Your Blog as a Shop

We constantly hear the mantra "Treat your blog as a business", and of course, if we are here to make money from blogging, then that's exactly what we should do. So I started thinking about what exactly that might mean, and that lead me to think about Henri.

Henri owns the hardware store in my village, and he has a fantastic business, despite the fact that there is a cheaper, much bigger DIY superstore a few kilometers away. His business is great because he (and his wife who works there part time) give amazing personal service. Let's analyze what he does and see if we can relate it to giving great service to our blog "customers".

He has Incredible Product Knowledge

Even when you don't know exactly what you need to fix that tap, or make that joint, Henri does. I've rarely seen him defeated, and even when he is, he'll find a workaround to the problem. When he's not serving customers, he's reading DIY manuals or websites. When a new tool comes in, he takes it out of the box and learns how to use it. He's passionate about his subject and proud of his knowledge.

As bloggers, we need to follow his example - we need to invest time in learning our craft, both as writers and as experts in whatever field our blog is all about. We do this by reading other blogs, researching our subjects and investing our time and money into learning other people's knowledge.

He has the right Stock

The store is one of those old fashioned places, with hundreds of drawers full of little washers that cost 3 cents! He also has a huge basement area full of other hidden treasures - his stock taking must be a nightmare, but I have never caught him out! Staples for an ancient Stanley staple gun? Of course! Left hand widget for a pie flange? How many would you like?

Our stock is our content, and it does take time to build. The trick is to stay broad within your niche, if that makes sense. There may be one area of your niche you are particularly interested in, and the temptation is to keep writing on that, but you need to open up your stock by blogging about all the other areas as well. Have a look at Problogger for an example - that is a well "stocked" site - you could actually spend a week in there searching on various terms!

He's Open When We Need him to be

Henri opens all over the weekend - which is when we need his stuff!

We don't open and close our blogs, but we should aim to be there when our clients are around - that means being on hand to answer comments quickly, and that can be pretty inconvenient, but so what? If you're posting your blogs at 7PM because most of your readers are in the US and you're in Europe, then you need to be online at 7PM!

He interacts with his customers outside work

Henri is a big personality in the village - he's in the cafés, the bars, the bakery - he has coffee at the same time every day, and lunch in the plaza. He knows everybody and we all know him, and we all join him and chat with him about football or local news.

We have Twitter, Facebook and a number of other platforms which allow us to interact with our clients outside of our blogs. So if you're not a social animal, it's time you became one - use these platforms to start to establish your online personality by doing things other than Tweeting about your latest blog post - people buy from people they like.

He has Time

Even if you're just buying a box of screws, Henri has time for you. He'll ask about the family, he'll greet you when you walk in and he'll say goodbye when you leave.

We should also give people our time, no matter how busy we are. When you answer comments or questions, invest your time and effort into what you write, and think about the impact of what you say.

He Sells Add-Ons

Henri is brilliant at turning a one product sale into a two or three product sale, by simply asking a question - "Do you need a new brush to go with that paint?" "Have you got the right socket for those nuts?" As a customer we don't feel we're being sold to, more often than not we're grateful to be reminded of the extras we need.

We can learn from this in two ways. One is to add related content to our posts, and that means actually checking our past post inventory to see what would benefit a reader of this new one. The other way we can learn is to start to link our products together in packages. I sell some excellent TV viewing software via one of my blogs, and it took two minutes to add a link to sell the cable people need to connect their PC's to their TV's - result? Just over half the buyers of the software also order a cable! Look back through your pages and see where you can add related sales.

He's a Nice Guy and a Real Person

Henri is a good, honest, likable guy. You instinctively know that he's not trying to rip you off, he's straightforward to deal with and when he occasionally gets something wrong he rectifies the situation. It means people keep coming back to him, year after year.

If we're going to successfully draw customers to our blogs and sell products to them, we need to adopt some of that style. We need to cut the hype, get rid of the bullshit and offer our clients value for money products which we know will work for them and give them real benefits. That way, they too will keep coming back to our blogs, year after year.

Have you seen examples in other businesses which have lead you to apply the principles to blogging?