Evan Carmichael advises a wellness entrepreneur on three low-cost ways to build online presence: pitch guest posts to health blogs with backlinks, use PRLeads ($99/month) to reach journalists as an expert source, and answer audience questions across forums and social media to establish authority.
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Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. Today I'm going to answer a question from one of my newsletter readers, Magdalena, who wrote in about trying to figure out how to market herself better online. So she wrote in saying, "Hi Evan, I'm so grateful for having the opportunity to get this powerful business connection. I moved to Florida less than 3 years ago. I've been in health and wellness for over 18 years and I've had my own business for 16 I work as a massage therapist and wellness practitioner and a wholeness, holistic coach. I want to take my business to a whole new level. I've started a new blog. My biggest challenge is marketing my business and myself and getting known on the platform. Just thinking about this idea and taking the next step can be overwhelming. Thank you for your willingness to help others in business. Best wishes, Magdalena. So thanks for the question. Congrats on having the courage to go out and start something new. It is a big challenge, especially if you're not technically savvy. I know it can be hard to set up online and get a blog going, and it can feel very overwhelming. So, uh, don't freak out. There are easy ways to kind of take small steps to get yourself going. If you are using a platform like WordPress, it can be really easy to post and make updates and not feel like you're always at the mercy of somebody who knows a lot more from the technology side of point of view. But to answer your question on how to get more well-known, a couple of ideas for you. The first, I would try to look at guest blogging. So this is a really common way to get yourself more well-known. You basically call up or email or get in touch with other people who have blogs who are in your industry, so other people who are talking about health and wellness or holistic care, and offer to write them a guest post. And it helps to have a couple topics in mind or give them some samples or show them some of your really best, really good posts on your own site. And then from there, offer to write a great post for them and then link back to your site. So the idea here is you're making partnerships with people who already have an audience that you can connect with and then have them help promote you as well, and you can get new readers and then get them hopefully sign up to subscribe to your blog as well. So that's a great way to get started, and usually blog owners are open to the idea of having guest posting just because, especially as they've had a blog for a while, it can be hard to keep content current, right? It's hard to come up with ideas all the time. So having people who are or creating quality content, not just promotional pieces, but really good stuff, can be a big boost to help them out as well. So that could be a, a good short-term relationship, but also long-term. You can contribute on an ongoing basis as well to help drive traffic and awareness back to your site. The second thing I would do is try to get some media. So I use a service called PRLeads. There are other free services you can use as well, or you can just try to find local reporters or online reporters who cover your space. Basically, the idea here is you've done this for 16 years or 18 years, you know what you're doing, right? It's not like you're just starting something out from scratch. Ideally, as an entrepreneur, you are an expert in your field, right? Why are people gonna buy your product or service? It's because you know what you're talking about. So a great way to get more exposure is to be seen as that expert for the media. So you want to get on the radar of reporters who are covering your space. Now, I said I use PR Leap, basically what that is, is a service, it's $99 a month. I have no affiliation with them other than I'm a happy customer. And you get leads from reporters who are looking for experts for stories. It's a great opportunity to get into media, got me into the New York Times and Forbes and a whole bunch of other places. But short of that, you can also create your own list and you can try to find people who are covering these kinds of topics and email them on a regular basis with new story ideas or comment on stories they've already put up. And the idea here is you want to showcase yourself as the expert so the next time they have a story, they're gonna come and talk to you. With reporters, with any story that they create, they always want to have an expert opinion with it, right? So why can't that expert be you? If you are a credible expert and you know what you're talking about, you're actually making the reporters' lives easier. So you really want to make sure you're targeting in on a set of reporters who really focus on your industry and get them to know you. That's the second one. First is guest blog and the second is get media. The third thing I would do is try to start answering people's questions. Just like I make these YouTube videos, people ask me questions and I start answering them. These are questions from my own community, so you are on my newsletter list and asking the questions, so I responded. If you don't have a community yet, the best questions to answer are the ones around the people who are attached to you, but if you don't have that community yet, a great way to build it is to go out and start answering people's questions who haven't heard of you before. So I would do some research on Twitter, for example. I'd look at forums that are related to this. I'd look at YouTube comments, see what questions people are asking, and then create a response for them. And it could be in the form of a blog post on your site. It could be in the form of a video post like this if you're comfortable in front of the camera. You could do a podcast. You could do a screencast. Whatever it is, you're basically answering somebody's question. If somebody has that same question, you're gonna have lots of other people who have the question as well. And so it shows that you're responsive, that you know what you're talking about, about, hopefully you, you know, have some good answers for them. And then ideally, as you start building this series up, you're going to be able to get people asking questions directly to you. So instead of just answering a random question on Twitter or on a forum that you see, people are going to start asking you questions and you get seen as that authority figure and people are going to keep coming back and asking more and more questions. So it's a great way to build up. If you're writing a blog, it could be, you know, every Friday it's #AskMagdalena and you're answering somebody's question. And at the start, again, it's somebody else's community, but as hopefully you build up your presence online, you're able to talk to your own people, or it could also be from your offline base, so people who are your current customers. You can say, "Here are some frequently asked questions that I get asked," and you can create a post around it, or a video, or a podcast, whatever it is. So hopefully that helps. I know it can be a struggle, and it can seem very overwhelming at the start to get this thing launched. Remember to take baby steps, do something every day to move it forward, and then it suddenly becomes less scary. When it's this huge, big project, it's easy to get overwhelmed and, and have that fear. But as you start getting into something, even though it's brand new, it becomes easier and easier the more you do it. So just get started. Again, I'd look at trying to do guest blogging, try to get in with the media, and also try to answer people's questions from different communities online. So thanks for watching, guys. If you like the video, please give it a thumbs up. It makes me want to do more of these videos for you. And if you have a question about how to get noticed online or different question about your business, feel free to leave it in the comment section below. I always try to read those and try to comment back as much as I can. So thank you, and we'll see you on the next episode.
