MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

Ben Hunt blogged and blogged and blogged and out of his pas­sion emerged a boom­ing busi­ness, and how did it hap­pen? I hear you ask … com­pletely accidentally!

A blog­ging strat­egy can kick your com­peti­tors in the nuts and leave them gasp­ing for air while you reap the rewards.

Let’s let Ben tell his story …

“I’ve used a sim­i­lar blog­ging strat­egy, but totally acci­den­tally! And I can vouch that it works.“

 

His Strat­egy

I have a small web design & con­sult­ing busi­ness in the UK, called Scratch­me­dia. I started writ­ing stuff I knew about web design & usabil­ity on a site called “Web Design from Scratch” about 3.5 years ago. I was just writ­ing stuff that I’d learned but hadn’t ever found in books on web design, and that I thought peo­ple would find inter­est­ing and useful.

Over 6 months, I wrote dozens of free arti­cles and tuto­ri­als, and just let peo­ple find it.

Now, the site is vis­ited by up to 9,000 peo­ple per day. I think they come because they find the con­tent applic­a­ble and fresh. Recently, I have started writ­ing arti­cles specif­i­cally that I think peo­ple will link to, but not always. I just write what comes nat­u­rally, and because the site has a strong per­son­al­ity, it strikes a chord with folk, I guess.

The great thing is …

• Web Design from Scratch is now my company’s only mar­ket­ing channel.
• Pretty much all our work now comes to us through this site. We spend noth­ing on sales or mar­ket­ing, other than the host­ing costs and time to man­age the site.
• It has been so pop­u­lar that we have had to take steps to reduce the amount of email traf­fic we get.

I didn’t know this would be the out­come when I started (which is maybe one of the rea­sons why it turned out so well!)

 

The keys to suc­cess, from Ben’s experience.

1) Write unique con­tent (i.e. write hon­estly and openly, let your per­son­al­ity come out)

2) Be spe­cific: choose your niche and own it.

4) Don’t hold back, out of fear that if you write every­thing you know, peo­ple will take it and run!

That last point is absolutely cru­cial! I think of it like this:

1) Peo­ple who are going to read your wis­dom and apply it to their own sit­u­a­tion were never going to hire you in the first place.

2) Peo­ple who are specif­i­cally look­ing for an expert in your field are more likely to find you through your blog/site. And they’ll instinc­tively trust you if you talk plainly about your expe­ri­ences… much more so than if you stood there and ‘mar­ket­ed’ at them.

3) Another group of peo­ple may not need a con­sul­tant right now, but if they read your stuff and love it, come the time that they *do* realise they need to bring in an expert, who’s going to be the first guy that pops into their head? Exactly!

Here at Mind Val­ley Labs we’d like to thank Ben for shar­ing such a great story with us. You should take some time out to see the results of Ben’s story and just see how he did it. His blog is a com­pelling read!

• Web Design From Scratch

So how should you go about this great blog­ging strat­egy? We dis­cussed using Blogs as a source of com­pet­i­tive advan­tage to crush your com­peti­tors in a pre­vi­ous post, why not read Using Blogs as a Source of Com­pet­i­tive Advan­tage over your Ecom­merce Rivals.

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About the Author

Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype. Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.

Check out other posts by Mike Reining

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