Yesterday in part one of this series, I talked about the opportunities out there for bloggers who are willing to share and apply their experience in blogging with businesses that are looking to set up blogs.

Today we’ll explore ways that you can connect with potential clients and package your services to increase the dollar value of your offering.

First, if you’re working with the business client, it’s important to understand the difference between personal blogging and business blogging. Business blogging doesn’t have to be dry and devoid of personality – quite the contrary. It’s just different. For an extremely informative overview of business blogging best practices, check out this interview I did with the Lonely Marketer’s Pat Schraber.

Identifying the Right Client

The right client isn’t anyone who will pay money. The right client is someone who can actually benefit from having a blog. They must be willing to:

• Allow personalities to step out from behind the corporate “veil”
• Understand that the business impact of a blog is not necessarily measured in the same way as other types of “advertising.” (See the interview with Pat)
• Commit at a significant amount of time to blogging or be willing to spend money to pay someone to help write posts and manage the blog
• Be willing to post regularly or approve posts regularly and timely
• Reply to comments on a consistent basis or assign a person within the company to reply to comments.
• Have a desire to connect with their customer
• Want to blog for more reasons that just driving traffic to their website (some may argue this, but that’s my opinion. Most corporate clients originally say they want a blog for this purpose and it’s important to explain that this is NOT maximizing the usefulness of a blog. If this were the only goal, their money would be better spent on AdWords)

How to Find Potential Clients

Most business owners have heard of blogging and have heard of how it can improve a company’s online presence. The thing with blogging however, is that most people don’t really know WHAT it is – just that it’s something everyone seems to be doing. They don’t know how exactly it can help their business; they just know that it can.

The problem with this is that most small and midsized business owners aren’t out there posting jobs on freelance boards to find someone to start a blog – even if they are receptive to starting a blog. Because they’re probably not going to come right out and tell you that they want a blog, you’ve got to look for the signs that a company might be receptive to blogging.

Some of these signs may be:

• Posting jobs on freelance boards for search engine optimization
• Any business that is using AdWords so is obviously spending money on some form of marketing campaign
• A small business owner who actively participates in online forums

Approaching Potential Clients

I have personally found that a very short and simple text email sent to TARGETED individuals that informs them of my service, works the best. I grew my entire freelance business using only this free method of connecting with people.

The keyword here is TARGETED. Don’t send spam mail. (That’s not legal) Don’t send something that sounds like an advertisement. Make it personal. Get to the point. Give them enough information. Don’t make it a pitch. Let them contact you for more information.

This email shouldn’t be an infomercial, it should be a way to find the people who ALREADY need what you have to offer and just hadn’t gotten around to asking or finding a person do it already.

Part Three

Tomorrows post will talk about how to package your services to increase the dollar value of your offering.

Share Your Experience

What hurdles have you encountered when setting up a blog for another person or company? What other ways might indicate that a company is receptive to blogging and willing to invest in getting a blog up and running? What are some other characteristics of ideal clients?

First ask yourself: What is the worst that can happen? Then prepare to accept it. Then proceed to improve on the worst. Dale Carnegie

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