Why I started BlogWorks and the future of the world

In this blog, we’ve written lots about blogging (ironic). Everything from topics to headlines to analytics – even hiring writers. And we have a long list of future topics we want to share with you. But, there’s one topic that’s been missing…until now. We haven’t shared the story behind BlogWorks.

Well, it all started with an itch.

My blog was new and I was struggling to get more readers. Like any blogger, I wanted more readers so reach more people and grow my list. And I was doing it all myself. You know the drill:

• think up ideas that (hopefully) get some attention
• squeeze in time to get the sh*ty first draft out
• find even more time to transform my draft into a final post
• mess around with images
• get the whole thing published

and then… It was time to start promoting the blog. AAAAAAGH!!

AND THEN A MIRACLE HAPPENED

At first, it wasn’t a very good solution. But, I knew if I could share my blog on social media, some of those followers would share my post with their followers and there could be an exponential effect. So, instead of only reaching my list (in fact, I would only reach the percentage of my list who open my email and click through to my blog), by broadcasting my content on social media I could reach the followers of my followers. Following me? And it started to work. Slowly my list started to grow. My goal was to increase my blog traffic and get to 50 new contacts a week. With an upgrade to my opt-in gift and a few tweaks to my strategy, I reached my goal in the first 2 months. Plus my site traffic was up and growing every week. Great! I had cracked the code, deciphered the scrolls and unlocked the keys to the traffic kingdom. But I couldn’t keep up. I was spending about an hour a day just writing the social media posts, collecting the images and then posting everything. Plus, it wasn’t what I wanted to be doing. So, I decided to outsource the work overseas. My initial job posting was a bit of an understatement: “Blogger needs help”

MY FIRST ATTEMPT AT OUTSOURCING

In theory, outsourcing work to a third world country is a fine idea. You’re getting some work done at an affordable price and they are earning cash. It’s an economic win/win. Once I got through the advertising, weeding through a truckload of applications, making my selection and negotiating a fee, I hired my first assistant. I thought that was the hard work.

That’s when the problems started.

At first, it was simple grammar errors – ‘their’ instead of ‘they’re’ or ‘write’ when it should have been ‘right.’  No biggie—I quickly fixed those. I tried to convince myself this was going to work. The work was getting done and, sure, I had to double check everything, but wasn’t that part of outsourcing work? I got worried when I started getting messages like this: “Dear Huge, apologies for no replying to your email. My brother wedding was long way out of town and we had trouble return to our home today. And then I got sick. I feel better now. Please resend emails I have internet troubles.” Just because you hire someone, it doesn’t mean life is getting easier. Just because you hire someone, it doesn’t mean life is getting easier Click To Tweet After a number of brave attempts at hiring overseas, I started looking closer to home. That was the start of BlogWorks. And it was a very modest start. With just a handful of clients and one person reading our clients’ blog posts and doing all the writing, scheduling and posting we brought the whole operation back to Canada. Today I work from a small office and we have a wonderful team of 8 who all live in British Columbia and all work remotely. And it’s been a long time since I corrected anyone’s grammar.

WE BROADCAST YOUR BLOG

When people ask what we do, the simplest answer is we broadcast your blog to help you reach more readers. Our daily social media posting service means that more people see your blog posts, join your list and check out your products and services. It’s that simple. We work in the background to broadcast your blog and get you more traffic. Of course, we encourage our clients to announce launches, events, promotions and connect with followers. But, what you don’t have to do is promote your blog. How great is that? There are lots of things we don’t do; like reply to followers, write blog posts, or do retweets. There are somethings we think our clients need to do themselves. We specialize in our broadcasting your blog. And we are great at it.

WHY WE DO WHAT WE DO

If you search online for “more blog traffic” or “social media tips” you’ll get a year’s worth of reading and videos. No shortage of advice there. You can also buy courses with excellent advice, created by real pro’s who know their stuff. We take a different approach—we do the work for you. In fact, we work hard to make it as easy as possible to get started with BlogWorks and to create great results for our clients. The goal was a done-for-you, turn-key, no hassle service. >> You don’t have to send us your latest post – we pull it from your site. >> You don’t have to let us know you’ve published a post – we check every week. >> You don’t have to give final approval on what we post – we double check everything. MEASURING ROI One of the most common questions we get asked is: “How will I know it’s working?” Valid question—you’re paying for a service and you should be able to measure the return on that investment. Right? We typically answer with 4 questions of our own:

1. What is your time worth? Using BlogWorks, a typical client will save 3-4 hours per week or 12 – 16 hours per month on social media. That’s huge! That’s time recovered for following up with leads, checking in with clients and working on other projects. Our typical client would value their time at $150-$350 per hour. Do the math and we are recovering some $21,000 to $68,000 of your time annually!
2. What is one new customer worth? We’ve had clients land $9,000 speaking engagements, get book sales, increase blog traffic and sell more courses all from updates posted by the BlogWorks team. What is the lifetime value of one new client for you? Think of BlogWorks as working quietly in the background to promote you and your company.
3. Are you building your online platform? Your online reputation and online audience have value. Sure, Facebook restricts your reach and people don’t read every tweet in their news feed. But a percentage of them do. A bigger online platform means more people see you and your company and more prospects visit your website.
4. What is a bigger list worth? Direct marketing with an email list is powerful. In fact, your email list is an asset worth investing in. Your email list can be used for announcing new products, promotions, surveys, selling product and, of course, inviting readers to a new blog post. Every day BlogWorks is helping you reach new readers, increase blog traffic and attracting more people to your list.

I have been using BlogWorks to double the traffic to my blog and to stay in touch with my followers. THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD It’s a pretty safe bet that the Internet and social media are not going away. It’s also a pretty safe bet that more and more companies are going to try to automate services, like social media publishing tools. That’s not our plan. We believe communication of your brand should never be done by robots. Communication of your brand should never be done by robots. Click To Tweet Sure, we use tools to organize and schedule content, but it’s real people reading your blog, thinking about your message and broadcasting it to social media. That won’t change. And we take our job seriously—we are representing real people and their brands. Maybe it’s time for you to join the BlogWorks family.