Blogging is critical for any organization that wants to improve sales. However, it is important to understand how blogs affect sales and what to expect from business blogging.
1. Over time, good blogging will result in people seeing you as an expert. You will get calls from people that found you on the web and because you were ranked highly for the team they searched on, they assume you are THE expert.
2. Long tail keywords will keep generating more and more traffic to your site. The more you write the more these keywords produce traffic. It is simple mathematics. The more combinations of words you have on your site the greater the number of search terms you will rank for.
3. SEO – Search Engine Optimization is time consuming and difficult to do well for most people. However, great information posted weekly in a WordPress blog with SEO plugins set up will produce nearly everything you need to search engine optimization. The only factors outside of blogging are keyword research and cultivating backlinks from credible sources. But good articles will even do that automatically sometimes.
4. Blogging is foundational. It gives you better tools to promote yourself in other channels, such as social media and email marketing. Without fresh content to point to, what are you going to be able to promote that is new in those channels?
5. Blogging is a relationship tool. Consider a prospective business partner where you both have blogs. You can do interviews with each other and both benefit from sharing the audience and the power in the linking. New targeted visitors increase sales.
6. Add a call to action on your blog and your lead generation will go through the roof. Often this is a free report people can download in exchange for an email address. There is little point of having a blog without having a great call to action to capture reader info and funnel visitors into your sales process.
7. The recognition you build up from blogging regularly also contributes to other opportunities like speaking, co-authoring books and press opportunities.
However, rarely does just posting info about something you want to sell really help. Blogging is a strategy that will help you more in the marketing sense verses the direct sales sense. Also, there is nothing magical about the technology of a blog. The quality of the content is what works the magic, not the technology serving it up to the world.
If you like the idea of blogging but you are realistic about your chances of success on your own (most people give up too quickly) then contact Buzzoodle and lets put together a blogging for sales and lead generation program for you.