Building Your First List

Blogging – The Best Way to Build A List

We all like to spend time with people we know and like and as online entrepreneurs we need to make it a priority to develop good relationships with the people who visit our websites and sign up for our newsletter.  We need to build credibility and create trust with good quality content.

Our aim is to become a recognized authority and expert in our chosen area and one of the easiest ways to do this is through a blog.  This is one of the best interfaces we can use to put ourselves in front of potential customers and give them the opportunity to get to know us.  It is also one of the best ways to build our list.  Some bloggers are perceived as experts (whether they are or not) solely on the strength of their successful blogs.

A blog, short for web log, is basically a website with a few specific characteristics.  Blogs started as a type of journal or diary (hence the dated articles or posts arranged in chronological order) but nowadays blogs are not all personal diaries although personal reflection and opinion are important elements of many blogs.

To build our credibility we need to make sure that everything we publish on our website is high quality, up to date, interesting, helpful and practical.  In short, we need to provide value and give our visitors an incentive to come back and see us.  One of the great advantages of a blog, and one of its specific characteristics, is that it’s so easy to update and it allows us to make regular posts with minimal effort (and technical knowledge).  Regular updates mean that there is usually something new to keep a regular visitor interested.  And if we can get a reputation for being out at the front with new products and developments in our market, then so much the better .

People seem to trust blogs more than normal websites and this may have something to do with the fact that bloggers interact with their visitors and develop a relationship which other websites do not offer.  Blogs are a very natural communication tool .  Visitors can leave comments which means that the website is no longer a one-way street.  A dialogue can be started and developed.  Others can join in and a community can be built.

If we’re passionate about our subject, it will come across in our writing, and there’s always something very attractive about someone with a passion – it tends to be infectious!

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