At HubSpot, we help people set up blogs for their business. But more importantly, we guide them in using blogs as a strategic marketing tool to attract prospective clients to their websites and engage prospective clients in a conversation on their websites.

Done right, I honestly don't think there is a better marketing tool - that is applicable to almost any small or mid sized business - than a blog.

Before starting a blog, the first step should be to do search engine optimization keyword research. Blogging allows a business to create as many pages on their website as they want in an organized and navigable way - since every post becomes a page. And since every page on a business's website is an opportunity to rank in the search engine result pages for a given set of 1-3 keywords, blogging creates the potential to rank for a whole lotta keywords relevant to the business.

However, blogging is not just about publishing content to the web. (Great writing is critical though.)

Blogging is about participating in a transparent and public conversation where anyone and everyone in the world is invited to participate. I like to call them blogversations. But, think about going into a networking event filled with prospects and suppose you could talk to them all at once, say as the featured speaker. That's what a blog is. It's actually better. Imagine if you could pause time and have 1 on 1 conversations with people w/out the rest of the audience knowing. Then, resume your speech until the next person wants to talk to you. Then, imagine that this went on forever 24/7. How could you not get business out of that. 

So, businesses should treat it like a conversation.

The hardest part that most businesses have when starting a blog is not coming up with the content. It's finding the first few people to have a conversation with.

Which is why you should immediately find a business blog buddy. Your business blog buddy should be:

• Someone who has similar interests or has a similar kind of business. An example of a blog buddy for a realtor would be a mortgage broker or a home inspector. If you do facial plastic surgery in Manhattan, find someone who doesn't do facial plastic surgery who does aesthetic surgery in MA. If you blog about online marketing, find a blog buddy that covers sales management or sales training.
• They have to be willing to link to you. You might not start out asking them to link to you. That's like meeting someone for the first time at a networking event and asking them to endorse you. You should start by reading their blog regularly, commenting on their blog and eventually linking to them. If they get it, and you're writing compelling stuff on your blog, they'll eventually start reading you, leaving comments and linking back. (If they don't ever link back, I recommend that you send them this post and tell them you're going to have to break it off if the blogversation doesn't go both ways.)
• Build your own network of blog buddies. When I started blogging, just like most new bloggers, I had no readers. I worked my way up to a few hundred readers - starting at one reader at a time. Once I made a blog buddy, I usually introduced my new blog buddy to other blog buddies. It's how Andrew and Noah met. It's how Greg got a job. As you start to build your network, most people will get it too. They'll start introducing you to others. Before you know it, you'll write a great article and 10 of your blog buddies will leave a comment or link to you from their blog. All of the sudden, their readers start to read your blog. Eventually, it takes off and your readership will grow a lot faster than one at a time.
• Don't stop reaching out to new people. Just don't stop making blog buddies like I did for awhile. They'll stay subscribed, but they won't be as active if you don't exercise your relationships.
• If you really want to grow your readership, fill out this form and start a business like PC4Media. All of my clients become my blog buddies. I'll happily show you how to do it. If you want to be my blog buddy, here's where you should apply OR just start linking to me.

I spent some time this past week helping out Dave Kurlan with his search engine optimization. Dave runs two successful companies. One was named to the Inc 5000 this year: Objective Management Group. The other (Dave Kurlan & Associates) was where I learned what I know about sales.

Dave is a guru on the subject of sales force development even among the sales development experts in the world. He's an expert among experts. 

Using HubSpot, I helped Dave identify some new keywords he should target in his search engine optimization efforts, as well as improve the prominence of his calls to action, with the goal of improving his already strong traffic and visitor to lead conversion rates.  Since he's a world reknowned expert and has a strong following in the blogosphere among sales develoment experts, his website is prominent in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) for a lot of relevant phrases related to sales force management.

