The free lead generation course is a series of videos that will take you step by step through the process of analyzing your market and setting up a publishing site using blogging software and capturing leads in tools that are designed to do just that.

Business Blogs can help readers make a better connection with your team – and that increases the desire to work with your company.

What should be included with your business blog author profile?

• Picture
• Name, Title
• Specialty
• Possibly some hobbies
• Links to LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook profiles

Don’t skimp on your business blog profiles.

Your corporate blog software should have robust personal blogs for each employee as well as aggregate the information into corporate blogs on key topics.

In that fashion, you can create a matrix of content across people and topics in your corporation and get more results for the same number of articles.

The stories about blogs that people hear in the news are the flashier ones, not the realistic ones.

Is the news going to talk about a 300% increase in someone’s website traffic after adding a blog?  Probably not.

But that company may be throwing a party because a 300% jump in online sales could be big.

Focus on a good outcome with business blogging, not the hype.

When business owners set up business blogs thinking that somehow the blog will help them, they often miss the big picture.

You must remember that business blog software is only a software system to manage your web content.  Writing regularly around topics that are important to your target audience is what brings in business.

If you do write well and frequently, then you will experience some traffic to your business blog.

But traffic does not usually help your business grow.

You need to have a web strategy to either make money via affiliates and advertising, or you need to do sales lead generation for your business.

A lot is written about how to generate income via affiliate strategies.  But what is less often written about is how to create real leads for your business from a business blog.

Here are some ways to achieve business lead generation.

1. Visitors download report or white paper – Offer free white papers or reports to visitors in exchange for their contact information.
2. Autoresponders – You can use email auto responder tools to create automatic email courses or drive interest or sales.
3. CRM Forms – If you use a good CRM, it will have web forms that you can embedd.  You can use these forms on your business blog to invite people to schedule a free consultation or demo.
4. Social Media Connections – Make following you in Twitter, FaceBook or LinkedIn easy.  These people will keep getting regular messages from you if you use the tools, and some may become leads eventually.
5. Webinar Attendence – Invite people to sign up for your webinar or teleseminar.
6. Video Download – This strategy is very common now – people will happily add an email to a form to watch a video with a great tip or secret in it.

There are many more ways to do business lead generation with your business blog software, but these are some of the most common.  Just remember, when you get a business blog set up, that is your starting point for lead generation and writing.  It is not the final product.

Before investing in any type of sales lead tool, you should think about the following.

1. Your lead generation must be able to target your target market
2. Lead Generation must be a business system that can be measured
3. Demonstrate a ROI that justifies its expense and time after an expected trial period

Commit to Lead Generation – then move on.

There is nothing wrong with trying something that ends up not working.  You should be trying new things within your budget that are targeted and measurable to generate sales and targeted leads all the time.  If someone sells you a lead generation system and says you will get results and then it does not happen, stop doing it and move that budget to a different lead generation trial.  But make sure you give it a reasonable amount of time first.

For example, Buzzoodle is an organic lead generation tool.  To know if it is working and how long it will take to get great leads you have to look at the competition in the marketplace to assess the results.  It can produce sales in as little as a few weeks but it depends on the leads target market for your business.  Lead generation with blogs does work great for most marketplaces, but only when you commit to a solid strategy and make a clear call to action.  Just having a blog that is not business blog oriented will not produce sales leads.

The Generation of Sales and Targeted Leads  is going to increase greatly if you start with your end goal in mind with any lead generation product.  You may say you are going to spend $5,000 on advertising in trade publications and if you first set a goal of the number of targeted leads you want to get from the advertisement, you will know if it has a good return.  How will you monitor the lead generation and sales from the advertisement?  If it turns out to have a great return on investment in the form of closed sales, you are going to spend $5,000 every month, right?  So you have to know the metrics and goals going into any sales effort or targeted lead generation.

The best blog software around will not get you results unless you also get some linking into the business blog and also make a clear call to action.  No matter what business blog platform you are using, here are some tools that you can combine with the rss from your business blog and get better results automatically.

1. Twitter with Socialtoo
2. FaceBook
3. Blog Catalog
4. Tumblr
5. WordPress.com – Start a blog and add your main blog feed on the right in a widget.
6. MyBlogLog
7. Blogger.com – Same as wordpress in strategy.

It is important to realize that many of these tools have been heavily exploited by spammers and do not carry much credibility when you first set them up.  But if you keep using them over time they gain credibility and will rank higher and generate some steady traffic to your main business blog.

If you have employees and are implimenting a blogging strategy, make sure that your Corporate Blog Software supports multiple users and well as virtual blogs that are keyword focused.

There are different ways to do this.  One way is to have the corporate blog software create virtual blogs that adjust to the keyword focus.  Another way is to set up a new blog on a sub-domain of each and every keyword you want to target.

There are some advantages to the sub-domain strategy, but it is a lot of work.  It can be effecitve if you use WordPress MU.

Ultimately, it comes down to your people more than your corporate blog software.  If your people write and get involved, your corporate blog will be more successful

Even when you invest in great business blog software, it is still a good idea to set up free blogs in places like blogger, WordPress and others.

You can often do things that are less strategy and more free writing.

You can also use them as another way to get visibility in search engines.

Your free blog can also have a very tight theme.  For example, this business blog software tips blog is only going to be a series of short tips on how to get the most out of your business blogging software.

We are not going to cover things outside of that quick blog tip focus.