A New Blogger Is Born

Land’s End Golf Schools

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A Little History

Stuart Allison is a golf instructor that I first met when we were both working for the John Jacobs Golf Schools in Scottsdale, Arizona. He was a teaching pro with the golf schools division and I was working in the just opened, travel department. Our paths first crossed when I put together a golf trip to Spain in 1992, my second of what was to be called the John Jacobs’ International Pro-Am’s, having the previous year, led a group of John Jacobs’ alumni to New Zealand. Stuart got a team together and came to Spain and we have been friends ever since.

You could tell who the popular instructors were when former students would sign up for these trips just to get a chance to play golf with their swing “guru’s.” Playing lessons with some head to head golf competition in an exotic country like Spain sounded like even more fun than coming to Scottsdale and they raced to sign up. It was an era where the John Jacobs’ golf schools were nearly always at capacity, especially at Camelback Golf Club in Scottsdale where their flagship golf school was located. A lot of the same students were returning with their clubs in hand year after year for the mild winter weather, championship golf and a golf swing tune-up with golf instructors such as Stuart Allison.

I hadn’t seen Stuart for a while, he has been teaching in Oregon, and I only recently caught up with him for a short visit when he came through Payson on his way back to Land’s End Golf School HQ in Scottsdale. Through a mutual friend of ours in Scottsdale he had heard I was starting up a new business here in Rim Country to teach business owners the benefits of blogging and social media interaction. He readily agreed to “suffer” through a day of my blog instruction in exchange for a chipping lesson but it wasn’t long before he upped the ante to lifetime private lessons. He was that impressed!

Actually, he was quite happy to volunteer his time and his business as a “live” demonstration, another blog in progress for Payson Web, showing my prospective customers how they, as business owners, working through Internet companies like Google, are able to empower their business with the marketing muscle it takes to compete in today’s business climate. Up to that point Stuart had been stumped, he was totally confused as to the next steps he should take to promote his golf instruction business online. He knew he had to do something but didn’t know what direction to go in and he was both relieved and delighted to hear me say that I had a solution to his problem - without having to touch his website!

A Blog Is The Voice Of Your Business!

I explained that while he would still have to compensate a webmaster to make changes to his outdated website, why would he? The beauty of having a blog, one that is designed to enforce a company’s brand, utilizing the look and feel of their existing website, a force that will be out there constantly working to represent you, day and night, even while you sleep! But before you get the wrong idea that this is another of those get-rich-on-the-Internet-overnight, insider secrets to internet wealth, or some other phony program to make money online let me assure you of one basic concept that is accepted universally by legitimate bloggers the world over: there is no such program or course that will have you making the kind of money these things claim.

Operating a successful business takes hard work, dedication and a higher standard of work ethic. Business owners and entrepreneurs usually have a bit of a controlling aspect to their personalities which makes blogging for their business the perfect outlet. An online marketing plan which includes a blog is also going to take some time, effort and diligence by you, the owner. It’s all about credibility and if you adopt my methods I can show you how to reach your target markets quickly.

You can do this yourself and save a boatload of money or you can hire me to do it for you. Personally, I prefer to show you how to do it, support you when you have a question and be your hometown Internet marketing go-to guy when you want to take it up a notch.

A Blog Walks Point For A Business Website

The best thing about it is that YOU are in control, but it takes time, hard work, and patience. Its like adding any other feature that enhances your business, it could be a new addition, a bigger machine, a better mouse trap or a blog, you know it’s going to be mean more work for you but you are confident it will pay off.

I have a little secret for you, when you get over the newness of the procedures, you will start having more fun than you ever imagined. Don’t worry if you think you can’t write a lick, this is the voice of your business and as such it carries authority all on it’s own. Write conversationally, just as if the customer was right in front of you.

Your blog is your voice to the online community. It’s the voice of authority, the business owner, the place where the buck stops. Use it to communicate both to and with your customers, interact with them daily if you like, and the best part is - all it costs you is your time. Google supplies you with everything you need for FREE.

And what you don’t get from Google or you need clarification or special instructions you can find here on the Payson Web blog. I will be posting articles on a regular basis that I review for my blogging friends, all of whom are experts at making money online. Making money online may not be your goal as a business blogger but the techniques we talk about for making money online apply directly to marketing your business through a blog. You can always accelerate the program and take it to higher levels later on when the need justifies the expense.

Leave your website as it is or go ahead and make a few minor adjustments if you feel them necessary but it’s my opinion that the days where you had to locate a webmaster to make changes to your site, paying hefty or monthly fees for changes and/or hosting fees, sometimes waiting weeks for adjustments to actually take effect, should be thing of the past. Technology has made this process obsolete and the new ways of online marketing have empowered the individual and made it possible for them to do everything themselves.

A Blog Is A Website Come To Life!

A blog can take a business on an incredible journey of discovery, a lightning fast A ticket ride where no man or woman has gone before - journeying on the virtual highways of the World Wide Web. It’s a maze of electronic roads where the keys to success are awarded to those willing to learn the secrets to navigating them. Your blog is your virtual marquee, reaching out for contacts, networking with other blogs, teaching you how to become a virtual spider, one that is continuously broadening their web to capture more customers, each thread connected to the other, the web growing ever larger.