At WhizSpark, I helped Dave market a handful of webinars for OMG and Rick Roberge and I teamed up on a local seminar for DKA. So, I've known Dave for a few years now. Dave was a successful HubSpot internet marketing client well before I joined HubSpot.

However, for a bunch of reasons, I figured it made sense for Dave to be a PC4Media member. The most important one was that I know my other clients would benefit from reading what he writes and from the services he provides. Dave is also a successful blogger and many of my clients who are just starting with blogging could benefit from seeing how he does it. So, as a start, I've launched a page under the PC4Media business directory that talks about OMG's sales assessments, as well as syndicates Dave's last few blog posts. I'm happy Dave has agreed.

Before I hired DKA to improve (err establish) my sales skills, I took the OMG sales assessment test to determine what my sales competencies and sales weaknesses were. It informed me and Rick what challenges I needed to overcome.

If you run a sales force and you don't use OMG's sales assessment tools, you're most likely making a lot of mistakes in your sales person recruiting and hiring process. If you run a sales force, and you never had your people evaluated, you should hire Dave to do a sales force evaluation to determine how to increase sales.  

Paid Search:

Link Building:

Social Media Addiction: 

I'm spending most of my time calling people who have expressed interest in HubSpot's strategic internet marketing platform.  Sometimes, I don't have the opportunity to dig into issues a business might be having when I call them. 

That's ok. Just in case it was a bad time, their boss just asked them to do something unreasonable, or their cat just died, this post might help them figure out whether I might be able to help them... when they have a moment.

Here's a list of things I help businesses with:

• Can you edit and add content to your website without paying your webmaster or waiting for the tech team to do it? Does your website go for months without anything new for visitors to read or for search engines to index?
• Is your online marketing strategy delivering results? Do you have one? Or does your website still look like the brochure you designed in 1999?
• Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) something "you think your web designer did" and not something you do everyday? Can you predict and measure the amount of traffic and leads you get as a result of your internal or outsourced SEO efforts? When you did keyword research, did you do anything more than brainstorm what your clients "might type" at google?
• Is your site visitor to lead conversion rate lower than 2%? Do you even measure that? Is your call to action a "Contact Us" button or buried at the bottom of the site?
• Do you have a blogging strategy that generates increased visitors and leads for your business?
• Do you know how to build links to your website that drive qualified visitors? How about links that increase your rankings in the search engines for the right search terms?
  
• Are you spending a lot of money on pay per click ads that send visitors to your home page instead of landing pages optimized to get the visitor to convert into a lead? Are you spending a lot on PPC ads without even investigating whether SEO could help you rank in the organic rankings?
• Do you have a strategy for Digg, Delicious, Myspace, Facebook and LinkedIn that again generates qualified traffic and leads? Have you even visited these sites to see how many of your prospects are interacting with your competitors?
  
• Are you still doing Public Relations primarily with a telephone instead of online SEO friendly wire services? How's that going?
  
• Are you tired of guessing what to do to market your busines online? Or worse, paying high-priced, do-little consultants to tell you what to do? Or even worse, paying very high priced firms to do things that you don't quite understand and they can't quite explain?
  
• Does your marketing department generate qualified timely leads for your sales people using the web? Do your sales people know how to support your online marketing efforts? Do your salespeople know how to generate their own leads from online networking?
• Do you have an email, web and webinar strategy that nurtures and educates your site visitors and prospects? Do people tell you, "I've been watching your company for a few months now. I'm ready to get started working with you."?

If they have one of these problems and they'd like to discuss how I can help them, I'm happy to make 15-30 minutes available for them free of charge to discuss their unique challenges and needs. If there's a fit after that, I'll also help them identify the business growth opportunities available to their specific business through online marketing. If we agree that I can help them solve their problems and there's sufficient opportunity to warrant an investment from them, I'll make an appropriate recommendation.

They should contact me through this form.

