Turning Your Blog Into a Sales Prospecting Tool

Corporate blogging has evolved over the past five years into a powerful medium that can increase sales, develop your status as an authority and even help you find new clients. Sales blogging is a great way to help you find new prospects, but there are a few pitfalls that you will need to be wary of when you are first getting started. Here are some tips to help you increase your social sales through smart online marketing.

Sales Prospecting with your Blog

Step 1 – Develop your blog. If you don’t already have your own blog, starting one is very easy. It is best to use your own domain if at all possible, and the popular blogging tool Word Press makes it easy for anyone to set up a blog in a few minutes. If you must use a free service, try to at least get a vanity URL that will cloak the free domain name. This will help your readers take you more seriously.

Step 2 – Develop your approach. Online marketing requires a lot of consumer savvy and you’ll need to adapt your sales pitch somewhat. No one enjoys reading a sales pitch, so this the time to work on developing a pitch that can be cloaked within useful information. If you must do a pitch, remember to keep marketing posts to a minimum, and spread them out with other useful informative posts in between.

Step 3 – Promote your blog. In order to reach out to prospective clients, you’re going to need to get your blog out there in the public eye. This is perhaps the most frustrating part of sales blogging, and it is necessary to be patient and put in some hard work. Social bookmarking sites are a vital component of social sales, but again, they must be used wisely. Always err on the side of caution and give away information that can be used freely.

If you don’t have the time to promote your blog, consider outsourcing it to a company that specializes in social bookmarking and commenting. They are typically very inexpensive and this is a great way to jumpstart your traffic right from the start.

Step 4 – Get involved in the blogging community. Even sales blogging is going to require some interaction, not only with your audience but also with other industry players. This is a different kind of promotion but it works quite well. Consider supplying guest posts to related blogs in exchange for a link. Read their blogs and comment on their posts, again leaving your link.

This is one of the easiest ways to build your own social network and it is an important way to help your sales blogging efforts pay for themselves.  Online marketing has changed blogging, and it has made it possible for companies to reach out to potentially millions of new clients. By using it properly and avoiding these pitfalls, you can be assured that your efforts will result not only in increased sales, but also a firmer foundation for your brand.