will improve, too, and dramatically so if and only if you follow up each and every response, as quickly as possible, with a special offer. In other words, thank the respondents, thank them as soon as possible… and always give them a thing (or two) which makes you money. Thus are you benefited as you benefit your fast-responding prospects.

There are many things, of course, which factor into consummate blog success. They include

* having good content, interesting, practical, timely;

* publishing according to a schedule, never missing a deadline;

* writing directly to your readers, always using “you”;

* keeping every word of text short, peppy, upbeat,

* and, always and forever, every single day, puffing.

Because if you don’t puff, if you do not encourage, recommend, admonish, excite, and motivate you are leaving the crucial act of marketing in the hands of those least able to discern for themselves what to do. That decision must be yours. You and only you must advance the necessary reasons for acting as you want them to act. That crucial aspect of marketing belongs to you… and you must do this every time you want results. Like today.