How To Use Twitter & Blogging for Lead Generation in a Small Business

Jun 20, 2010

By Dan Nieves

Blogs and Twitter can be a great way for your small business to increase leads. According to HubSpot, inbound marketing has the potential to bring more leads for less money. Small and medium-sized business have the opportunity to level the playing field with some of the big guys by strengthening their online presence. The focal point of social media is engagement and by regularly adding blog posts and content on Twitter, you can do just that. Another value add of frequent blogging and tweeting is that it can boost rankings on search engines such as Google. By having a more visible presence online and engaging the community comes the potential to increase your customer base.

So Why Tweet & Blog?

  1. Engagement. Both Tweeting and Blogging provide an excellent means to become engaged online.
  2. Drive Traffic. Tweeting can help drive traffic to your organization's website and company blog (then your blog can help position your organization as a knowledgeable and valuable resource...a 1-2 punch!)
  3. Build search engine presence. More blog content means more pages indexed on major search engines like Google. The more pages your organization has, the better the odds of someone coming across your business. And with search engines now including real-time results, tweeting can give you another opportunity to increase your online presence.
  4. Lead generation. The numbers don't lie, SMBs who are tweeting and blogging are generating more leads, some cases nearly double the amount.
Twitter

Let's take a look an interesting graph on the effect of Twitter usage:

Effect of Twitter Usage on Median Number of Monthly Leads Among B2C SMBs in North America, by Number of Employees, December 2009-February 2010As you can see, those SMBs that were using Twitter had nearly twice as many monthly leads as those who were not using Twitter. If used correctly, Twitter can be a vital tool in lead generation. Twitter can be great for highlighting services and products your business offers, relevant articles to your industry and simple, engaging conversation. With that being said, it can be just the tool your business needs to compliment your marketing and drive potential leads to your business.

According to eMarketer, companies with 100-500 followers on Twitter generated 146% more median monthly leads than those with 21 to 100 followers. Beyond the 500 mark, there was no further gain. It is quality and not quantity when it comes to Twitter followers, so seek to create a loyal and engaged following. Furthermore, Tweeting can be another means of spreading the word about your business by growing search engine presence, Google for example, as they now pick up real-time results.

Blogging
In addition, blogging also has been found to increase monthly median leads. Companies who blog regularly were found to have nearly double the amount of monthly leads than those who did not blog. A key factor to remember is that blog content must be added regularly in order to keep visitors engaged and coming back to your site. Frequent, pertinent blog content demonstrates credibility and can allow you to position your organization as a valuable resource.  People buy from people they trust, so start by being a trusted resource.

Blogs are a great means to be engaged as well as an outstanding way to increase brand awareness. Regular blog content can help companies increase the number of pages they have indexed by major search engines such as Google and Bing.  The more you blog, the greater the opportunity for someone to come across your company. According to HubSpot, organizations that have more pages indexed on Google tended to generate more leads.

Is your small business tweeting and blogging? If not, start ASAP!