People that dive into social media in an attempt to sell often end up wasting their time.

Selling in most social media platforms is difficult and does not typically produce great results in the literal sense.

However, social media is a great platform for you to get people interested in your product, company or in you personally.  That can lead to them investigating you more, signing up for something on your website and that then is a lead for you.

Social media works best as a way to be interesting and create opportunities for people to look deeper into who you are – and maybe buy your stuff.

How do you write for a business blog?

Business Blog Writing is not that much different from normal blog writing.

If your business hopes to build on relationships and the personalities of the employees, then your business blog should be written with the same flavor of a more personal blog.

Probably the biggest difference about writing for a business blog is that the business blog should have goals.  These business blog goals are known to the writers of the blog, but are not obvious to the casual reader.

Some of your business blog goals are:

1. Lead Generation – By attracting the right kind of people from search engines, you can greatly increase your warm leads without selling in the blog article.
2. Keyword Ranking – Skilled business blog writing can help you capture more top spots for high value keywords.
3. List building – Not just email anymore.  If you do a good job with your business blog writing, you can grow your lists on various platforms, such as twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and your email list.
4. Website Visitors – Your business blog may be set up at a completely different site, which can drive visitors over to your main business website.

So while the tone and personal aspect of the business blog writing may not change, in the back of the mind of each writer should be the goals of the site and the outcome you desire, without coming across like a salesman.

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.

Why does Corporate Blog Software improve your SEO?

The blog software itself should greatly enhance the search engine optimization because corporate blogging software should only have a few goals – one being search results and another being lead generation.

But how well your corporate blog software improves your results also depends on the research and implimentation of the site.   Here are some things that you should consider when setting up a corporate blog.

1. Keyword research – are you targeting keywords that have traffic but do not have too much competition?
2. Optimization – does your corporate blog software automatically optimize based on your keyword targets and does it keep content fresh?
3. Multi-author – Does your corporate blog have the ability to allow many people to do Blog Writing?
4. Is the corporate blog an Inbound Marketing engine that will get you a good return on your investment?

These are just some of the things you should consider to enhance the SEO with Blogs as well as produce actual corporate sales and lead goals.

How do you generate targeted sales and leads?

Of course, there are many lead generation tools and strategies.  Here is an assessment of how to assess any tool or strategy to get more sales or leads.

Sales Lead Tool Musts

1. Be able to target your target market
2. Must be a predictable system that can be measured
3. Must demonstrate a ROI that justifies its expense after a reasonable trial period

Don’t Buy Excuses

There is nothing wrong with trying something that does not work.  If fact, you should be trying new things that are targeted and measurable to generate sales and targeted leads every month.  However, if someone says you will get results and then it does not happen, stop doing it and move that budget to a new lead generation experiment.  But make sure you give it a reasonable amount of time first.

For example, Google Adwords will work the same on day 1 and day 100 (within the margin of error).  But it will be less an issue with the adwords tool and more an issue with your leanding page and your keywords.  You need to try those and keep experimenting – and moving your adwords budget around to get the best return on your advertising spend.

For an organic lead generation tool like Buzzoodle, you have to look at the competition in the marketplace to assess the results.  It can produce sales in as little as two weeks but it depends on your sales leads target.  Lead generation with blogs does work great for most marketplaces, but only when you commit to a solid strategy and make a clear call to action.  Just having a blog that is not business blog oriented will not produce sales leads.

The Generation of Leads and  Sales that are Targeted is going to increase greatly if you start with your end goal in mind.  For example, you may say you are going to spend $3,000 on advertising in trade publications – but first set a goal of the number of targeted leads you want to get from the advertisement.  How will you track the lead generation and sales from the advertisement?  If it turns out to have a great ROI, you are going to spend $3,000 every month, right?  So you have to know the metrics and goals going into any sales effort or targeted lead generation.

For a small business that is looking for a cheap SEO service, a business blog is just the answer.

While a good SEO specialist is worth every penny of the thousands of dollars a month they charge, they are often out of the reach of the small business.

If you are a small business owner and you like the idea of getting great business SEO results, you really need to consider a business blog software solution.

What you need to know about your business blogging solution is that a normal blog will not get as good of SEO results vs a business blog that has been set up with search engine optimization and lead generation as the primary goals.  SEO with Blogs works best if you are planning that from the beginning.

Can a Blog be a Lead Generation Tool?

Yes, Lead Generation with Blogs is very possible and only takes a commitment to treating your business blog like a lead generation tool.

Your lead generation depends on your call to action.  If you want to increase your lead generation you need to decrease distraction – that means your call to action must be the predominant element on the page.

Here are some examples of things you can do for lead generation with blogs.

1. Subscribe to email course – this is a series of informative emails your visitor opts into and you have the chance to sell your business as well in the emails.
2. Advertisement – If you are just looking for more eyes to see your ad, your blog can do that.
3. Purchase – you can really sell things that are clear products with a clear target market very effectively via your blog.
4. Download a free whitepaper or report – this captures people’s information for later follow up, which is how you generate leads for service businesses.
5. Register to see video – now popular with the people doing video – you can get a great, informative video after providing your name.

These are just some of the strategies you can use to do lead generation with blogs.

Why would you want to buy a business blogging software solution instead of just sign up for a free blog?

Actually, you should do both.

A free blog is a great way to create inbound links for your business blog and it is a place that is a little less focused, but it can boost your business blog results.

That said, if you have invested in a business blog solution with software that focuses on business outcomes and lead generation with blogs, you will want to focus most of your engergy and content on the domain where your business blogging software is hosted and running.

The free blogs you set up are more of a support role if you have the time for it.

The #1 reason you want to invest in business blogging software instead of going with free blogging software is your ROI.

Business Blogging Software is going to be designed to get business outcomes.  A business blog can generate significant leads and sales when positioned correctly and supporting products or services that can be sold via the web.  (Either sold directly or resulting in qualified leads that can get followup)

If you are shopping for business blogging software there are some things you really have to consider.

1. Don’t look for the most bells and whistles.  Your business blogging software should be simple and focus on lead generation.
2. Search Engine Results – The most powerful business blogging software is going to optimize content to maximize results from search engines for your target market.
3. Call to Action – Your business blog should minimize links and maximize exposure of your call to action – that is how you generate sales and leads with your business blog.
4. Group blogging – a must for your business blog software is to have multiple writers and levels of permission.  The free blogs out on the market usually do not allow multiple authors.
5. Easy to use – The best business blogging software is going to be easy to use.  Maximizing your ROI means more leads for less money and less time spent blogging.  The simpler the blogging software, the less investment of your time.
6. Support – you will want to pay more for a business blog if you are expecting results because you need support and people that are researching improvements all the time.  The industry changes and it is important to stay up to date on the industry and tweak the business blogging software when needed.
7. Linking – Ideally, you choose a Business Blogging company like Buzzoodle to help you because they offer additional important elements like linking and writing when needed.