How To Get Sales Leads From Your Blog
Generating Sales Leads From A Blog
It's easy to start a business blog full of enthusiasm then run out of steam after a few months. How many websites do you see with 'Blog' in the navigation and when you click on the page it either has some very old information or quite often a 'Coming Soon' message!
With a few sound ideas and a plan in place and you'll have plenty of ideas to write about - plus your visitors will enjoy sharing your posts too and increase your internet presence and selling opportunity.
Getting Sales Leads Through Your Business Blog
Your business blog should be an extension of your company’s website. Preferably it should be sited as a sub-domain of that website, rather than a separate entity with its own domain. Keeping these two sites linked will have a positive effect on your website when you receive inbound links to your blog.
One of the main reasons blogs don’t get the recognition they should is through neglect. In the beginning the blog owner is full of enthusiasm for his topic and perhaps issues blog posts three times a week. After several months he runs out of steam. He struggles to find topics to write about. He doesn’t promote the blog on a regular basis. If you haven't the time then it would be very worthwhile hiring and expert internet marketing company who can take the stress out of business blogging by setting up, maintaining and promoting your blog for you if you wish.
If you’ve ever landed on a blog that hasn’t been updated for several months, what did that make you feel about the business behind it? Less than enthusiastic I’m willing to bet. Having a neglected blog is worse than having no blog at all.
Okay, so now you’re committed to creating a blog for your business and keeping it updated regularly (or having one of the many online internet marketing companies do it for you) – so what to write about?
There’s just one rule here: Write about what your customers want to read about. Keep this in mind and you’ll never be short on ideas.
To get started ask yourself, what are the top 10 problems my customers want solved? Put another way, what are the top 10 things my customers are interested in? You have your starting point.
How long should my posts be?
Ideally between 400-700 words, but don’t pad a post with waffle just to achieve the desired word quota. At the other end of the scale you do come across blog posts that are 1500 words long. And while that’s okay too, it might be best to break your topic down into three ‘bite-sized’ chunks for ease of reading.
How important is your headline?
Very. Many ‘professional’ bloggers will tell you that they spend more time ‘penning a killer headline’ than they do on creating the rest of the post!
Why is it so important?
In a nutshell, your post title is akin to your website page title. As well as giving you an opportunity to rank for your main keywords, your blog post title is your pitch to your human readers. It should say the equivalent of ‘click on me.’ Your blog post title can charm, can intrigue, can pose a question, can create controversy – but it must get those clicks.
Embed a ‘call to action’
Does your website have a dedicated ‘squeeze page’ or landing page where you collect names and email addresses for your list? Great. Then why not use the space beneath your posts to encourage your readers to go sign up for whatever you’re giving away.
Add social proof
Google looks for ‘social proof’ that your website provides useful content, so make sure you include social media buttons that your followers can use to share your blog posts with their friends or networks on Facebook and Twitter. There are many excellent internet marketing companies online who can help you with every aspect of creating a successful and profitable blog.
The key to successful blogging is simply providing fresh and relevant content that will keep your visitors engaged. So much so that they will return to your blog on a regular basis . . . and share your content with their friends.
