Today’s post is a guest post by Murray Newlands, founder of Influence People and author of Content Monetization.

A lot of bloggers are great writers. They’re very skilled and could be full-time professional writers, but they’re missing one key element: They aren’t very good businessmen.

They have backgrounds in English and journalism and thus don’t think of blogging like a business. Instead of marketing their blog posts as a product for companies for their marketing campaigns, they see themselves as freelance journalists who only write about what they love, and freelance journalists don’t make that much money anyway.

I’ve already written posts on blog monetization, so I’m sharing a few ways that you can think like a product person to improve your actual writing so that you can write for marketing projects and make more money:

Think Like a Product Person

When you’re writing for a marketing campaign, or even for anybody who’s paying you, your audience is the person who’s paying you and who they think will read your work. But for it to even get accepted and get more work in the future, you need to make sure that the person paying you to do the writing likes your work:

1. Try to write content that has the potential to spread and can be shared with ease. Your online visibility will make it easier for your content to spread from your current customers to potential future customers. Once it starts to spread, the person who hired you’s sales will drastically improve and they’ll be happy to hire you again.
2. Your content can also be used to build a new and improved reputation. Therefore, in order to do so, write content that establishes you as an expert of your field. This perception of expertise will allow you to charge higher rates to client-customers in the future.
3. Your content should also influence your customer’s buying decision. Write your content to create awareness among your customers regarding the unique features of your products and services.
4. Always work on things that interest you, because when you work on something you love and have passion for, it reflects in your content and such content is likely to appeal to your customers because it sounds more genuine and leaves a stronger impression.

Allow Your Customers to Share Their Experiences

This is specific to certain forms of marketing writing, but beviews given by previous customers greatly influence to new customers. According to different surveys, such customer-based reviews are considered more trust-worthy than reviews written by journalists. That’s why public forums and blogs help improve sales, e.g. Amazon which allows reviews from its customers and has been successful in driving it sales over the years. Most people who will pay you to write marketing articles know this, so you could pitch writing Amazon reviews for them to get more work.

You can also make a first-party blog for your customers to share their personal experiences regarding your products and services. Such blogs also help generate new customers by increasing the number of users accessing your site, eventually increasing your profitability. People find such forums trustworthy and genuine, allowing market to grow and increase sales. A good space for user content can also help you gain credibility.

Recap

1. Create good content that allows your customers to drive easily through the sales tunnel.
2. Design content that can spread easily, establishes you as an expert and helps your customers make their decision in your favor.
3. Allow your customers to share their experiences regarding your products and services by creating such a place for them on the web.

Learn more about how to monetize your blog from my FREE webinar at 11:00am PST on Friday, January 27th.

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