If you’ve been following this blog, you already know the importance of a website blog. However, how do you make sure your blog is generating leads? This article will provide five actionable things you can do today to optimize the ROI of your blogging efforts.
Not Convinced You Need A Website Blog?
Let’s review the statistics.
Companies with a blog generate 67% more leads than those without. (Bloggingwizard.com)
On average, each blog post can generate roughly 80 leads. (Bloggingwizard.com)
Blog posts and articles are the second most effective lead-generation channel. (Explodingtopics.com)
Convinced?
So, let’s dive in and talk about how to make sure your blog is generating leads.
Create Customer Personas: Who Are You Writing For?
“Writing without someone to listen is like dancing in the dark.” Ovid
If you don’t know who you’re writing for, chances are no one will listen. So, the first step is to know your audience.
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- Who are they?
- What are their challenges, goals, needs, interests, and concerns?
- How do they converse? What is their language?
- Which social media channels does your audience prefer? Where do they like to engage with brands? What types of content do they want?
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Once you’ve identified and understood your target audience, create realistic customer personas for them. You may want to segment your audience and create different personas for each segment. Segmenting also enables you to target your messages and emails.
Your personas should go deeper than demographics to include psychographics, such as behavior, attitudes, values, beliefs, and personality traits.
There are tools to help you create realistic personas. Try these:
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- Semrush Persona Tool
- HubSpot Make My Persona
- Smaply
- Adobe Express is a design tool, but you can use it to create customer personas.
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So, to ensure your blog post is generating leads, know who you’re talking to and publish helpful content that addresses their pain points. You will turn your readers into customers.
Optimize For SEO
To ensure that people find your blog articles when searching on the internet, you’ll want to take the time to optimize your blog for SEO.
Conduct Keyword Research
Check the traffic analytics for your current blog articles. What did you learn?
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- Which posts are people reading?
- What are they doing after they read? Are they engaging or sharing?
- Which articles are not performing well?
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Analyze the keywords. Are they high-traffic keywords? Did you consistently use these keywords throughout your blog post titles, meta descriptions, and content?
It’s helpful to conduct a keyword analysis before writing your blog post. You can use tools like Ubersuggest to help you find high-performing keywords.
Use Compelling Headlines and Meta-descriptions
Be sure to use header tags (H1, H2, H3) to structure your blog posts. Doing so makes it easier for search engines to understand the article. If the search engines are confused, your great content will be suppressed.
When writing your meta description, place your focus keyword at the beginning and ensure that it accurately describes what the reader will learn from your article.
Use Relevant Tags and Categories
Tags and categories make it easier for readers to find articles of interest, especially if searching for solutions to their problems.
Include Internal and External Links
Internal links make navigating your website easier for search engines and readers. Internal links also bring your readers to previous articles that add context to the topic and keep them on your website longer.
Linking to outside sources lends credibility to your website blog and demonstrates that you’re an authority on the topic. Even if you’re an expert on a subject, readers appreciate knowing that you’ve conducted independent research to support your point of view.
Write High-Quality, Relevant and Valuable Articles
A critical step to ensure your blog is generating leads is to publish helpful information that addresses your audience’s questions. If readers come to your website and find it filled with articles that are irrelevant or don’t provide answers to their questions, they won’t return.
Even worse are off-topic articles. There’s no problem with the occasional post that addresses a timely issue that everyone might be dealing with. But if you do this consistently, your visitors and search engines will become confused about your brand—who you are, what you offer, and how you can help them.
So, with your customer personas in mind, write high-quality, relevant, and valuable articles that offer solutions to their problems.
Use your blog to educate, inspire, and entertain your audience. Doing so will ensure that you attract readers genuinely interested in your niche. The more readers, the higher you move up the SERPs. The higher you rank, the more traffic. If that increased traffic finds relevant, helpful, authentic content, they’ll take the next step and explore your products or services.
Update Your Old Posts
Routinely update your old blog posts. Check for broken links and new information or data that can be included in the article. Refreshing your posts demonstrates that you are current with the latest trends and industry news. It also improves search performance, increasing your lead generation capabilities.
Optimize Your Images
People are short on time and patience. Potential customers will go elsewhere if it takes too long for your website to load. Optimizing your images by compressing them improves your website’s loading speed, making it easier for search engines to understand your content. Plus, you’ll dramatically improve the user experience. Frustrated visitors will not become leads.
Make Sure It Works On Mobile
The majority of the global audience accesses websites on their mobile device. So, while your blog may look great on your desktop, it might be challenging to read on a smartphone. Before publishing, check its appearance on mobile. Look for spacing and font issues, slow-loading images, hidden CTAs, and other issues that will create a poor user experience.
Write Clear and Compelling CTAs
Unlike ads and social media posts, blog CTAs must be more subtle. However, you must still include clear and compelling CTAs to help your audience move through the buyer journey. Your blog articles should be more informational and not promotional, so it’s a delicate balance.
Be persuasive but not aggressive.
Think about what you want the reader to do after reading the article. Add your CTA to drive them to take that action. For example,
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- If you found this helpful article, please share it on your social channels.
- Please leave a comment below. We’d love to hear your feedback.
- Subscribe to our newsletter.
- Read more on this topic. [include links to related articles]
- Sign up for our upcoming webinars/podcasts.
- Need help with {fill in the blank}, contact us, and let’s talk about how we can solve it together.
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Create And Promote Lead Magnets
Lead magnets are powerful tools to ensure your blog is generating leads.
However, to be successful, you must offer something of value in exchange for their contact information.
Lead magnets are effective because they attract a specific audience and provide them with information relevant to their challenges and interests.
By providing valuable information, you build trust with your audience and establish yourself as an authority in your industry.
Furthermore, a lead magnet helps you generate qualified leads by attracting readers genuinely interested in your services or products.
Some examples of lead magnets are:
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- Checklists: SEO checklist, event planning, product launch checklist, website audit, content creation checklist.
- Reports and White Papers
- Surveys
- E-books
- Webinars
- Masterclass
- Quizzes: personality test, trivia quiz, knowledge assessment
- Templates: organizational template, worksheets to track projects, planner template, business startup template.
- Free Trials
- Resource Lists
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How do you incorporate a lead magnet on your blog?
First, include a clear and compelling CTA within your blog article to encourage your readers to download your lead magnet.
Create a landing page for lead magnets that clearly describes what readers will receive in exchange for their contact information.
Make sure there’s no friction between your CTA and the landing page. Also, ensure the CTA accurately describes what the reader will discover on the lead magnet landing page.
Use pop-ups to promote your lead magnet.
Bottom Line
With only a little optimization, you’ll quickly ensure your blog is generating leads.
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- Define your customer personas
- Optimize for SEO
- Write high-quality, relevant, and helpful articles
- Use compelling and clear CTAs
- Add lead magnets
- Promote your blog articles on all your social channels
- Repurpose posts and link back to your website
- Track and measure performance. Use the data to guide future articles and optimize your content creation strategies.
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With these easy-to-implement tactics, you’ll turn your website blog into a lead-generating engine and attract readers genuinely interested in your services or products.
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