How to Capitalize on the Readership of Other Blogs to Generate Leads for Your Business

I’ve come across many business owners who believe that any type of effective lead-generation tool costs money. To the surprise of many, you don’t have to spend a dime to generate leads online.

One of the best free tools for lead generation is other industry blogs. When you are active on industry blogs with a high readership, you are able to showcase your industry expertise and gain exposure to other industry professionals, your target audience, and other markets. No need to purchase ad space on blogs. Simply follow my easy, step-by-step Undercover Lead Extractor Process that shows you how to use other industry blogs as lead-generation tools, and increase exposure—today.

See below for easily digestible steps to extracting leads online:

Step 1: Uncover and Discover: Figure out where your target audience plays online; specifically, what blogs does your target market read? If you have trouble thinking of blogs your audience might be reading, then first decide what magazines they’d be reading. This will help you to understand what information your audience is looking for. Then, search for blogs that provide similar content to these magazines.

Whenever you come across a blog that appears relevant to your audience, read through some of the blog posts and comments. If it appears that the blog author is publishing valuable content that is constantly generating comments from members of your target audience and other industry professionals, you’ve found a great blog to be present on.

You want to come up with a list of approximately five great blogs to be active on.

Step 2: Track: When you have your list of five blogs, follow the blog authors on social media sites (many times, bloggers will have social media contact information on their blog sidebar). Read through the content these authors publish on social media platforms to get a deeper insight into the context of their conversations, and to observe how their followers react to their content on these social networking sites.

Step 3: Observe: For about a week or so, read the posts published on each of the five blogs. This will help you familiarize yourself with the topic of conversation and the context in which the conversation is occurring. Jumping into a random discussion is not a good way to impress bloggers and blog followers.

To ensure that you stay up-to-date with newly published posts, subscribe to the RSS feed of each blog, or subscribe for updates via email.

Step 4: Take Action: It’s now time to start commenting! But before you do so, familiarize yourself with a few commenting dos and don’ts:

• Do add value and expertise to the conversation.
• Don’t provide a generic comment to any post. This often appears spam-like and illustrates that you don’t have expertise in the subject being discussed. Not a good impression to make on your target audience and other professionals in your industry.
• Do give positive feedback.
• Don’t be a Debbie-Downer, even if you disagree with what the author or commenter is saying. Rather, offer constructive criticism, and be respectful of other opinions.
• Do pique the interest of the author and other viewers. Authors and / or blog readers who are intrigued by your comment may want to visit your blog and comment.
• Don’t take someone else’s comment and put it in your own words for an easy way out. Provide a unique insight into the conversation, and offer your own opinion.

**The mother-of-all don’ts: DO NOT promote your company in a blatant manner, and don’t place links to your marketing materials in your comments. Comments that are promotional and contain links are often marked as spam.

When you begin to comment and offer valuable opinions and advice, you’re gaining exposure and increasing your chances of getting the blog readers into your sales funnel.

Step 5: Go the Distance: Don’t stop now. Once you’ve established yourself as a frequent commenter and the blogger is familiar with you and your expertise, ask the blogger if he or she would be willing to write a guest blog for your blog. If he or she is willing, they will most likely promote their guest appearance to their blog readers, subsequently driving targeted traffic to your blog.

Want to receive instant updates to your email? Subscribe to our blog via email, using the subscription box to the left on this blog’s sidebar.

If you like this post, you might also like:

1. Bring Your Business Vision to Life Today: Build Blog Readership
2. Blogs We Love and Why
3. Top 5 Plugins for WordPress Blogs