How To Create A Blog Post That Generates Leads
Over 90% of B2B marketers claim their companies blog or use other types of content marketing. 85% percent of B2C marketers said the same (Growth Badger). That’s no small portion!
So why are companies spending their time and money on blogging? Because it works.
A successful blog can build brand awareness, build industry and domain authority, and generate leads.
Clearly a lot of businesses blog, that doesn’t mean those businesses have successful blogs. Blogging is a skill and it takes time to develop that skill. Over time, a blog can grow your business but there are important components in a successful blog post.
No one wants to waste their time and money only to find that their blog isn’t generating engagement or leads, so I’ve put together several ways you can make sure your blog is on the path toward success.
Know Your Audience
Understanding your audience is the single most important thing you can do when creating a blog that generates leads. Your audience can be big or small. You audience for any given blog post can range from your overall target audience to a teeny tiny subgroup of your current client base.
Regardless of who your audience is for each blog post, you need to understand them. What do they want from your business? What questions do they have? What are their values? What are their concerns and hesitations?
Understanding your audience will help you create a blog post that offers the most value for your audience, and it’s that value that turns a reader into a lead.
Create Value In Every Post
Every blog post needs to create value for your reader. Sure, the blog is supposed to generate leads for you and help you grow your business, but in order for that to happen you have to give your audience something worth engaging with.
And now that you understand your audience, you know what they want and need from you which helps you create real value in your content for them.
Aside from lead magnets (which have their own section), I suggest answering questions to create value. There are two routes I recommend:
- Answer Questions About You
- Answer Questions About Your Industry
Your social media team, customer service team, and/or marketing team can all be great sources for the information you need to get started.
Answering Questions About You
Creating blog posts that take this approach to value can be great if you find your audience has common questions about what you do, what a product can do for them, or something similar.
Is there a question your customer service team is answering almost everyday? You can easily create a blog post that offers an answer to the question and then direct your clients to that blog post. Not only will that offer value for the client, it will also save you money because your team won’t have to dedicate as many resources toward answering that question over and over.
When you’re creating value by writing content about your business, you don’t have to explicitly answer in a question/answer format.
For example, if you sell a kitchen product you might create a blog posts like, Our Top 10 Favorite *product* Uses In The Kitchen. This kind of blog post showcases the versatility and value of your product. It gives you the chance to introduce what makes your product superior and unique. It can answer questions like, “How do people use your product?” and “Is this product worth the investment?” all at once.
There are infinite ways you can create value by answering questions about your business. If you don’t sell a B2C product but offer a B2B service, this approach still applies. You’ll just have a different audience with different needs and you’ll work to understand them before you begin brainstorming for blog posts.
Answering Questions About Your Industry
You can also create value in your blog posts by answering questions about your industry. This is an excellent way to demonstrate your industry knowledge and authority. If your content is search engine optimized, then you’ll also build brand awareness with new audiences as your content organically drives traffic.
This example from 4Ocean demonstrates what I’m referring to perfectly.
4Ocean is appealing to individuals that care about our oceans and the environment. By creating a blog post on a circular economy, not only do they inform and educate but they demonstrate their knowledge on topics in sustainability. They also demonstrate their values, exemplify their mission, and set up the perfect place to highlight how they implement a circular model for their own products.
Creating value in every blog post is essential. It’s important to remember your audience in every step of the process. If your content doesn’t offer your reader something they want, they won’t naturally want to return for more. Worse, content without value can make your reader feel like you wasted their time. Your reputation might be harmed which will make future blogging attempts even more difficult.
Use Lead Magnets
A common method marketers use to add value to a blog or website is to offer lead magnets. Sometimes bloggers refer to these as “freebies.” Lead magnets offer something of great value to the reader in exchange for some information, usually an email.
There are many different kinds of lead magnets you can offer. Some of the most common include:
- White papers
- Templates
- Webinars
- Ebooks
- Guides
- Case studies
What you choose to offer depends on what your audience wants. For example, white papers are common in the B2B tech industry. White papers create massive value for readers in a given industry and those readers are often willing to exchange personal info for access to that content.
If you’re offering an at-home composter then a guide like, “The Beginner’s Guide to At-Home Composting” could be a perfect lead magnet for your target audience.
If you offer a larger lead magnet, like an ebook or white paper, then you can even create multiple blog posts leading to a single lead magnet. You could easily turn each chapter from your ebook into a blog post giving the magnet much more coverage all while engaging your audience and building authority even more.
Include A Strong Call To Action
As you create valuable blog posts, you’ll want to make sure you include a call to action (CTA). A call to action is when the content guides or requests the viewer to act. Just like lead magnets, your call to action might vary from blog post to blog post. In fact, it should vary.
A CTA could be anything from a pop up email form to explicitly asking your reader to check out a related post at the end of the post they’re viewing. A call to action could also be a line of text that encourages the reader to share their email in order to access your lead magnet.
Different blog posts will naturally lend themselves to different CTAs.
Finding the right balance for your audience is also important. A CTA that isn’t prominent enough will go unnoticed, but an overly strong CTA might register as pushy or disingenuous.
