In part one of this series, I talked about the income earning opportunity for bloggers who are willing to share their knowledge by consulting with business clients who want a blog, but aren’t sure how to get one off the ground successfully.

Part two talked about identifying potential clients and offered ways to connect with them.

Today in part three, I’ll talk about how to package your services to increase the dollar value of your offering.

Setting Expectations

As a blogger, you’re aware that blogs don’t necessarily “convert” customers in the same way as a website or an advertisement. However, a business will likely think that it will. As I mentioned in part two, it’s critical to get the point across that blogs have different goals than a website.

Just because a blog won’t necessarily have the conversion ratio that a website does, doesn’t mean that the blog shouldn’t have goals. For a blog, those goals may be RSS subscribers, comments, page views, and percentage of return visitors. It’s your job as a blogger to explain to the company IN THEIR TERMS why this is critical to their business.

It’s possible that a blog may not be the right choice for some businesses. Businesses that have low engagement may not realize the full benefit of a blog (such as a company that sells steel building kits to end consumers for example). If you don’t see the soft dollar benefit in engaging with customers, it’s your responsibility as the consultant to bring that up. If they don’t see the soft dollar benefit in engaging with customers and you DO, then it’s your responsibility as the consultant to state your case.

Setting Measurable Goals

One of the most important things you can do to increase the value of your blog consulting package is to set measurable goals. A measurable goal will state “what by when.” Use the first month as a baseline with a flexible goal such as getting 30 RSS subscribers or 20 comments. Of course, try to shoot for higher, but don’t beat yourself up if you don’t reach that goal. The first month is about setting a baseline.

The fact that you set measurable goals will greatly enhance the value of your service offering because it gives the project structure. Without structure, any project tends to drift into the abyss. It also indicates that you have a PLAN and that you have confidence in that plan. Just the fact that you set goals will set you apart from a huge majority of others who are offering the same services.

This doesn’t mean that you’re going to be held accountable if the company doesn’t reach their goals. It’s up to the people within the company who will be executing the tasks you lay out to do their part. You’ll want to do your very best to meet those goals, but you’ll also want to give yourself flexibility when laying them out – stating that these are GOALS not promises.

Creating an Action Plan

When someone comes to you for consulting they rarely want just general “how to” information, they want an action plan for success. This means that if you’re working with a company to start a blog, you’ll probably want to either do the tasks to set it into motion or round up key people who know exactly what they need to do and when they are going to have it completed by.

Talent you’ll need to round up

• Semi-technical person to set up blog/install plugins/buy domain name/set up emails
• Graphics person to create a design
• Person or people to write posts
• One person to moderate posts (sometimes)

It’s completely up to you how hands on you want to be with the project. You may act as a project manager only, assigning freelancers to set up the blog, install plugins, create and integrate a design, etc. However, if you are skilled with all of these tasks and have the time, you may want to do them yourself and keep a larger piece of the profits.

Training the Team

The harder piece is the content writing since the content is the heart of the blog and because it must be added on a continuous and consistent basis. If people inside the company will be posting, they will probably need some coaching on how to write for blogs verses other media. You’ll also want to train them on:

• Specific things they can do when they run out of ideas
• Ways to find other blogs to link to within their posts (and the importance of this)
• How to leave posts open ended and ask questions to encourage comments
• How to reply to comments (and the importance of this)

Since people within the company come and go, it’s a good idea to have these points in a written document. In order to deliver training, you can use an online meeting utility like GoToMeeting. Though this only requires time of you, the fact that you do this is worth more than the time in hours that it takes to complete this training.

The bottom line is that more structure you can provide, the more value your service holds.

Share Your Ideas

What other ways could you add value to your blog consulting services offer?

Tags: Blogging, Business Building //