How Business Blogs Generate More Leads and Sales Opportunities
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In a 2015 study by Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs, researchers found that 80 percent of marketing professionals treat business blogs as part of their content marketing plans.
In an earlier but highly related survey in 2013, HubSpot found that businesses with 51 to 100 pages on their company website generate 48 percent more web traffic compared to company websites with 50 pages or less.
Companies can easily reach that 51-page and beyond threshold by consistently blogging for less than 365 days. The study also found that businesses who publish blog posts once or twice a month generate 70 percent more leads compared to companies without blogs on their website.
Business blogging has become an integral tool in a marketer’s arsenal, but how do blogs actually generate leads and sales opportunities? Here’s how.
How Business Blog Generate Leads
As every company website today has a blog, here are some of the ways business blogs generate leads and sales opportunities for the company.
Blog titles can be optimized for search.
More often than not, people come across your website through your blog page. It could be from an evergreen post, or a promotional blog went viral. The fact is that blog posts drive traffic to your website.
It’s like fishing. You need to know what your customers are looking for, blog about them, and make sure the keywords are included in the blog titles.
Offer great content with multiple subscription options.
Great, timely, and consistent content ensure that people visit your business blog and, in turn, your website regularly. With the advent of social media, make sure that your offer content subscription through various channels and not just through newsletters or RSS.
A recent study found that 62 percent of American adults get their news through social media. Among them, 18 percent check their feed for news on various topics.
Since people are searching for content via social media, make sure you are highly visible on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and other social networking sites where your leads are.
Promote downloadable content in the sidebar.
Forget widgets like categories and tags. Instead, dedicate your business blog’s sidebars to downloadable content offers to help generate sales. In the sidebars, you can add buttons for gated offers such as videos, podcasts, whitepapers, and even recorded webinars.
Create blog posts for gated, long-form content.
Hook your readers by providing excerpts for long-form, gated materials such as whitepapers. You can also create easy-to-read blog posts about them to generate leads. Make sure to add a call-to-action at the end of your blog posts to direct the readers to the gated content.
Business Blogging Tips
Blogging is not just great in keeping your website relevant and updated, it also helps the business generate leads and sales opportunities through the internet. If you’re new to business blogging, here are some tips to make it work.
Position yourself as an industry expert.
Ever wonder why some blogs invite bloggers to write on their website? It’s because they are experts in their own fields.
For instance, a makeup brand can invite beauty or makeup bloggers to test their products and write about it on their company blog. Similarly, a restaurant can invite food bloggers to taste their menu and write a review.
When you blog, you instantly become an expert on your own. Becoming an industry expert allows you to build a following through high-quality content.
Always bring value to your customer’s lives.
Piquing your lead’s curiosity is just one thing, but adding value to their lives through blog posts is another. To build a following on the internet, you have to be a value creator.
If you can’t commit, don’t start.
Blogging only works when you commit to it. Building an audience needs time and requires constant publication of good content. If you can’t commit to an editorial calendar, blogging will not help your business generate any leads or create sales opportunities.
Blogging requires patience.
Successful business blogging is not an overnight sensation. A good rule to follow is to blog consistently and publish quality content for two months and see what happens.
Chances are, nobody will read what you post in the first few weeks, even in the first month. Thus, you should persist.
Readership can’t be bought as well. You just need to focus on publishing quality content and use social media to spread it.
Use the online community to network.
It’s not enough that you write blogs, as you need to let people know that you are writing them too. Share them on social media especially on Facebook and Twitter, and use LinkedIn to network and position yourself as an industry expert.
Repeat these steps until it becomes second nature, and you’ve built an audience.
Know what your readers what.
If you’re blogging for a business, make sure that you know who you are writing for, who your target leads are, and who will benefit the most from what you write.
If you know what your readers want, the easier for you to plot your blogs posts in your editorial calendar. A good rule to follow is to solve your reader’s problems. This way, you not only pique their interest, but you add value to their lives as well.
