Business Blog for Customer Acquisition

Can you use a business blog for customer acquisition?

Certainly you can, but you will be more successful if your blog is set up having customer acquisition as the primary blog goal.  The purpose of blogging is not to create a blog.  It is to achieve your goals via the web.

Sure, the purpose of blogging for some people is to use it as a networking and social media.  However, there is not a rule someplace that says that is the only way to use it.

Take email for example.  Email was initially used to send people messages.  Then people started using email for marketing.  Now email is one of the most cost effective ways to do sales.

The biggest challenge to email is to build a hot list of emails of people that want to hear from you.  That is where the business blog comes in.  Customer Acquisition starts with someone opting into your email system if they do not directly buy from you or request a demo.

Your business blog just needs to be set up with purpose.  Is the purpose list building?  Lead Generation? Direct Web Sales?

That is why our system only adds essential internal links and clear calls to action.  It is simple and it is focused only on Customer Acquisition via great search engine optimization.

New Business Blog

If you are going to start blogging and you are setting up a new business blog, here are 10 tips.

1. Don’t think about what a blog should be.  Think about what you want your blog to achieve for your small business.
2. Blogs are just CMS websites (Content Management Systems) – don’t be intimidated.
3. There is no absolute right or wrong.  You can write a combination of short, long and medium blog posts.
4. Use images, but if you do not have time, just put up the text.
5. Post less more frequently, not a lot only occasionally.
6. Add Google Analytics right away so you can watch your progress.
7. Don’t clutter your business blog
8. Don’t drive people off of your business blog with too many external links
9. Don’t make people search all over your new business blog for your contact information.
10. Link to your business blog from outside resources to get it a better reputation.

Social Media Marketing

How does a blog, especially a business blog like Employee Ambassador, help your Social Media Marketing?

1. Blogs are the home base that your social media marketing efforts point back to.  And a business blog set up as an Employee Brand Embassador blog is going to convert more of your effort into sales leads.
2. Blogs are where your thoughts begin.  You can automate twitter, automate facebook, automate tumblr and automate many other things when you have good content being produced in a blog that has an rss feed.
3. Search Engine Results – Blogs are far better at getting high search engine ranking and converting those organic visitors to prospects.
4. Your Business Blog is the focus of the links from other social media outlets.  This linking improves the blog ranking.
5. Your business blogging is where people that really want to get to know you beyond the social media profile can read about you and what you know about your industry.

Blogs are the hub of your social media marketing.

Old Media Marketing

It is popular to talk about social media, brand ambassadors and Web 2.0. But does that mean the traditional marketing has stopped working?

No.  Actually it means that there are more ways to reach people and you have more options that all may be less effective than in the past when there were less options  with more people condensed into fewer communication channels.

Here are some traditional marketing techniques that still work.

1. Press Release – When it used to be really read by the press, it was appropriate to call it a press release.  Now I would call it a news broadcast.  I do not believe a press release will usually find any major writers but I do think that you are going to get some good exposure and good back links to your business blog or website.  If you focus on a niche or use the more expensive press release services you may still hit some great media outlets.
2. Email Marketing – Way more attention seems to be given to social media than email marketing.  However, email marketing will still generate a lot more money for you when done right.  It is an essential part of your marketing and if you bought the whole Email is Dead line, you jumped in the wrong bandwagon.  I make most of my money from email and Search Engine Optimization from blogs.
3. SEO – Search Engine Optimization is not the new hot thing, but if there is one area that is actually using social media well, it is the people that get how SEO and Social Media are linked together.  The key with SEO is that if you are in a tight target niche with little competition, you can probably pay for a one time project and reap the rewards for a long time.  Blogs make it easy.  If you are in an even slightly competitive market, you need someone that goes to war on your behalf every month to increase ranking and get more pages indexed.  Or you can just use Employee Ambassador and your staff just does some light writing and the whole thing is automatically targeted to keyword conquest.
4. Old Websites – Do you have one of those old websites sitting around that looks like late 90’s and does date back to then?  Don’t touch it without talking to a web professional!  The age of your website is valuable and the page urls should not be changed unless you have someone that can look at your search ranking first.  I updated one of these old sites after some research and got fantastic results within 3 days – I am talking #1 rankings where a lot of other people were fighting for it.  These old sites have great credibility in the eyes of search engines and can be ignited by a good search engine specialist.
5. Directories – Things like directories seem out of date, but getting listed in a good directory still gives you a valuable back-link and can generate a steady (if not big) stream of website or blog traffic.  Some of my favorite are technorati and blogcatalog – but the older directories are still effective if you get into them too.
6. Link Exchanges – These things have a bad name, and anything that automates the process I would stay away from.  However, doing an occasional link exchange with someone else in your industry will help – not hurt – your website.  If link exchanges  hurt websites, most blogs with blog rolls would be thrown out of Google long ago since they often link to one other.  This is one of those things that still works, you just have to be smart about it.
7. Word of Mouth – The oldest of the traditional marketing is the new hot marketing.  Finding ways to get people to talk about you are the best way of cutting through the noise.  But it may just not work for you – you really have to be differentiated.

Most things will still work with good execution and message.  Just be realistic about how people’s attention has scattered.  You need to scatter your message where your niche market is to make sure they can find you.  Especially when they are looking in Google, which is where Employee Ambassador comes in.

Your Business Blog

The first thing people think of when they look at our Employee Ambassador blog is – where is all the blog stuff?

While a client’s blog can have as many things as they want in the side bar, a business blog should have only things that are focused on the outcome that you want.

That means navigation is secondary to signing up for a newsletter or requestion a demo.

This is not because you are tricking someone.  It is because from a business perspective, it is only worth doing if it makes you money.  And the busier your business blog is (covered in links and such) the less likely people will do what you want.

Also, Employee Ambassador blogs are a blog seo strategy, not a warm and fuzzy place to try to build an audience.  We certainly respect the warm and fuzzy blogs, but that is a different strategy, and works best when one person has one or more hours to write every day.

Small Business Blog

The purpose of blogging, especially for a small business blog, is to create either sales or leads.

Customer Acquisition is possible with a small business blog, but you have to be building a tool for customer acquisition, not a fun blog.  That means you set up your blog to focus on the fundamentals.

1. Your Blog Generates Search Engine Traffic
2. Your Business Blog has a clear purpose and call to action.
3. Your blog is updated regularly so it ranks higher and generates more traffic.
4. Your business blogging purpose is focused on customer acquisition, not having a blog because you heard it is cool.

A successful small business blog is primarily about knowing why you are blogging before you start blogging.

Working with Employee Ambassador can help with this because we only focus on business blogs and employee blog writing to generate qualified leads that want what you have to sell.