A recent client of Buzzoodle.com was getting such good traffic to their WordPress business blog that they wanted to delete it.

Why?  Well watch this video and see how their logic went. As a side note, this is what happens when a programmer is asked why the main website is not performing well – they blame the other site on stealing. Not cool.

I frequently get people looking for lead capture software and that is the one thing our Buzzoodle lead generation system does not do.  The reason is simple.  Lead capture should be done with your sales software, not a separate form that then needs to be ported over to your sales system.

Now for some people, a simple and cheap lead capture form is all they need and to those people I recommend aWeber Autoresponder.  Now keep in mind, it is better to use a good CRM like Salesforce or InfusionSoft, but if you need a cheap lead capture system and you want to maximize your investment, you cannot go wrong with aWeber.

Now you may wonder why not a free lead capture software solution, which is possible with a WordPress lead capture plugin.  You can go that route, for sure, but for a small monthly fee you can use the aWeber Autoresponder to build nicer forms, capture any data you want, get great reports and schedule follow up emails with your new leads.  This last point is so important.  If you can automate your sales process you will be more productive, sell more and work less.  Sounds good, right?

So go check out aWeber and if you really have to, use a free lead capture software solution but as soon as you can, make the switch to something that is going to get you better results.

Hiring a blog writer is a great investment if you have a sound strategy and you are using blogging tools to target lead generation.

But blog writers are as diverse as graphic designers.  Some are super, but expensive.  And some cheap blog writers are not worth their cheap wage.

But this is not a situation where there is a right and a wrong.  It depends on your site, the quality of the blog posts you want and your tolerances for less quality blog posts.

Keeping a well targeted blog fresh by posting light articles regularly is important.  But if you are using your blog to be an industry expert, you cannot just hire anyone to do that.

If you are not in the Internet Marketing industry, you may not be aware that there are blog writing software tools that grab content from other sites and let you lightly rewrite it and post it as original. That might be OK if you do not care about quality and accuracy, but it is not appropriate for quality blogs.

So if you are trying to build a good blog site, how do you hire blog writers that will do a good job for you?

You can begin by running ads in trade magazines or spending time in industry forums.  Decide what a good article is worth to you and pay a flat fee per article and hire a few people to write for your blog.

This is not the cheapest way to get content, but it is very effective at getting quality blog content at a manageable price.   And you will be surprised how many people are out there looking for a side blog writer job.

I am a sucker for well designed and implemented Internet Marketing software.  I have to say that Andy Jenkins does a great job and go look at Kajabi.  It wowed me so much I signed up to promote it and I usually do not spend my time doing that.

Of course, one of the trickiest things about doing a membership site is producing great content, and Kajabi does not do that for you.

But what Kajabi does do is speed up the process of building your professional membership site and also streamlining your marketing in an incredible way.

Now to be clear, I am just getting access myself to this system so it is too early to say how well I like it or how effective it is.  However, even thought I am capable of building most of these features myself, it is too time consuming.

Do not underestimate the importance of the Kajabi marketing features.  I have written on other websites about membership site software that picking the software, creating the content and setting up the entire thing is hard and it is only the beginning.  Marketing a membership site is also difficult and takes a lot of time to reach a critical mass.  I have seen friends struggle for years trying to build their membership site only to find at the end that now they have to learn marketing.  (I warn them, but they often do not listen)

As is to be expected at this point, Kajabi has a money back guarantee and even currently has a free Kajabi two week trial period to see if it is right for you.  Seems like a no brainer if you are interested in building a top tier Internet Marketing business.

A few years ago I strictly sold higher end solutions.  No PHP, no open source and no free tools.

I come from a big corporate background and using enterprise tools was the only way to go.

And while there is some use for it still, you really have to get out of this mentality if you are still thinking this way.  For example, there are enterprise blogging systems, but are they really necessary?  Every SEO expert I talk to says WordPress beats any enterprise blogging system – and it is a free, open source blogging platform.

Now you may still want to use a system like our lead generation blogging system to help your WordPress site perform better, but you are still on an Open Source Blogging system you own.

