The benefits of blogging are proven: it’s the most effective way to attract prospects.

According to a recent study, companies that blog earn 55% more leads than companies that don’t. Anyone who has a blog is constantly looking for more ways to get people to read it. A lot of bloggers already know the basics: keyword usage, killer titles, short paragraphs with catchy headers, homepage teasers, smart usage of graphics, etc. All of those practices are on target. But the truth is, they won’t help you attract prospective clients if you don’t…

Write compelling content!

If your content isn’t interesting, then all the tactical execution in the world won’t save it. The goal is to inspire people to give you a piece of the most valuable resource they have –their time. When you choose to spend your time reading an article, you consciously make the decision to engage in that activity over anything else you could be doing at that moment.

People have far more information sources readily available to them now than ever before, which means their time is that much more in demand. The fact that they’re choosing to spend any amount of it on you is a significant gesture of trust. That’s why people call it spending time. When people trust you with their time it brings them one step closer to trusting you, and the services you provide.

So how do I write compelling content?

Take a page from the playbook of cutting-edge bloggers in the journalism field. Starting out, they knew that they could never compete with the newspaper conglomerates by just reporting the news. There’s no shortage of options for readers to get the basics. What those bloggers had to do to make a name for themselves was to provide their own unique perspective on what was happening, and give their readers analysis that they couldn’t get anywhere else. Now it’s the newspaper industry that’s struggling for readership, even though most of them have an online presence, while bloggers are thriving.

Take the sports section of the Boston Globe for example. In the 1970s Peter Gammons’ coverage of the Red Sox sounded more like poetry and Bob Ryan’s reporting on the Celtics was so extensive it almost seemed like he was on the team. There was simply nowhere else that any Boston sports fan would consider turning to get the latest news about their favorite teams. Thus the Globe’s sports section became hallowed ground, an institution in itself.

So what changed?

Bloggers who were passionate about Boston sports took to their blogs to offer interesting alternative analyses. They used fresh statistics and perspectives that the Globe’s writers had never considered to provide a unique take on the games. They made readers look at the same games in a whole new way. As a result of this type of phenomenon affecting all sections of the paper, the Globe has taken a major hit to readership. Today, when something big and truly fascinating is going on with any of the Boston sports teams, it’s often an online reporter who has the scoop before the Globe’s beat writers know anything about it. It’s the same in other news categories, and…

It’s the same in your industry.

Everyone might be discussing the same old topics. But if you give people a perspective that they’ve never considered before, they’ll want to hear your take on it over anyone else’s. They don’t want to come to your blog to read the exact same things that everyone else is saying; they want to read something that they can’t read anywhere else. Or else why spend their valuable time? If you provide your prospective clients with compelling content, they’ll be eager to carve time out of their busy schedules to read what you have to say. And that will bring them one step closer to just as eagerly accepting an offer for your services.