Blogging for Lead Generation: Best Practices and Tips

Last week we took a look at why marketers should blog to generate leads, so it makes sense to follow that up with a discussion of what marketers need to keep in mind as they build out their blogs.

After all, you wouldn’t convince a friend to embark on a big adventure without telling them things to remember and watch out for. Below is a rundown of helpful advice from experts on the quest of blogging for leads.

Know your readers
Before you eagerly populate your blog with content, pause and consider what your goal is and who your audience is. “Think of your ideal prospect and develop a marketing persona as a point of reference,” says Nicholas Pandiscio, chief operating officer for WolfCom Public Relations. “Work towards a goal of presenting that persona with something that will appeal to them.”

Understanding readers will help marketers understand their specific needs. So, for example, if you’re targeting potential customers who don’t know much about your business, you should probably avoid using industry jargon. “On the other hand, if your target audience is more knowledgeable then you can skip the basic material and focus your writing on more advanced topics,” Pandiscio says. “Understand where the prospect is in the buying process.”

Shareability
Regarding the actual way marketers present content on their blogs, Pawan Deshpande, founder and CEO of content curation and online marketing solutions company Curata, suggests making facts included in blog posts tweetable to improve the chances of that post becoming viral.

“As an example, try taking stats from an industry survey and turn them into a post,” he says. “You can then create a list of bite-sized, hyperlinked facts from the survey, making it easy for others to tweet.”

Making a blog’s content shareable will also help the marketer’s discernment when considering what to blog about. “If you’re blogging, you should always have something interesting to say or show,” says Michael Harbron, sales and marketing director of Internet marketing company