3 reasons why blogging now can help your doula business
I have found in my own business, and students in the Rock Your Birth Biz Blog Boot Camp have also discovered the positive impact that blogging can have on their businesses. In this Facebook Live replay, I talked about three effects that blogging can have on your doula or birth business. I also address a couple reasons why your past blogging efforts haven’t worked.
Video Transcript
Hi everyone! Good morning and thank you for joining me. Today I’m going to talk about a triple threat marketing strategy that can truly help attract new clients to your birth business. And that strategy is…. BLOGGING!
For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Darlene MacAuley and I help birth professionals start and grow their businesses with a focus on establishing systems and creating community, both on and offline.
Before I get into today’s topic, I’m curious to know whether you have considered blogging or have tried blogging for your birth business. If you have, type YES in the comments. If you haven’t considered blogging before but are curious to know more, type CURIOUS in the comments.
Maybe you have tried blogging but found it difficult to come up with topics, or perhaps the few you’ve written didn’t get much attention. Perhaps you’ve concluded, “What’s the point, anyway!”
Well today I’m going to explain the triple-threat factor of blogging as a marketing strategy which I hope will help you understand how powerful it can be and get you to consider adding this strategy to your marketing toolkit.
And, if you know of any other birth pros who might benefit from today’s topic, I invite you to share this video with them now!
At the end of this livestream, I’m going to tell you about a freebie you can request to help you attract more clients through blogging. I’ll give you more details later, but for now, let’s get started!
I’ve visited lots of blogs by birth professionals, some great, and others not so much. As a blogger who has been doing this for about a decade now, I can spot where the not-so-great bloggers have gone wrong. You see, a lot of times, their content is actually good, but they’re missing a few things that could make a big difference.
I’ll highlight a couple of those missing elements in a bit, but first, I want to share why I feel blogging can be a serious tactic in your overall marketing strategy.
If you watched my live stream last week, you might remember me talking about the three types of impact that one’s marketing activities need to make. Today I’m going to tell you how blogging can achieve all three… which are VISIBILITY, CREDIBILITY, and OUTREACH.
#1 – Visibility
First, let’s look at visibility. As I mentioned last week, visibility strategies are what introduces people to your business. If you blog consistently, whether it’s once a week or once a month, you have created a reason for people to visit your website other than looking for someone providing your services in your community. If people are searching for your blog topics in a search engine or Pinterest, your site could pop up with the answers they need.
If people love what you have to say, they could share your blog post, giving you more visibility.
On social media, rather than tell people you’re looking for new clients, you can start a conversation about your blog topic and direct people to your blog post.
Simply put, blog posts give you more opportunities to serve your community with valuable information that isn’t sales-y but it brings people to your online home where they can learn you exist. They can make you more VISIBLE.
#2 – Credibility
Once you have become visible to your ideal clients or Business Best Friends, your blog posts immediately help to build your credibility as an expert in your field as you share your knowledge about what you do.
The more consistently you blog, the more credibility you can build for yourself. Once someone reaches one blog post, they may stay and read another, and another, until they’re looking at your service packages because they want to hire you.
It can take time for people to experience you and build up enough of the Know-Like-Trust factor before they hire you. Having a growing blog let’s people get to know you over time. They may grow to like your sense of humor, appreciate your extensive knowledge, and they may come to really value your opinion. It may take them just a few hours of reading multiple posts on your site, or they may be fans of yours for several months or a couple of years before they contact you about hiring you.
Another benefit about having fans who rave about you? They’ll probably share links to your blog posts which equals… that’s right, more visibility!
#3 – Outreach
This is more of an advanced blogging strategy… using blogging to build community. Outreach marketing strategies have to do with making personal connections with your referral network and potential, current or past clients. On your blog, this can look like…
…an interview with a fellow birth professional
…a guest blog post from a fellow birth professional
…you contributing a guest blog on a fellow birth pro’s site
…sharing a client’s birth story
These are just a few examples.
How do posts like these translate in the minds of your BBF?
Increased credibility (or trust) because you have relationships with fellow birth professionals in your community.
Increased credibility (or trust) in your ability to do your job from hearing about your clients’ experiences.
In addition, when the professionals and clients you’ve collaborated with share your blog posts that they were a part of with their own networks, you’re going to get even more VISIBILITY. In addition, the know-like-trust factor can happen even more quickly because your blog posts are being shared by someone they already know, like and trust.
If you’ve tried to blog and it didn’t work for you…
So for those of you who have tried to blog before but felt it was unsuccessful, I’ll take a stab at troubleshooting why.
The first reason is likely going to have to do with visibility. Your posts were not being shared frequently enough or widely enough. If, after you initially posted and shared your blog posts, how often did you share them after that? My guess is, not much if at all.
The second reason could be that your posts may not have been what your BBF is looking for. It’s great to write about topics you are passionate about, but you need to be strategic and decide on topics that you are not only passionate about BUT are ones your ideal clients want to know about.
There is a third reason why blog posts can fall flat, but I’ll let you find out what that is in this week’s freebie, where you can learn 3 Simple Ways to Attract Clients to Your Birth Biz Through Blogging. In this downloadable workbook, I go over three common mistakes that I see birth pro bloggers make which can easily be fixed. In addition, there is space for you to brainstorm some ideas that you can implement if you already have some blog posts you want to improve, or ideas you can make sure to execute with your brand new blog posts.
With this freebie, you’ll also receive a few emails over the course of the week to learn even more about how blogging can help your business, and you can find out about the Rock Your Birth Biz Blog Boot Camp, which is my 8-week online course and coaching program on blogging for your birth business. I’ll include a link to the freebie in the description after this livestream.
Thanks so much for joining me live or on the replay. See you next week!
