Business Blogging ROI

Measuring your Business Blogging ROI  is much like measuring the ROI on your business referral efforts.

You give out business referrals, you get business referrals back, and some of those turn into great leads.

With blogging, you link out to people and some people will link into your business blog.  This then results in more traffic, more people on your email list and eventually more sales.

Much like referrals, your business blogging ROI may not be easy to measure because it could take months for that link to actually generate business for you.

What things can you meansure to know if business blogging is working for you?

• Lead Generation
• Inbound Links
• Blog Comments
• Email Subscribers
• RSS Subscribers
• Twitter Followers

Business Blogs are also excellent for SEO with Blogs.  This can be measured by your SERP Ranking in Google for your blog and your organic search traffic.

Keep the metrics simple and understand which numbers actually lead to more money for your business.  While measuring your business blogging ROI may not be an exact science, you can become closer than you thought.

The Business Referral – When other people market you

It is great if people market you. One way is when they talk about you / refer to you, but what I am talking about is real, intentional marketing. If you can become part of something that people care about, then they will actively market you and you will just soak up the benefit.

The key for doing this is to help and participate in a win-win relationship. Here are some ideas for example:

• Help write a book – The author promotes the book and people read about you in the book.
• Guest write an article or post on someone’s blog or website.
• Promote someone else via a testimonial, and they will frequently point to your testimonial or blog post to enhance their image.
• Free eBook or white paper – as part of a give away on another website.
• Speaking – You are the speaker. The event coordinator is out promoting the event and the speakers.
• Offer a service that enhances someone else’s product or service. They will upsell you to get a sale themselves. (For example, we are frequently part of other marketer’s proposals just for the Buzz Marketing aspect, and those marketing people always win the work.)

These are just some of the ways that you can leverage other people’s marketing efforts to get more visibility for yourself. If there is one common thread, it is the importance of a win/win relationship where you are providing value to someone that they can pass on.

Winning Back Advocates

I know someone I like really well that has her own business. She is good at what she does and was priced so well that it was easy to refer business to her. Unfortunately, she got so busy and she did not follow up on her employee’s work, that things started to fall through the cracks and I started hearing a lot of negative buzz about her.

Luckily, she did not hurt my reputation too much with the people I sent her way. Of course, I stopped referring people to her.

That got me thinking though. What would it take for her to win me back as an advocate?

• Positive Word of Mouth from multiple people.
• Clear successes that are above and beyond what I think her every day job is.
• A solid understanding of how she has improved her business processes.
• A Business Referral to me.
• Being sure she delivers and follows up on anything she promises.
• Not to give me any BS. Tell me what the problems were and how you fixed them.

Winning back an advocate is much harder than winning them in the first place. Even though you may be good at what you do, if you are not good at running a company and managing expectations it can lead to wide spread dissatisfaction.