By: Jacob Hanson & Rachel Hansen
Okay, admit it. Most of us have tried—or at least considered trying—online dating at some point in our lives. Regardless of whether you have or have not, we can all agree that the end goal of dating is to find someone that we are compatible with.
Ideally, this someone will share our interests, complement us as individuals, and push us to be better human beings. This element of compatibility is also what we should be searching for when it comes to attracting the right customer to our business. In fact, there are a lot of similarities between “marketing yourself“ to potential partners and marketing your solution(s) to potential customers.
Below are five ways that we as bloggers can learn from online dating to create a killer blog that attracts all the right people.
- Be Authentic: Be real. Be you. Let people see the human behind the screen. Your blog may be the single most powerful tool in your tool box to consistently increase web traffic, so use it to let your subscribers see what your company culture is like. Help them understand why you do what you do, and how you can help them.
Both blog readers and online daters are looking for a solution to their current challenge (for online daters this problem is “being single”). While daters may be looking for a casual fling, odds are your readers are looking for something long(er)-term. They are looking to you for advice, encouragement, something to relate to, and yes, solutions to their challenges.
Don’t let fear of rejection keep you from being honest about who you are and what you can offer. If you aren’t being authentic in your blog—or your online dating profile, for that matter—the reader will eventually find out. It’s okay if you put yourself out there and get rejected. After all, you’re not trying to attract just anyone to your blog—only people who are really and truly a good match for you and your business.
- Be Consistent: Dating sites will tell you when was the last time someone logged on, if are they currently online, when they last updated their profile, etc. If you are actively looking for your Mr. or Mrs. Right, will you not seek out those that are still active on the site? If someone hasn’t logged on in a few months, you can safely assume that they have found someone else, or even lost interest in the site. In the same way, a dating site recognizes when you are no longer active and will stop recommending your profile to other users.
Google also does this with blogs. They are regularly crawling your site to ensure that you are active, consistent, and authoritative in order to rank your content for their searchers. If Google recognizes that one or more of these elements are off, it will affect your rankings in search results.
Educators reading your blog can see how consistent you are by looking through your blog history. They can see how often you post, whether or not you are talking about new and engaging topics, and if your posts are relevant to their practice and problems. Educators and administrators don’t have time to waste. They need to see that your content will be there to support them regularly, not only when it’s convenient for you.
- Be Proactive: Seek out ways to reach potential readers (or dating prospects)! Would you create an online dating profile and then just wait for Mr. or Mrs. right to find you? It does happen, but not often. Logging in to your dating service and actively seeking out those who share your interests will dramatically increase your chances of crossing paths with potential partners.
The same principal applies to blogs. Creating posts that are optimized for SEO increases your chances of being found, but you are putting a great deal of hope in the fact that your Mr. or Mrs. Right is actively searching for you. It behooves you to figure out where educators and decision-makers get their news and information in order to meet them where they are. Are there specific social channels they’re active on? Mediums through which they prefer to receive content? Leverage those channels to share your content and invite more potential customers into your world.
- Make Time to Reflect: If your online dating tactics are not attracting the desired quantity—or quality—of desirable suitors, you may start to analyze what the issue might be. Is it something about my profile? Have I shared too much or not enough? Did I upload the right pictures? Do I have the right interests flagged? Am I not engaging enough in my proactive outreach? What are people seeing, or not seeing, when they read my profile?
We as bloggers and marketers should do the same. If we are not attracting the right subscribers, or those subscribers are not converting to leads through our blog, then we need to ask ourselves, what isn’t right? Oftentimes we fail to take the buyer’s perspective into account when writing a post. Put yourself in their shoes. What is valuable to them? What do they need to see or read to become curious enough to investigate you further?
- Take Advantage of Technology: Regardless of your experience with online dating, we can all agree that it has become increasingly personalized. Dating websites have built-in algorithms to recognize similarities between profiles and make educated guesses about who may be compatible with whom. As a marketer, you can use similar tools, like marketing automation platforms and Google Analytics, to gain incredible insights into what your prospects need, allowing you to truly personalize their experience with your brand.
Not only will these points help you attract the best potential readers to your blog, but maybe they’ll even land you a date!
Thanks for sharing!
