If they’re not buying what you’re selling, then you’re not selling what they’re buying

The are two ways of looking at this…

The simple one is to change what you’re selling to what they are buying. This is a good path for someone who wants to start a business. Having a ‘hungry crowd’ is a definite advantage. I’ve seen too many businesses spend a ton of money getting ready to open their doors and when they do, no one shows up. Soon the doors are closed and a dream lost. Some people are so fixated that they’re going to open a particular type of business that they will spend years of savings, but rarely do they ever do any market research to make sure there are enough customers where they put their business.

So if you have a choice, find the need first and then fill it rather than picking the product or service and then chasing around trying to find the customers.

In the other case, perhaps you’re committed to a product or service and can’t leave it behind or add something new. In this case, you might be able to reposition what you’re offering to better appeal to the prospects or target different prospects. If you sell Mercedes, your prospect might not respond to the status factor or the comfort, but he might be willing to pay a high price for protecting his family. This can be more than just market segmentation, it can include finding new uses in the changing world. Things change, people change, what new needs do they have that they didn’t have before?

Nowadays, there is a lot to do before you can post the first post.

The blog world has changed a lot in recent times. Now one of the first things I do put up the legal pages. Today, a blogger needs to protect themselves, even a mom blogger writing about cupcakes needs to have a privacy policy page. Having a Terms of Service is also a good idea and if you are or might someday want to monetize the site in anyway, then you have to have a Disclosure Page.

Then presumably since you’re writing a blog, you’d like someone to read it. That means they need to be able to find you so then you need to get involved to some extent with SEO. On page SEO, off page SEO, setting up feeds and xml maps. Google wants a Contact page so you need that too, but better use a contact form because if you put email address on it your inbox will be filled with spam (better do something about comment spam while you at it).

There are also two other big changes in the past couple of years.

The first is Social Media. There’s a blog, and Twitter, and Facebook, and LinkedIn, and, and, and…They just keep on coming. For the important sites, you need to cross link the blog with them.

The other big change is the move to mobile platforms. The blog has to look good on a vastly smaller screen. While you might be able to display the full blog on a smart phone, it’s going to be hard to use. So in addition to a traditional display, you need small and medium size version. You also need to optimize what’s presented to cut down on the amount of data sent since the connection might be significantly slower than we’ve been used to.

So what’s a blogger to do? You handle it the same way you eat an elephant…

One ‘Byte’ At A Time