Posted: 16 Jul 2012 05:00 AM PDT
So
you want to use social media to generate leads for your business? If
that’s true, then you must also be willing to take the steps necessary
to put your business and brand in a position to attract leads online.
And those steps may take some time.
Social media is a powerful tool, but cannot stand alone as an online marketing solution. Social media marketing comes after you have discovered your voice through blogging and have a key word strategy in place.
Does Blogging = Leads?
You can’t expect to put your
business online and expect the online buzz to suddenly rocket you to
online social media stardom. Leads won’t fall from the sky either.
Generating a lead is the end
result. And while Stephen Covey has taught us to “Begin with the end in
mind,” you must first focus on answering the question, “How can we be
valuable to others, consistently over time, so we organically attract
people to our business online.”
Then you must have a plan to create
the valuable content people want to read, share and comment on. Content
people will share and will lead others to you (traffic), who will then
want to learn more about how you might be able to help them (conversion)
so you can then have a qualified prospect (lead).
You do this from blogging. And how often you blog matters also.
The Impact On Lead Generation
The Impact On Customer Acquisition
It Doesn’t Matter if You Are a B2B or a B2C business, You Need to Be Blogging
Every week I speak to a business owner who thinks his/her business doesn’t need to blog at all, let alone a lot. Thinking that way is similar to thinking back in 1995 that your business wouldn’t need a website. Blogging is the new SEO, and it’s an important part of consumer culture so you better start capitalizing on it.
B2C Blogging Works!
B2B Blogging Works Also!
If Google Can’t Find You, Neither Will Anyone Else
Ranking high on the search engines (particularly Google) is no longer optional, it’s critical. The more keyword rich content you create (and blog), the more search engines will find you. In order for Google to find you often, you need a lot of pages that link to your site. You can control this by blogging often and making sure to use the keywords that will lead people to you.
Are You Showing Up?
More Blog Posts = More Indexed Web Pages
What does this teach us?
That you need to generate as much (keyword rich) content as possible, before your competitors pass you by. Social Media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and YouTube all give you the platform to share your content in different ways, but you have to generate the content first. And oh yeah, that content needs to be interesting. The leads will follow.
The great business management guru Peter Drucker’s most well known quote is “The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.”
Social media can certainly help you create and keep a customer. But you
have to be willing to do the work [online] that it takes to get there.
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