Most small and mid sized businesses are just dipping their toes into blogging. With keyword research and a good analytics package, it's not hard to plan and measure how blogging will impact the bottom and top lines for a business. If it's an ecommerce site, blogging is a no brainer. If you're a b2b company trying to generate leads... again... a no brainer. If you're b2c and people are passionate about your types of products (ie you sell wine not hammers), also a no brainer. If you're a realtor, you should be talking to Real Estate Tomato about how to start a real estate blog... umm... yesterday. (Of course, you shouldn't underestimate what's required to be successful with a blog - no matter who you are or what you sell.)

All that said, social media is still the wild west. There's no best practices. There are very few services that assist business owners in a meaningful way. The only businesses that are taking advantage of social media are big brand name F1000 companies. They have the budgets to deal directly with the big social networks and the budgets to tap the big ad agencies who deal with the big social networks.

Everyone else is sorta left figuring this out themselves. I've been able to successfully generate leads from social media activity. So has the internet marketing company I work for. We teach our clients best practices for the sites that actually drive traffic directly, and support our clients' SEO strategy. We also give them the tools to analyze effectiveness in terms of traffic, leads and soon: sales across their SEO, PPC, blogging, and blogosphere/social media activity. This informs what works and what they should do more of. For example, if Digg reaches your audience, you should learn how to use Digg. If you're trying to reach a younger crowd, join facebook. If you're trying to reach CEOs, start answering questions and endorsing people on LinkedIN.

But, this list could go on and on. How does someone know where to focus their efforts and how do they measure what's working before the leads come in? As this map indicates, you could literally spend all of 2008 registering and learning social media services. There certainly isn't a comprehensive tool within the reach of the average mid sized business to track all the leading indicators of social media success or failure. However, is it really necessary to track the leading indicators? If you have a website that converts visitors into leads and you can successfully generate traffic from social media sources and measure which social media sites send visitors with a high likelihod of converting to a lead... then... I'm left with the conclusion that you should just find yourself a social media advisor. I'm sure that 1 out of 50,000 people are like me (or the guys at Read/Write Web) who spend too much time tracking the social media landscape, who can interpret it and translate it for the average business owner so they know what to do first.

And if in doubt and you don't want to find an advisor, start with LinkedIn. If you're in business, chances are that your best prospects are on there.

Bruce Mendehlson and I have been chatting by email about this. I also spoke to Debra Simpson on the West Coast about this. I plan to speak with Rita Coco and Allison Chisholm about this too.

But, Bruce is the first one that has demonstrated some knowledge about what I think is required to make blogging work for businesses. Here's his thoughts:

There are A LOT of blogs out there, and many (in fact, most) are poorly written, rambling, off subject and add little (if any) value that relates back to the product, service, or business someone is trying to promote.

After all, it's challenging to compose relevant, compelling content on a regular basis--after a few dismal attempts most business owners move on to something else. It's not that they don't have the desire; they don't have the time or the discipline to devote to a labor-intensive product like a blog.

The key is to help your clients understand how a blog (or a podcast, RSS feed, widget, etc.) should and must be integrated within a broader marketing and communications plan. For example, if they have a product in R&D or coming to market, they'll want to use the blog to build interest in and excitement about the product or service. They'll want to create a dialogue with consumers in which consumers can share their thoughts about the product or service.

When it comes to blogging in our Web 2.0 world, it's all about the 5 C's: Collaboration, Content, Converged services, Community, and Conversation. Your job is not only to help business owners understand the important of blogging, but also to invest the necessary resources (time and money) to creating a well-written, interactive online dialogue through their blog.

This is extremely well said. Blogging is just a tool. It's how you use it that's critical.

I've signed on about 15 companies since the beginning of the year who all are in the process of starting their blog, at my suggestion. But, it's not something to enter into lightly. And it's not something I'd recommend someone do until they develop a strategy.

