Use Lead-Gen Tactics on Blogs: Baggott

It’s not enough just to have a company blog, or blogs, said Chris Baggott, the former chief marketing officer of e-mail service provider ExactTarget, in a recent interview.

Baggott, now founder of Compendium Blogware, recommends using company blogs to increase the odds of the company appearing in organic search results and then following up with fairly standard online lead-generation strategies that many companies miss.

“Search engines love fresh content,” said Baggott. And blogs are the perfect vehicle to deliver it on a daily basis, he added.

However, there are a couple of tactics that many companies miss when they set up corporate blogs.

For example, most executives think of blogging from the top down, and, as a result, conclude that the CEO or some other top-level executive should be writing the posts.

Not so, said Baggott. “The people who should be blogging are those that are customer-facing,” he said. These are the folks who are most in touch with the issues that affect customers and the problems they are most likely to turn to the company to want to solve.

Moreover, a bunch of customer service reps can churn out reams of fresh content, compared to a CEO who may be able to crank out one or two posts a week of marginal interest to customers and prospects.

In order to turn blog visits into potential sales, Baggott also recommends some fairly straightforward lead-generation tactics, such as offering whitepapers for download or Webinars that address the issue discussed in a particular blog post.