Businesses that Blog Generate More Leads

If you’re still not convinced about the value a blog can bring to your business, check out HubSpot’s recent study of 1,400 customers’ inbound marketing activities: The State of Inbound Lead Generation (free download).

The report reveals that businesses that blog regularly generate more leads than those that don’t blog.

The number of posts you’ve published also has a direct effect on lead generation with fewer than 10 posts having no tangible effect whatsoever; in fact, you might as well not even bother blogging at all!

The tipping point seems to be 24+ articles published for leads to start coming in. And, unsurprisingly, the more articles you publish, the more leads seem to come along.

Why Blogs Are Good for Lead Generation

The reason blogs work better than “ordinary” websites is partly because they help your business increase the number of pages it has indexed in Google. With more pages indexed, and more keywords ranking in Google, you’re more likely to be found.

Blogs are also typically very good at Search Engine Optimization (SEO) straight out of the box, although there are things you can to do improve them even more.

Finally, blogs can be a great way of building and sustaining relationships with visitors to your site – although Facebook Pages seem to be increasingly popular places for this now.

Beware Blogging with Abandon

Although you might be tempted to rush out and start blogging right away on the basis of the HubSpot report, it’s important to bear in mind a few things to begin with:

1. www.yourdomain.com
Host your blog yourself. Don’t run a business blog on one of the free services like www.wordpress.com or blogger.com. You want all the google juice for yourself! It’s even better if your blog name / domain name includes your keyword: E.g. A dog trainer’s dream domain would be www.dogtrainer.com because people look for “dog trainer” in Google.

2. Design Matters
Although you don’t have to spend masses of money on getting a custom design, the more professional it looks the better. Appearances count, especially in B2B business blogging. Don’t just take my word for it.

3. Learn something about Keywords
Tools like Market Samurai will help you easily – and relatively inexpensively– identify keywords that you can target. When someone sits down to search Google for a product or service you want them to find your website. A combination of a search engine optimised blog, blog post and keyword strategy will increase your lead generation.

4. Include Clear Call-to-Actions in your design
If you want leads to call you for a free quote, make sure there’s a clear, striking call-to-action on your blog, above the fold. Don’t go overboard with too many. It’s not a case of Overkill-to-action; but make sure you don’t leave your visitor wondering what to do.

5. Update Your Business Blog Regularly
Once your blog is up you need to provide regular quality content in a variety of forms: blog posts, vlogs, podcasts. Posting once or twice a week to your business blog every couple of weeks is not going to help you rank highly in Google. The more often a blog is updated you’re not just pleasing readers, you’re encouraging the search engines to come around to index you. Each post you publish is your way of telling Google that your site is active and up-to-date.

6. Assign Adequate Resources to Your Blog.
Yes, blogging takes time and maintenance. You can’t just go and pluck a post or three of the tree. One option is to assign the business blog to an employee or group of employees who can create new online content. Another option is to outsource your business blogs to professional copywriters and content marketers. No matter what, it’s a great idea to plan blog posts in advance.

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