Blogging, we’ve all got to do it right? it’s good for SEO isn’t it? And we’ve all got to become experts and build up a following..
Well maybe. Getting opinions from digital marketeers is a bit like getting opinions from economists; they all have them, they all tell you they’re right, many will disagree with each other, but only time proves who is right and who is wrong.
The aim of this article is to convey as a professional and successful digital marketer what I know works within the context of generating leads for businesses, which is what most business websites seek to achieve,. This article is not about a distillation of SEO techniques or cutting edge Google secrets, it is plainly and simply about applying basic marketing principles to the web that have always worked since the birth of Google and are likely to continue working into the foreseeable future.
Why Blog?
There are two principle reasons to blog in the commercial sphere:
- As a passion to tell the world about what you think and to build a following. The most successful are very influential and commercially successful
- to generate leads for your business
This blog is to outline the simple steps to achieve the second approach successfully. In the real-world, none of us who run a business have the time to be a “thought leader” and create a massive following so you have to make every blog post count.
My philosophy here is simply:
- All information is useful, and if it’s useful to you it’s useful to someone else.
- So show that someone else that you have that useful knowledge and can help them; don’t keep it to yourself blog it.
- Re-use content; If you are creating content that has value make a case study/blog/newsletter/social comment and point back to your site.
And finally re-use all the information you have no matter how small.
Working example of a lead generating blog post
I’ve just created a blog post on Nvisage about being a Joomla development company. This has come out of a phone call with a prospect yesterday. They called because they had a need for a Joomla development agency and they found us using Google. They also mentioned how hard it was to find a good Joomla agency as most Google results were one man bands which they didn’t want.
So I created a blog post with this prospect in mind, because where there is one lead there are more who want the same. This is a key facet of blogging for leads, think who you are are talking to and write the blog post for them. Be specific for two reasons:
Although there are fewer people searching for specific phrases
- it is easier to get good search ranks for specific phrases and articles
- people looking for specific phrases know what they want and why and are closer to making a buying decision
So help them…
My simple rules for effective lead generating blog posts are:
a) identify quickly what the end user is looking for and establish your expertise in that space
b) prove you can back up what you are saying with a relevant case study
c) give a reason for the reader to get in touch
d) give them a call to action so they can now do something.
This process works for me, and it will work for you. I win business exactly where I want to with this approach; in my target sector and for projects i want my business to do.
Of course there are improvements and other things you can do to maximise results further but this is where you need to give us a call and have a friendly chat about our successful digital marketing and conversion services.
If you would like your website to generate more leads for your business just give us a call on 01273 972 992