Then there was that whole .Net thing.  I never did think there were big advantages.  Once we switched to .Net everything took longer, things were harder to update and at times we could not debug easily.  I was sold on why it was better but it never seemed better to me, although my programmers liked it.  Now I do everything exclusive PHP.

About 9 months ago a client called me and wanted me to set up Oracle for him.  I was at the library with my daughter, but I asked him what we was trying to do with it.

He needed a simple time keeping system that could be accessed from remote locations.

I pointed him to Google Docs and saved him tens of thousands of dollars – and he loves the solution.

The idea of Enterprise software has changed.  I prefer multiple tools good at specific things instead of complex packages that try to do everything.

I prefer open source.

I prefer things that can plug into other things and leverage the specialty of the initial software.

And I prefer our WordPress integrated publishing and lead generation software to any Enterprise Blog Software you could buy.

What are the best practices for blog lead generation?

I hope you do not question whether a blog can generate leads or not.  It can and does every day.

However, it is not the fact that it is a blog that makes it a lead generator.  It is because it is the perfect tool to develop a content marketing strategy to attract buyers and generate leads.

The first thing you need to do it to decide what your blog lead generation strategy is.  There are two very different strategies, and you can pursue both, but you should do so on two different blogs.

#1 is developing your expert status. This is when you build relationships with your readers and write interesting things frequently.  This is hard and takes time, but the payoff can be big.  People like Chris Brogan have leveraged a blog into a speaking career, author and more.  However, this is a bit of a crap shoot and I do not like to encourage this approach unless someone understands it will probably take years and will take a very steady effort over that time.

#2 is utilizing WordPress as an SEO and lead generation tool.  In this approach, you set up a blog targeting niche keywords and work the system to rank well in search for those words.  When people land on the blog from search engines they get the article and also see your clear call to action and some will become leads for you.

The good thing about #2 is that you can expect faster results normally and you do not have the pressure of writing extremely unique articles several times a week.  This is especially important for people that want leads in areas that are not so flashy.  For example, if you have a steak restaurant or a roofing company, do you really want to become an industry expert or do you just want some targeted, local leads?  Obviously the second option is the best for those kinds of businesses.

The problem with many marketers and Internet consultants is they think one size fits all.  They keep beating the drum of relationships and expert status, when all someone really wants is 10 more inbound leads per month that are worth $200,000 per month in new sales and cost $100 to generate and took about an hour of their time in the month.  (example)

The social media consultants that are selling relationships need to start taking their own advice and listening to business owners.  Most want results, not fluff.  Blog lead generation works if you understand what your goal is up front and focus on it.

Building your own free lead generation website is not hard.  Promoting your lead generation site to the point that you get fantastic results is not as easy.  First I am going to let you in on the secrets of building a lead generation website and then this article will give you some of the details that you will need to consider to get fantastic results.

Building that free lead generation website is going to take a couple of steps, but anyone can do it.  To begin with, you need to download the free lead generation software that contains lead generation videos and a free WordPress lead generation template that you can use to optimize the open source WordPress software to build your own lead generation engine.

But before you worry about the lead generation software and website, you need to do some keyword research on the key phrases that your target market is searching for.  The videos walk you through this process, but it is essential.  If you have not taken the time to identify key phrases that get steady traffic and have lower levels of competition, you are not going to develop a site that targets profitable key phrases that have a positive return on investment.

Next you want to build a lead generation site in WordPress that is optimized for search engine ranking as well as for lead generation.  This is easy with the WordPress lead generation templates that are available for free and in premium sites.  These themes combine SEO and clear calls to action to make your WordPress Lead Generation Blog produce more leads for you.

Lastly you want to understand why your site will get results.  It is a combination on regular, fresh articles that use your keywords plus links back to your site with the anchor text with the keywords and the testing of your call to action once you reach a good number of visitors, to assess which call to action produces a higher percentage of leads.

If it seems to simple, it is.  But what stops people is that it takes consistent effort over time.  You have to ask yourself if targeted lead generation is worth the effort for you.

What is Lead Generation?

Some people will say that lead generation is referrals.  In fact, even an Internet Marketing guy like me agrees that for many businesses, referrals and word of mouth are the best lead generation strategy.