Blogging should fit into a strategy that supports the business. The ultimate goal of most marketing activities should be to generate interest from qualified prospects. So blogging should fit into their traffic and online lead generation strategy. In order to get the most out of it, the following should be done first:

1. Search Engine Optimization Keyword research to inform topics that should be written about. 
2. Launching a blog on a blogging platform that is optimized for SEO and community development - on your own domain name.
3. Reading and commenting on other blogs in order to start entering the conversation. 
4. A system in place that tracks new links, traffic and leads generated from the blogging activities.

If you don't do all of this, you run the risk of writing a blog that noone reads and adds no value to your business.

But, as Bruce points out it's equally important to go into blogging knowing that this is an investment of time and money, like any other marketing expenditure. So, it requires the right resources to pull it off.

In order to help my clients, I'm seeking a stable of professional writers who I can recommend. If you know anyone, please send them to this post and ask them to contact me here. I'm going to need to be comfortable that they can do what Bruce talks about, but also do what I bulleted above.

They are going to need to be able to coach clients towards their business goals using blogs as a tool.

Right now, "How to Generate Leads Using the Web" is the title of my blog. I'll probably change it at some point.

But, "generating leads via the web" is what I am helping my clients do. That won't change. I'm planning on doing a series of step-by-step videos to demonstrate how to do generate leads via Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click, Blogging and Engaging in the Blogosphere and on Social Media sites... for the benefit of my clients as well as readers. The knowledge to do this should be in everyone's hands. Right now, the knowledge I'm going to share is not known by many people. I'm about to piss off a lot of search engine optimization and social media marketing consultants. 

To do this stuff right, you don't "NEED" them. However, to do it right, you NEED the tools. Since I'm providing my clients with the tools, I have a lot of reasons to share the knowledge of "how to generate leads" openly. I'd rather educate a few hundred people at a time, than one on one.

The place to start is always with Keyword Research. Using the HubSpot tools, I've been able to help almost all of my clients identify keywords that:

• have a large amount of search volume,
• aren't too difficult to rank for in the organic search rankings,
• and where they are already ranking in the first 100 results in google's search engine result pages (SERPs)

These are the gems because with a little bit of work, it's easy to start ranking high on the first page and start enjoying that free traffic. But, since there are a lot of internet marketers publishing to the web, it's difficult to identify keywords for myself. (Luckily for me, Mike Volpe and the marketing team at HubSpot has done the work to rank for "internet marketing" and a bunch of other phrases, and they supply with as many leads as I can call.)

What I'm struggling with is how to show examples of doing it without giving away competitive advantage. For example, we discovered a few keywords that one of my clients should focus on, he changed his title tags and voila ... he went from result 79 to 9 in the SERPs. I would never share what those keywords are because it would make it too easy for his competitors to duplicate. The actual work he did to rank is obvious if his competitors simply look at his site, assuming they have enough knowledge of SEO. (0ne of his competitors already knew about this keyword and is optimized and ranks for it.)  However, I'm not going to advertise how he did it in a video. 

The struggle is over.

So, I'm happy to report that I discovered a solid keyword phrase, where pc4media ranks "19" in the SERPs and there's approximately 140 searchers per month. I would not have discovered if it wasn't for the integration of HubSpot's keyword research tools and web marketing analytics. A few people came to the site as a result of the search. Then, with one click I determined where I was ranking, how many people searched for that phrase in a month and whether or not it'd be difficult to get to the first page.  HubSpot's keyword tool tells me that it's not that difficult to get higher than I already am and I've already made a change to my site to get higher.

So, I've found a good one. Were you hoping I'd share it? Not until I do my videos. I don't want another internet marketing expert to wreck my progress while I'm making the video. I expect others to compete with me for the keyword after I do the video and lots of people see it. But, that's why search engine optimization is an ongoing process.  Also, by then, I'll have done a bunch of blogging, link building and social media marketing in order to rank. It'll be harder to duplicate my efforts. And I'm sure I'll find more terms to go after by then too. But, this'll serve as a good way to demonstrate "how to generate leads" via SEO.