Your Business Blog Will Set You Apart

When Stuart Allison, golf school owner, returned to his office in the Valley he took with him what we had created together, in just one day, his very own custom designed Google blog. With it came simple instructions on how to manage it himself, insider information provided by a veteran online marketer and pro blogger that would help him promote and rank his blog and a promise from me to answer any questions until he felt comfortable with it.

He also learned about search engine strategies that will show him how to increase page rank and traffic, how to build relationships with others that share his interests. More importantly he now knows how to find out what people are searching for - and writing for them. In addition to all that we created a Twitter account and set it up where the posts from his blog automatically syndicate as Tweets to his Twitter followers, opening up a whole new marketing channel.

I think my friend Stuart was a bit dazzled by the whole process, as a lot of people are when they first experience it, maybe even to the point where they feel overwhelmed. My advice for that is like anything else I advocate and that’s to take one step at a time. Don’t think that you have to be a computer genius to accomplish successful blogging.

I am pretty passionate about it, and I’m told that’s a good thing when you plan on teaching something to someone. And it helps that Stuart is a fairly smart guy (for a golf pro) and caught on pretty quick. He’s going to be my testimonial guy looking in the TV camera saying ” If I can do this…anyone can.”

Become A Pro Blogger In Just One Day!

My Google based training program for new bloggers is easy to understand and you can be set up and blogging away in just a day. Most popular is our one day workshop where I go one on one with the business owner or designated marketing person at a location of their choosing. The lesson plan that you can download for free here on my blog (coming soon!) will also be used as a lesson plan should you desire to hire my services.

The workshop also includes a follow up session to answer any questions and I am always available by phone or email and I will respond to everyone kind enough to write me as soon as I can. I am also available for support questions via email.

I work with a number of different blog platforms, having a number of both Wordpress and Tumblr blogs that I manage. That simply means I can discuss those blog hosting options with you as well should you have a blog platform in mind that you heard about or were referred to. I will also tell you about the difference between a free blog and a paid one by pointing out an old adage; you get what you pay for. When someone gives you something for “free” on the Internet, especially a blog platform, you can be assured they are making out just fine and I can tell you how they are doing it, just so you understand the process.

My friend Stuart Allison is a golf instructor by trade but owning a small business such as a golf school forces him to think like a businessman and that means wearing a lot of hats. His livelihood is dependent on the success of his marketing efforts and he doesn’t have a lot of money to spend on advertising nor is he able to hire outsiders to do it for him. He is a hands-on guy who is not afraid to roll up his sleeves and dive into something new, he just needs someone to show him the way, how a blog working in tandem with social media can bring him more opportunities for sales. Demonstrate how a person with average writing and computer skills can make it as a blogger.

Years ago, recognizing the necessity of a website, he had a friend build him one. Stuart was pretty far ahead of the curve even then, designing a brand of his own, logo and all. But after that, it just sat there, not doing much of anything. He was told nothing about keyword optimization, registering his site with directories, how to do link swaps, etc. It didn’t take him much time, working with me, to discover what he could do for his business by adding a blog that compliments his website, basically creating a “voice” for it. With each part of the plan we devised for him his eyes just kept getting bigger and bigger, and you could almost hear the wheels turning over the possibilities.

Don’t Be A Victim Of Your Own Website

His website had been just sitting there gathering cobwebs and he knew it was time to do something more pro-active. As we have seen in too many instances lately Stuart was not alone in his frustrated attempts to avoid becoming a victim of the website trap. Years ago businesses felt the pressure for an online presence, everyone was doing it, consumers expected them and companies went out and tried to find people they could trust to build them. They filled them up with content, listed contact info, maybe a profile of the owner’s background, then abandoned the project for something better while their client sat back waiting for the phones to ring off the hook with people clambering for their services. It became a status symbol, sort of a “build it and they will come” mentality was born.

Unfortunately some of these websites were built by people with the most convincing sales pitch. Very few people understood that once their website was built and launched that was only half the battle, heck, I was one of them! Webmasters could build you a website but only a few of them could tell you how to market it. Websites sat there getting ignored, people got the feeling they were mis-led when the phones didn’t ring and they were out thousands of dollars. Some didn’t even know where their site was hosted or if they even owned their own domains!

Do we advocate not having a website? Not necessarily, but a blog can be just as effective as a website, a whole lot cheaper and a lot easier to manage. What we do advocate is control to the business owner. Only then do they know the job is being done their way and by their time-frame. It’s just beautiful how it all works, and pure Blogetry is it’s name.

We can demonstrate blogging techniques to you while answering such questions as:  how do I get my site noticed and indexed by the search engines? how do you build page rank, how do you get more traffic, how do you deal with advertising, affiliate programs or other ways to make money online with blogs. Should I look at PPC (pay per click) advertising for my business and if so, how do I target potential customers. What comprises search engine marketing, and the big question, how much will it cost me?

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