But who said you have to pick just one?

The fact is, you should build several lead generation systems and measure their effectiveness.  For example, document your referral and word of mouth lead generation strategy.  Does it include thank you letters?  Does it include affiliate payouts?  Do you know who is recommending the most leads to you?

Next, look at your advertising and promotions options.  Yellow Page advertising used to be a necessity, but now I see well crafted lead generation websites getting much better returns for much smaller expenses, because many people turn to the search engines to find a company to help them with their problem.  Am I saying not to do lead generation with Yellow Page ads?  Absolutely not.  If your industry gets leads that way in the past, then keep doing it but track it carefully.  How much profit are you making on the leads that come from that source?  Is it covering the marketing costs?  Every year these returns keep getting weaker in many cases so you cannot blindly assume that because it was a profitable lead generation source it will continue to be one in the future.

Of course, advertising in magazines, newspapers, on websites and in email newsletters are all ways to do lead generation that can be effective.  You must test and measure to find which ones are worth continuing to do.  Remember that there are diamonds in the rought.  I know someone that pays $50 per year for a banner advertisement that produced 6 figures in sales per year.  Those things are out there but they are hard to find.

Lastly, continue building a lead generation website for your business.  This is not something that usually produces results the first week, but over time it can become your most valuable asset to your business.  A good lead generation website can be set up for a fraction of the cost of other marketing efforts and often produces much higher results once the site started getting noticed and ranked well in search engines.

The reason that a lead generation website, separate from your traditional business website, is important is that it does not mess up your other marketing and it is able to focus on one clear, measurable goal.  One of the strongest selling points to what we help people do is that we are not touching their existing website.

Lead generation results can be developed and increased if a business is willing to go through the process and build out the strategy.  It is the same techniques that lead generation companies use to collect and sell leads, but you build the site for yourself and the lead generation is exclusive to you.

Not all website keyword research is created equal. One of the programs I offer charges for keyword research and sometime people ask me why. After all, many SEO people will do free keyword research and then try to sell their services after the fact.

Ultimately you need to know that you are getting what you pay for. I could also use software that would look at your existing website and figure out what keywords are important to you based on your existing text. However, how valuable is this really? Think about it. Do you really think that you have naturally written and targeted the best industry keywords with high traffic and low competition? Do you think you are using the exact phrases that you prospecive buyers are searching for? Probably not.

Recently I worked with a client that already had traditional SEO services and he had the report that the SEO specialist had produced for him. I told him if he wanted to reduce the fee we could use those keywords, but could not assure him of any particular results.

Even he knew that the SEO person had really not done any serious research. The list of 1,300 prespective keywords we gave him also had a filtered list of keywords we thought were better for his product and ultimately had a third list of the 100 or so best keywords to target for his industry.

The little bit he spent with us gave him a real look at what his buyers were looking for as well as an idea of the competition for those keyword phrases so he could target the low hanging fruit.

Buyer Beware: Not all keyword research is created equal.

First off, I am not casting any stones here.  If I write a post on one of my blogs and there are not mistakes or typos in it, it is the exception, not the norm.  I enjoy writing and I enjoy teaching, but I have never been a natural good speller.  When my book went to print, I found a misspelling on the cover and had to pay to have it reloaded.  And I was being careful that time.

I get the question all the time when doing blog speeches.  How careful should I be with my writing standards?

Well, I just came from reading a news article on CNN and it had several obvious mistakes in it.

I do not care.  I understand it is breaking news.  I respect that they are putting out new stuff all the time.  But it did make me realize that it is not just us bloggers that are guilty of lower editorial standards.  The web moves fast and more content (if it has value) is better than less.

So Should You Worry About typos?

The answer is that it depends on what you want to achieve.  With typos, some companies have very high standards because of protecting their image.  If I was a lawyer or an accountant, I would not want to be sloppy because I am in a field that requires attention to detail.  If I sell writing services, then I would also not want to have typos because one typo will jump out at people and kill sales.

Ultimately, it depends on your audience and your desired outcome.  I am fine with typos in breaking news, other people will rant and rave about lower journalistic standards.  How important is it that you make everyone happy?