You’re probably no stranger to blogging. Everyone from amateur beauty enthusiasts, home cooks, and Fortune 500 companies like Best Buy, Coca-Cola, and Comcast have blogs.
Blogging is a great marketing tool and one that brings a great ROI if you’re doing it right. Blogging generates leads and is a simple way to maintain more contact with your customers.
In order to create a successful blog and enjoy the advantages of more website traffic, your blog has to have valuable content and inbound links that lead back to your website.
When a blog’s content is valuable, it serves as an excellent marketing tool that other businesses within your industry will link back to without forcing more work on you.
Once generated, useful content can be used as part of your long-term strategy, allowing you to watch it generate leads.
How to Generate Leads With Your Blog: a Blogging Strategy Done Right
Blogging should do more than let followers know about company news; it should be relevant to other professionals in your industry as well. Your content should be able to be used as a source.
Blogs that think outside of the box often educate customers about products or services, boost SEO, and are favored on big search engines like Google.
It’s not easy to run a successful blog because, after all the work that you’ve put into bringing people to your blog, you must now entertain them, give them a call to action, and offer value that turns them into customers.
Lead generation is the best way to turn your visitors into customers and there are several ways to capitalize on lead generation directly from your blog.
Sounds great right? However, if you’re not one of the businesses that have figured out the secrets of lead generation, you’re probably not seeing the incredible results.
Luckily, if you fall into this category, there are a few essential tips that you can follow to generate more leads and see greater results.
Create Long-Form Blog Posts
You might believe that most people don’t want to sit around reading tons of information, but the more information you have, the better your content will rank on Google, according to this survey by HubSpot.
Plus, the more words you have, the more backlinks can be added naturally.
Detailed content keeps readers engaged on the page for longer periods of time, so be sure that your content is actually good, otherwise, those same people will bounce.
Add Visual Content
Adding illustrations, videos, infographics, and other images turn long-form blog posts into more enticing pieces. They can also add extra information or highlight important topics.
Images are nice to look at, but they can also convey emotion and capture attention in a way that just written words cannot. If the image is especially appealing, it will subconsciously encourage readers to stay on the page longer.
Schedule Regular Posts
Posting regularly helps in two ways. 1, it pleases Google. Google’s web crawlers like when sites post regular content that is new and different. If you post every day for 10 days and then stop for 10 days that’s bad.
Get used to scheduling your posts for the same time and day each week. If you can’t keep up with 10 posts day, that’s fine.
Good, quality content that is posted consistently, once a week or once per day pleases the Google bots. Secondly, your audience will come to expect and appreciate that they can count on your content.
People are creatures of habit, don’t take away their Monday morning blog reading joy just because you post sporadically.
Offer Blog Summary Downloads
So, you are creating long-form blog posts with amazing content and beautiful visuals on a schedule that Google approves of. But some readers don’t have the time to read every 2,500-word blog you post.
Offering your readers an easy to digest downloadable summary ( in exchange for their email address) creates leads for you and offers interested consumers a way to get your information faster.
Give your Readers Access to Exclusive Content or Perks
You’re already creating great content that is helpful to your customer and industry peers, but there are ways that you can benefit your loyal readers even more.
Entice readers to join an email list by offering them access to video workshops, one-on-one coaching, or simply more in-depth information.
Many e-commerce businesses offer special discounts and first access on new sales to their email subscribers.
Locate the Influencers in Your Industry and Reach Out To Them
Putting in a little bit of effort to find out who the influencers are in your industry and reaching out to them can generate massive leads for your blog.
Finding the influencers is as easy as searching social networks and finding out who has the most engaged followers.
Start to engage with the influencers in your industry by following them, befriending them, and liking or retweeting their content.
Anything that shows the influencer that you are aware of and impressed by their work will create a more familiar relationship.
Next, you need to reach out. Influencers get thousands of emails a day so you might need to work hard to get your message to stand out.
Check out this in-depth way one blogger utilized influencers to gain over 1,000 subscribers in one day.
Display Virtual Phone Numbers Prominently
Providing your customers with a phone number adds a personal touch to your blog. It also shows that there is someone just a phone call away that is responsible for the products or services you are offering.
It can be intimidating getting all of your products and resources online, therefore it is humanizing to offer contact through virtual phone numbers.
Just be sure that the placement of your phone number is subtle and works with the rest of your page.
Add a Time Delay Pop Up To Encourage Email Subscribers
You have probably been in a situation where you were peacefully reading a blog post or perusing an e-commerce site, then BAM, a pop-up creeps onto your screen asking for your email address.
Although they might be a bit annoying, they definitely work to create leads.
Don’t Forget The Call To Action
There are many ways to sneak in a Call To Action (CTA) in your blog posts.
Add a link to a landing page or downloadable eBook in the text of your blog post. Or put a CTA in a video, have a pop-up slide in with an offer, or answer comments on your blog with a CTA.
Never forgo a chance to answer a comment that asks for more information without a link to more information!
Bulk Up Your SEO
Use Google Search, Google Suggest, Google Trends, and Google Keyword Planner to find the most popular keywords and sources to raise your blog’s Google Ranking.
Don’t forget this tip. There’s no point in writing an informative and engaging content post if no one is going to find it.
Use Exit Pop-Ups
After a visitor has finished reading your blog post, they have no choice but to head back to the place they were before – Facebook, LinkedIn, or wherever you cleverly brought your visitors in from.
As the visitor uses their cursor to head to the URL for a new destination, the screen becomes a pop-up. You can utilize these exit pop-ups to generate anything from email leads or lobby for Facebook likes.
Conclusion
These tips should generate leads like magnets and you’ll soon be on your way to having a huge email list.
The best part is all these tips take just a little bit of effort and they lead to maximum results; with the right strategy, your blog will be generating leads like never before.