Experimenting with different CTA’s over many different blog posts will help you better understand what your audience responds to best. Thankfully, if you find one CTA works ten times better than another CTA, you can typically edit your posts to incorporate the most effective call to action.
Blog Consistently
Failing to understand your audience or create value can stunt the success of your blog, but there’s one more deadly sin to worry about today. Consistency.
Blogging consistently is a non-negotiable when it comes to a successful blogging strategy. Blogging on a regular schedule isn’t just standard SEO practice but it’s also crucial for establishing trust with your audience.
If a potential prospect sees valuable resources getting published weekly on company X’s site while company Y hasn’t published in 4 months, who do you think the potential prospect will consider more authoritative and professional?
When you commit to a consistent blogging schedule, you also increase your chances of building your audience and attracting more leads. That’s in part because you simply have more blog posts for people to find, but also because blogging regularly boosts SEO and builds your authority at the same time.
If all of this sounds overwhelming, like another massive undertaking on your already full plate, then stick around for tips to make it easier to manage your blog. But before those tips, I have one more thing that will help you create blog posts that generate leads.
Promote Your Blog
You can write, publish, and forget about your blog posts. But if you want to have the most successful blog possible, then blogging should be part of your overall marketing strategy. It shouldn’t exist isolated from your other marketing practices.
You should promote your blog posts (when appropriate, of course) on your social media channels. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn can further your blog post reach, even if it’s just by a little bit.
Sharing valuable content that’s created for your target audience is an easy way to drive traffic to your site. Your followers are already committed to your business in some way. The worst that could happen is you don’t receive any traffic or engagement from your social media. But more than likely, not only will you be driving additional traffic, you’ll also be generating engagement on your social media accounts as well.
Promoting your blog posts grows your business all around!
How You Can Make Blogging Easier
Many people struggle to find time to consistently create valuable content. Here are a few things you can do to make successful blogging a little easier.
Create A Schedule
Depending on who is doing the blogging for your business, scheduling could be in a formal scheduler or a basic spreadsheet. Find what works best for your business and don’t be afraid to try new things if something isn’t working for you.
Take a short 15–30 minutes to brainstorm topics for blog posts and take notes on what the post could be about. Brainstorming when you feel the creativity flowing will make creating the posts much easier.
You’ll want to perform SEO keyword research between that brainstorming phase and the drafting phase. That will inform what headings you choose, the title, and exactly what words you need to include for the best organic traffic results.
Ask Other Teams
Your social media, marketing, and customer service teams can be great resources for blog post ideas. Find out what questions they see from your clients or target audience the most. What issues are your clients facing? And what are their interests in regards to the industry? These things will point you in the right direction when you’re trying to create valuable and targeted content.
Ask Your Followers
Don’t forget about your audience! You can always ask them questions too!
You don’t have to explicitly ask, “What blog posts would you like to see us create?” You certainly could, but you could also get more creative with it. Coincidentally, I saw the perfect example of this today.
Stasher is a company that makes endlessly reusable storage products. They’re meant to help consumers replace single-use plastics. Stasher recently released an ocean-themed color palette for some of their products which has influenced their social media posts lately.
As you can see, they offer 3 options for their Instagram followers to select (not including the ‘all of the above’ choice). Each of these options would make excellent blog posts!
“Why kelp (and its reforestation) is important” is a topic that builds authority because it tells their followers they care about the planet and they’re willing to devote resources to it.
Topics like, “How Stasher helps protect our ocean” and “What individual actions can help support our seas” allow the Stasher to demonstrate their knowledge about the planet, emphasize how they help the planet, and highlight how their products can help you help the planet.
It’s genius! And, you can do it too. If you don’t have ideas ready to suggest on social media, that’s okay. An open ended question will work just the same.
Hire A Writer
And finally, if you really just don’t have the time to learn a new skill or add serious content creation to your schedule then hire a writer to do it for you!
Content and copy writers specialize in writing alone. That means your blog posts will come from someone that knows all about how to write the perfect blog post for you.
I don’t recommend sites like UpWork and Fiver. It’s likely you’ll find extremely cheap prices and you definitely get what you pay for when it comes to writing. The last thing you want as a busy person is to get a piece that needs serious revisions or rewriting.
And, you definitely don’t want someone to give you spun content. When someone “spins content” it means they pieces of existing content on the same or similar topics and blend it together. Search engines know when content is copied and it can seriously damage your online authority. That’s the last thing you want when you’re trying to build a successful blog.
Professional freelance writers that specialize in blog posts are experts at creating blog posts that generate leads, build authority, and build brand awareness. Hiring writers like myself (Andrew Michele)or a writer from your own industry is one of the best ways to get quality content that will build your business when you don’t have the time to do it yourself.
Now that you have the basics to creating blog posts that generate leads, it’s time to get writing! What’s the hardest part about blog writing for you? As a fellow blogger, I’d love to hear about your challenges. Let me know in the responses!
If you’re looking for a freelance writer, make sure to check out my personal site here.
