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Your corporate blog can become a valuable lead generation tool for your sales team. Here are just a few of the reasons why a regularly updated corporate blog can have a huge payoff in terms of bringing in new sales prospects.
#1: A blog establishes credibility with future prospects
By regularly commenting on important trends in your industry, or by providing regular updates about your products and services, you can really demonstrate your expertise. And, over time, that ability to demonstrate expertise will transform into enhanced credibility with prospects. They will be more willing to buy from you because they have trust in what you are selling.
#2: Blog content is Google-friendly
From a purely SEO perspective, a corporate blog is pure gold. Blog content keeps your site refreshed and updated, something that Google rewards by sending more traffic your way. The Google search algorithm is specifically designed to rank sites with fresh, relevant content higher than sites with static or outdated content. And a blog – unlike a whitepaper or customer case study – is much easier to create and then add to your website.
#3: A blog provides the raw material for social media posts
Once you launch a blog, you will begin to see how blog content and social media content are related. That’s because every blog that you write can also be sliced and diced into multiple new social media posts. For example a blog post describing an important new industry trend might be transformed into 2-3 Facebook posts and a week’s worth of tweets. When it comes to lining up new customers, it’s far more effective to post social media updates based on your own blog rather than, say, simply re-tweeting an article you might see in a magazine or online trade publication.
#4: Blogging can position you as a thought leader and influencer
As you begin to establish a steady stream of blog posts, you will quickly gain an audience. Suddenly, instead of reaching 100-200 people with your blog post, you will be reaching 1,000 people. That’s when you start to get into thought leader and influencer territory. Suddenly, you might find your blog being cited in mainstream media articles, or things you write creating conversations across social media. That’s when you know that you’re truly an influencer. From your blogging, you might generate speaking gigs at conferences, or invitations to attend special VIP events. All of that helps to bring in new leads.
#5: A blog can become a valuable referral engine
One easy way to gain traction for your corporate blog is to provide answers to all the questions that people are searching for online. Essentially, you are reverse-engineering Google. Think about all the queries that potential customers are submitting on Google, and then think of a way to answer those questions via blog. Then, when people search for those questions on Google, they will be directed to your blog. That can be a valuable referral engine, and it’s one big reason why so many brands and businesses develop “evergreen content,” or the type of content that never goes out of date because customers never stop searching for it on Google.
Final Thought
Without a doubt, blogging can increase lead generation for your business. It’s just up to you to decide on the proper editorial mix to make sure that your blog is fully complementing the efforts of your sales and marketing team.
