Improving Lead Generation Using Your Company Blog

If you’re looking to increase your company’s digital presence and lead generation, one place to spend time auditing is your company’s blog.  Does your blog do a good job of answering questions your buyers have? Are you consistently blogging and optimizing your posts for SEO? Are your titles compelling enough to attract the reader’s attention?

I could list numerous more questions to ask, but in this post I wanted to specifically talk about how your blog should function as a triage for your lead generation efforts by creating momentum with visitors who are likely to buy.

Since the end goal of a business blog (or any customer facing content asset) is to stimulate demand and generate enquiries, here are a few tips to increase conversions:

OFFER RECOMMENDED READING

Like what you’re reading here? At the bottom of this post there are additional resources that are related and relevant to lead generation.

Offering visitors another post on the same page gives them a reason to stay and click around other content. Related post plugins like this can also help with SEO.

OFFER DOWNLOADS

Many marketers spend countless hours/dollars creating outstanding eBook and whitepapers only to use them sporadically in email campaigns. Apply a bit of creativity on your blog and showcase your solutions with an offer to download related content. Offering downloadable content on your blog increases your website’s secondary conversion points, and a great way of generating reconversions.

SOLICIT FEEDBACK

Show that your blog isn’t just one way communication by asking for feedback. Serial Atlanta entrepreneur, David Cummings, does a good job of always ending his blog posts with a question.

Encourage discussions by seeding comments on new blog posts so visitors aren’t shy about being the first one to comment.

Use your site’s analytics to establish which topics people liked the most.

GAIN PERMISSION TO SEND SPECIFIC UPDATES BY EMAIL

Email remains critical to business marketing communications– securing an opted-in email address is a primary goal for most businesses in the process of building a new business pipeline.

Dig a bit deeper and you can build targeted email lists based on specific site content.

Targeting content at niche groups builds trust and moves a minority towards transacting.

AND MOST IMPORTANTLY

Don’t give up! Most blogs fail in the first few months because companies start one with the best of intentions, but then quickly realize it takes time, money, and resources. If you’d like some help identifying your buyer personas and coming up with a content strategy feel reach to reach out to us. We’d love to help.

What other demand generation techniques have you used on your blog?

Related Resources

Why Web Analytics Are Important

How to Drive Traffic to your Website

Maximizing Social Media Through Email

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Why Twitter Sux

I just don’t get Twitter. It provides no real value to me, and it seems like a bunch of noisy people selling themselves.

That’s what I heard from someone in a meeting the other day.

Trying to be politically correct, I smiled and said, “well, if you ever want to learn more, just let me know.” But my inner thoughts were:

Really? It provides NO value to you?? So connecting with hundreds or even thousands of professionals that are potential customers, has NO value to you? How long have you spent trying to “get it” before throwing in the towel?  Aren’t you in sales? Aren’t you always trying to “sell yourself”, so you’re annoyed that everyone else is too?

I’m so glad I didn’t actually say all those things during the meeting.

The truth is, I would agree that, at first, learning the Twitter lingo and the “etiquette” takes some getting use to. Let’s say, a week.

I also think the reason people throw in the towel is they don’t know how to manage their account. All they know is “Follow. Follow. Follow. Tweet. Tweet. Tweet.” No real engagement. Just follow people, tweet out information, then cross their fingers that a lead will appear. Magically.

Come on.

Let’s take some baby steps to get you on the right track. I tell our teams all the time to focus on one “lead-type” at a time. Let’s say you’re looking to connect with Online Community Managers (wink).

I’m taking a risk by sounding like a “self help guru”, but here’s your One-Week Plan for “Optimizing Twitter for Lead Generation.”

Monday: Find Them.

1. Go to sites like Followerwonk.com and search on “Online Community Managers.” You can even narrow the search by location.
2. Create a list within Tweetdeck and name it “Online Community Manager.” Follow all those you find at Followerwonk and put them into that list.
3. Open up that list as a new column within Tweetdeck. There you have a very narrowed conversation stream with only OCMs.

Tuesday & Wednesday:  Sell Them. Not Yourself.

1. Go through your new column of OCMs and look at their bios. Do they have a blog? If so, scan their blogs for interesting posts. Tweet one out and give them credit.
2. Comment on their blogs.
3. Make a comment about one of their tweets. Engage them in conversation. You’re in sales, you know how to start conversations.

Thursday: Give it a rest.

1. Don’t be super eager or “Big Brotherish”, but scan their tweets, and if something truly sticks out, it’s ok to say something.

Friday: LinkedIn.

1. You’ve established communication with your potential leads, now send a “warm invitation” to bring them into your LinkedIn network.

Does Twitter take some time? Yes. Should it engulf your day. Absolutely not.

But now you have numerous new leads and LinkedIn connections that you didn’t have last week. Also, one added benefit, people on Twitter tend to connect with like professionals. So your newly found leads are probably connected with hundreds of others with similar skills.

But, if it has NO real value to you……