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Are You Alive? Why Your Blog is the Heartbeat of Your Business.

Guest post by: Jeff Ogden

Article Overview: Websites rarely change, but customers and google spiders constantly search the web looking for news. This is why a robust blog is important to every business.

Free Download - Marketing Made Simple TV is looking for a few good sponsors By Jeff Ogden
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Are You Alive? Why Your Blog is the Heartbeat of Your Business.

As part of my day-to-day activities at the b2b demand generation and global marketing companyFind New Customers, I research the websites of lots and lots of companies. I find typically a Resource Page with eBooks, white papers, webinars, etc. Nice stuff. Sometimes (not very often) they have a decent sign-up form. But there’s a problem.

I’ve never heard of the firm. They’re invisible.


I’ve come to the inescapable conclusion is that the reason they are invisible is their business had no heartbeat. A heartbeatHeartbeat happens continually as long as you are alive. By the same token - marketing in business to business needs a heartbeat too. That’s your blog. Blogs are regularly updated, like a heartbeat. Buyers are looking for companies with a heartbeat – regular publishers of content. They need to be constantly reminded that your business is alive. Unfortunately, so does Google and Bing. When they ping a website, they look at how recently it was updated. So that heartbeat is important in search rankings too.


The Problem with Websites
They are static. They rarely, if ever change. I hear people say “Our website is outdated. We need a new one.” I think that’s a wrong position. Instead, they need to think about publishing daily and weekly – good content that answers buyers questions. A good, robust blog is updated several times a week – at least. (But Fearless Competitor is updated every day.) It contains your keywords and links back to your website. It demonstrates to the world that your business is alive and alerts the search engines to your presence.


Seed Nurturing
Jon Miller, VP of Marketing at Marketo talks about the importance of seed nurturing – plant “seeds” all over the internet to make it easy for people to find and engage. Jon's right – a blog let’s you share content, such as eBooks, webinars, thought leadership and more - that you can seed all over the internet. By continually publishing, your business has a regular heartbeat that prospective buyers see. Your business is alive.


The Importance of Syndication
Another way to show your heartbeat is to syndicate your blog. Our blog publishes to Evan Carmichael, CustomerThink, B2Community, Linkedin, Facebook and many other sites. By syndicating your content, you are planting seeds for your business all over the internet – seed which, if they germinate, lead right back to your business. Where can you syndicate your blog?


Blog as a Sharing Vehicle Let’s say you regularly publish content. Webinars, e-books, white papers, videos, etc. How do your share the word about your content? Let’s look at how a blog can help you promote a white paper. Let’s say you have a brand new white paper, such as “The CMOs Guide to the Crazy New World of Marketing” (the actual title of my next white paper for Silverpop). Do you simply post and pray? Let’s say instead you sit down with the author and record a video interview with him on the ideas behind the white paper. Then you post those video clips to YouTube and Vimeo. Next, you can write a series of blog articles about that interview and attach the videos. Those blog posts will be shared with your syndication network too. Bingo! You and your content are all over the internet. Your business is alive and everyone sees you’re alive. Also read "How to Turn a Good White Paper into a Great Demand Generation Piece."


Our Personal Story While we’d love to update our website, Find New Customers, we decided to instead invest in our blog. We spent quite a bit of money to updateFearless Competitor for the New Year. We felt that since our blog is updated frequently (almost 365 times a year), having a professional-looking blog would be the very best way to grow Find New Customers. We invite you to check it out at Fearless Competitor. P.S. When I interviewed Mark Schaefer of Businesses Grow for Mad Marketing TV, he said that blogs are great, even if no one reads them. Because Google reads them. And we agree that job seekers really ought to blog = in many ways it helps the world know they are alive. Are you ready to show the world that your business is alive?
P.S. In addition to being the President of Find New Customers, Jeff Ogden is a professional blogger who writes for companies such as Silverpop and Aprimo. He is also a professional writer and speaker.

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Home > Marketing > Jeff Ogden > Are You Alive Why Your Blog is the Heartbeat of Your Business >
Article Tags: B2B demand generation, B2B lead generation, btob demand generation, btob lead generation, Find New Customers, global marketing, lead generation companies, lead nurturing, lead scoring, sales lead generation

About the Author: Jeff Ogden
RSS for Jeff's articles - Visit Jeff's website

President of the B2B lead generation company Find New Customers. Also the host of the B2B marketing show, Mad Marketing TV. We help companies rapidly grow revenue by transforming the ways they attract, engage and win new customers.

With 8 out of 10 companies saying the lack of quality sales leads is their biggest problem, they need help. SiriusDecisions also found that fewer than 1 out of 10 companies that implement lead management software went beyond the basics. They need help.

We help companies implement world class lead generation programs. Companies need quality sales leads, so they need sales lead generation programs including social media marketing. They need to implement lead nurturing programs. We are considered one of the best leads generation companies in business today.

Click here to visit Jeff's website Dashed Line

More from Jeff Ogden
7 Keys to B2B Marketing Succes
How to Find New Customers
Definitive Guide Making Quota
7 Keys to Lead Nurturing


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Re: Best Internet Marketing Strategy Re: Best Internet Marketing Strategy - Hi David, I agree about the Blogosphere. You have a smaller group that Blog, but do so on the premise that they think they should, but have never really considered the purpose of their Blog. Then I think there are a few SEO or Internet Marketing types that see Blogging as just another link building strategy. But the largest group of Bloggers, tend to be people who enjoy writing and discussing their topics of interest. Blogging is good for link building, but the true Blogger is a breed apart from the rest. They want to dialog, to debate, to have feedback and they are very willing to link to other worthwhile conversations that are relevant to their topic. I agree with you. These group of Bloggers obviously are passionate about their writing and together, they create huge conversation trails interactive and travel from Blog to Blog. But the evidence is clear with this group that loves what they write about. With comments enabled on a Blog and having a Blog tuned to a specific purpose you already have the evidence of original Social Media.
My entry My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Re: Alexa Ranking Goals Re: Alexa Ranking Goals - That's great GT! What method did you use to put up the Entrepreneur Blog Network in your Wordpress Blog? We're always looking for the easiest methods to help bloggers who are not techies get involved.
EvanCarmichael.com suggestion EvanCarmichael.com suggestion - Maybe I missed it but I would like to suggest that a Blog be created to support the Forum. The idea is that in the blog you put in snippets of some of the biggest conversations with a 'read more' link to the forum itself. Setting up the Blog and clipping some conversations onto it wouldn't take very long.
Jen's Blog - Spam protection Jen's Blog - Spam protection - Jen, I like the Blog and just posted a comment to one of your articles. From my experience you need to implement some sort of SPAM capture tools. i use them on my Blog and it's been a life saver as I'm getting hit by spam atleast 5 times a day. I use Wordpress and they have plugins like Captcha and SPAM Karma installed.


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