 | THE TRUE VALUE OF BUSINESS BLOGGING | | | | | What's your hourly rate? | Posted by Steffi Lewis on 30/07/2012 |
I'm back at my favourite coffee shop for a meeting with a potential new client called Andrea. She's just started a small business after raising her family and was wondering if she can afford to blog or if she should go get one of those £100 websites advertised on TV ...
 letting sblogit.com do the hard work for you makes sound financial sense
We had first met Andrea at a recent networking event and realised that she was quite au fait with computers after working in the corporate world for some years. With us having a phenomenal January, my partner-in-crime was taking another meeting in Bedford that day.
The first part of our meeting was about getting to know each other as I like to consider all our clients as friends and of course Andrea would need to like me as well if we were going to work together to help her get the best from blogging and social media.
Next our conversation turned to other marketing channels and I asked what she was already doing. She told me that she'd had a thousand flyers delivered around Milton Keynes as a tester in January but hadn't had much response and was quite disappointed. She was being encouraged to sign up to a regular monthly delivery contract but now didn't think it was value for money.
She showed me her flyer and it was pretty good but I suggested flyer delivery was unable to differentiate between letterboxes of her ideal demographic family and that for the same amount of money she was intending to spend each month, she could have a blog from sblogit.com and spend some money on a Facebook advert that would allow her to reach the right people in the right area.
She was still umming and ahhing about a blog so I said "Andrea, you're a brand new business and you do have a lot of competition out there. Facebook will connect you with the right people and blogging will allow those who click on your Facebook advert to learn about you, trust you and feel good about spending their hard earned cash with you."
"I understand what you're saying" said Andrea "but surely I could do it just as well myself?" I never have to think about that one for long. "Yes of course you can" I replied "yet when are you going to find the time to create something that is keyword rich, grammatically correct and linguistically appealing as well as select the perfect image to go with it AND then share it out on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn?"
I asked her my favourite question "Do you know what your hourly rate is?" She did, and it was comparable to the rate we charge for our editorial services. However, when I suggested that creating a new blog post would probably take her anything up to three hours to get it perfect, she agreed that our team of professional editors taking her raw thoughts and doing it in around an hour was more cost effective than doing it herself.
I recently wrote a post called Zen & The Art Of Business Blogging where I discussed the different levels and real values of blogging with different platforms. I got out my iPad and let Andrea read it whilst I went to buy us some more coffee.
By the time I got back, she was convinced. "Ok, I understand the value of what you do now," she said "I don't have the time to do it myself, do I? What do we need to do now to get my blog set up?"
Always a great moment when the penny drops and I will be welcoming Andrea to the sblogit.com family soon. If you'd like to discuss the real value of business blogging, then all you need to do is give me a call on +44 (0) 2032 394386 and let's arrange a coffee!
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STEFFI LEWIS
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 | DIRECTOR AND SHARER OF THE BLOG LOVE LIKES: My friends, cats, spooning, good filter coffee, fast bikes, my iPad and iPhone, Jimmy Choo, Jaeger, Mercedes, Aston Martin, people who make me laugh hysterically, rock music, Sci-Fi, Chinese food, wine and Chocolate.
DISLIKES: Isms, labels, Marmite, Salmon, stress, early mornings, hangovers, people that make me sad, self-centred and selfish behaviour, Soaps and Reality TV.
VIRTUE: Effortlessly combines calming serenity & inspiring awesomeness.
VICE: Likes to party like a rock-star.
"Don't tell me that the sky's the limit when there are footprints
on the moon"
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