Step-by-Step

Every small business owner who is planning to use their website to blog and capture leads, needs to have the right tools.

The word “tool” in this case refers to anything from a simple piece of software to detailed educational products.

There are a LOT of companies out there with great ideas for their website and it is very easy to get distracted by the magical promises of having fancy tools and plugins. Most of these shiny things aren’t necessary to accomplish what you need to do to build and grow your business and attract your customers.

Here is an overview of the basics you need to get started – this should help you choose what you believe will suit you best for your business.

Resources Needed to Run Your Website

A tool is just that – a tool. It will not do the work for you. (sorry!)

The simple act of buying a piece of software won’t magically bring you traffic or sales. BUT there are some things that can really improve performance, or when used as designed, increase your traffic, conversion, and sales.

Many tools will enhance what you are doing by:

• reducing the amount of work required to accomplish a task
• make something of importance stand out
• will turn repetitive tasks into automation
• make something faster
• make something easier
• require less of your time and so on.

CAUTION: sometimes plugins will interfere with one another. Some tools are incompatible with other tools. Some plugins and tools will be incompatible with your website and “break it”. You also have to have a webmaster or developer to put the website together for you and you need someone to maintain it and update it. If you are unfamiliar with having your business online it can seem overwhelming but don’t let that scare you off. Being online can really help you grow your business.

12 Simple Steps to Setting up an Effective Business Blog

• 1. You need to decide on the niche you will be blogging about
1b. Choose your domain name.
• 2. You need a blog
• 3. You need to get eyeballs on your blog with:
– paid traffic
– free traffic
– social media traffic
– link building
• 4. You need to collect the names that belong to the eyeballs.
– listbuilding resources
– squeeze pages
– autoresponders
• 5. You need to follow up with an email sequence with helpful information and affiliate offers
• 6. Set up your store on your site
• 7. Track your visitors so you know what else they want to buy
– You need to find affiliate offers to fulfill No. 4
• 8. You need to post new articles on a regular schedule and keep organized
• 9. You need to brand yourself and your business
• 10. Now that you have traffic you need to track your traffic
• 11. Expanding your market, creating your own products
• 12. Expand your income by doing more like setting up a membership site,
• 13. More Tools, more ideas