Instead of discussing blogs and relationships, which is the usual way a blog speech goes, he talks about the real blog secrets.  The blog secrets are that they can be optimized for seo and get great, targeted traffic that can be converted into real sales leads.  Blog ROI is high – but only if you know the blog secrets.

Ron is a Social Media Speaker that has spent years teaching employees and companies about how to use social media tools to drive real business results.  Blogs are a key component of this strategy, but it also includes the typical social media sites which can help pump more visitors into the top of the sales funnel.

Basically, you can use your business blog software to build an article publishing site that gets great search engine results and becomes a lead generation engine for your company.

If you want to know how to do it, you should go over and take the free lead generation course.

Business blogging is a great way to get your employees involved in building value for the company and contributing to a system that is proven to generate leads and grow companies.

To generate leads with brand ambassadors, you need to plan out your sales funnel.  Sure, many people that the brand ambassador comes into contact with will not be a valid lead, but some will.  Plan for those that are.

Ask yourself these questions.

1. Where does our company want the brand ambassador to push people?
2. How can we capture more leads from our brand ambassadors?
3. How can we leverage more information created by brand ambassadors to create Inbound Marketing Leads?
4. What can the brand ambassador give away to make people take action?
5. How is the brand ambassador going to build lists where he or she has influence?

I suggest you assume that your brand ambassadors will create some interest – and you map out exactly how that interest gets funneled back to the company.  Brand Ambassador’s can create leads, but not if they do not know what to do with people that do express interest.

Finding the most bells and whistles in a business blogging software solution will probably only confuse the issue around your goal.

There are only a few Business Blogging goals worth considering.

1. Sales – Business Blogging Software in the hands of a good writer or group of writers can actually directly result in sales for some kinds of products.
2. Leads – Lead Generation with Blogs is very possible if you know how to customize blogging software to be a lead generation engine.
3. Relationships – If your goal is to create a better relationship between your business and your customers, business blogging is an important part.
4. SEO – Business Blogs enhance search engine results and generate more traffic to your main website.
5. Expertise – If you want to position your C level executives as industry experts, a business blog along with speaking and webinars is essential.

The hard thing here is you cannot just say yes.

Instead, you must pick one as your primary goal.  If you try to do all five business blogging goals, you will fail.

That does not mean that all these things cannot happen – but by focusing on one as the primary goal you are going to drastically change the Corporate Blogging Software you choose.

For example, building an expert blog is much more like building an typical blog.  You really do not need custom business blogging software to set up an expert blog.  However, if you want to generate sales, leads and get SEO results you need to work with someone that understands how these things happen and have a custom business blogging solution that meets your needs.  These people usually understand SEO, Affiliate Sales and Squeeze pages so that you can combine these strategies and get the business blogging results you want.  And it will usually get a great ROI over time.

Within a short while of launching Employee Ambassador, it became obvious to us that the Employee Ambassador branding was focused on the wrong thing.  Online Lead Generation with Blogs is more important than the issue around who writes.

Now we have refocused our branding and product.  Buzzoodle has become the online lead generation with blogs solution that people are looking for.

We are still very passionate about working with clients that want to use employees as Brand Ambassadors, and this software is still excellent for achieving that.  We also intend to continue these blogs and topics, but if you buy our online lead generation product you will be working with Buzzoodle directly.

Instead of thinking about the blog software as a blog, you need to think of it as a simple solution for publishing articles and getting great search engine results.  Then using that visibility to make a clear call to action that will generate leads for the business.

Blog software for business purposes is actually simpler than traditional blogging software.  That is because a business blog should focus on clean and simple with a clear lead generation strategy.

Employee Blogging in your blog solution only enhances your results because it helps prospects get to know your staff and it helps you get found by providing more content that search engines will index and display.

Blog software is great for content management.  Your business blog will benefit from clean, simple and measurable.

First, I am not going to leave you in suspense.  Both.

Why?  Twitter is fast.  Everyone should be using twitter and anyone serious about online leads and sales should also be blogging.

Twitter will help you get quick boosts of traffic.  Your business blog will help you get better SEO ranking.

This is kind of like asking if you Ford should advertise in magazines or on TV.  If you have the resources, both is the obvious answer.

You may not know it, but you can automate twitter to automatically update when you have a new blog post.  This puts Twitter on autopilot and helps you leverage your time to be effective in both mediums.

First, blogging is enjoyable to people once they get into the habit.  It gives them a voice to the world and is an outlet for their frustration, enthusiasm and opinions.  If your employees are blogging on their own, maybe even using a fake name so they do not get into any trouble, then you could have a real problem on your hands.

If you have Employee Blogging in  a controlled environment, then you are going to have employees that feel energized and listed to – and more appreciative of their job.  And you will have control over what is actually released to the public.

Of course, the Employee Ambassadors solution does not prevent an employee from setting up a free blog someplace, but it does help them feel better about the company they work for and makes them more skilled at producing beneficial content.

Usually, someone sets up a blog, spends years trying to develop an audience and then when they have moderate traffic, they start thinking about how to momitize it.

Instead, if you start with a clear product – whether you are selling it directly or generating leads – you can focus all your energy at pull marketing and attract the right kind of people that want to take action and purchase your product or service.

This is a big deal.  Instead of struggling with what new thing to write about, you forget the idea of a regular audience and you write for your target in an effort to help them find you.  This is the fastest way blogs make money.

For example, an employer could react in a negative way and discourage employee blogs.  This would hurt the long term visibility of the company.

Or an employer might simply not care about employee blogging.  This will make the company more visible, but has big risks to the employer because it is more difficult to monitor what employees are blogging about and the employer has no way to modify this content.

The third option is to use a group blogging tool like Employee Ambassador and encourage employee blogging in a controlled environment that has a clear business outcome.