This article shows how efficient a blog is at bringing new leads to a business. According to the article, 69% of businesses said they increased their leads through blogging, right behind SEO at 75%. When you consider that blogging greatly optimizes your site for search engines, the benefits of blogging are really considerable.

At Matmon, we completely agree with this article and we suggest that our clients practice this as well. We can see the benefits of our blog just by looking at our analytics.

These are the most visited pages on our site, with our home page in first position, and the Matmon’s blog in second. Additionally, 70% of the visits to the blog are from organic sources, against only 43% for the site as whole. This means that most visitors reaching our site through our blog are not trying to reach Matmon and become potential customers.

However, lead generation is not the main reason Matmon has a blog. We aim to become a resource for our current clients and other people needing interactive services, to give advice on little things that clients can do themselves, or offer information on services they are researching. Getting leads is just the icing.

To read more about how writing a blog can benefit your site, read this article at FUEL LINES.

Study: 69% of Businesses Increased New Business Leads Through Blogging « FUEL LINES Fueling Ad Agency New Business Through Social Media.

Having a pretty website is important, but what makes users want to stick around and read your site is content. Good, rich, valuable content.

Why is writing quality content so important?

You want users to engage with your site. If visitors like reading your blog posts, are interested in the industry news you publish or come to your site for product information; more than likely they will take action. They might click on an ad, buy your product or look up your store address.

Another reason you want good content is to rank higher on search engines result pages. Since early 2011, Google’s new algorithm called Panda has aimed to make the web a better place for content. Panda hates duplicate or irrelevant content, redundant articles, too many ads, old websites and automated content. If you are guilty of any of these, Google will be ranking your site lower, making it harder for visitors to find you.

How do you write good content?

• Original: Your content has to be unique. You cannot reproduce content without being flagged by Google. It may seem obvious, but a lot of content on the web is duplicated. For example, if you have an online store, you likely copied the product description directly from the original catalog. It may seem logical but this will get you ranked lower in search engines. Instead, try to bring value by crafting descriptions your users want to read. Make sure you source anything that you have not written.
• Unique: The original content rule is valid from one site to another (do not steal content from another site), but also don’t copy content within your own website. Do not write your “About Us” on both the About Us page and the Contact Us, even if you content is original, it will not be unique. You also should not have several pages describing the same service; if it is the same it needs to be on one unique page.
• Recent: Both customers and search engines like sites that are frequently updated. Share your company news, update your product list, post customers testimonials or write a blog. Visitors will like to have something new to read and to be kept informed and search engines will like to see you are still producing original content.
• Lengthy: This one is more important to search engines than to us humans. Panda likes a lot of original content; one hundred words won’t cut it. Ideally, any page should have more than 300 words of original content.

Websites that have not been following these rules have seen their ranking drop dramatically, as well as their visits. It may seem like a lot of trouble, but your site will only be better and your users will thank you for it.

Social media is a great way to generate leads for your business. However, between Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Blogs, Youtube, Flickr… the possibilities are numerous. Marketers need to set goals and create a marketing plan in order to stay focused. A study from MarketingSherpa shows which social media platforms are the most efficient at generating leads for B2B and B2C.

Blogging is the most constantly efficient platform for getting new leads, both for B2B and B2C. This is not surprising since blog posts bring considerable value to their readers.

For B2B, LinkedIn seem to be the most effective lead generating platform. Indeed, LinkedIn users are online to display their experience and services on their topic of expertise. It is also the network the least obstructed by distracting information.

Facebook is the clear winner when it comes to B2C. With more than 700 million users, Facebook as the largest audience out of all the social media platforms. It is also a place where users go to relax, and share in a very informal settings a lot more prone to attracting customers rather than businesses.

Also noteworthy is Twitter, better than Facebook for B2B but better than LinkedIn at B2C. Youtube and other video sharing sites are also worth mentioning, especially if you are marketing complex or highly visual information.

Running a blog takes time.  At Matmon most all of our resources are dedicated to client projects and keeping up with latest technologies, trends, tricks, etc.  When we find blog posts that may help our client we post links to them in this resource blog in hopes of making it easy for clients to find current web design and development related articles. Though many large companies are experimenting with ways to use content management systems and blogs, they move slow and are missing out on opportunities to inform and respond to customer demands.

“As today’s younger consumer increasingly turns to the internet to make their spending decisions, that opens up a window of opportunity for small businesses.”