About three weeks ago I wrote “Ready for a Business Blog?” and have been looking more and more into how companies are using blogs internally to communicate with and among employees and how they are using blogs publicly to increase knowledge about their products, increase visitor engagement, and generate sales leads.

Business Blog Examples

B.L. Ochman of whatsnextonline lists a handful of companies that use blogs in “Best Business Blog Examples and Why It’s Time to Think About a Business Blog for Your Company.” Companies listed in the article include IBM, American Airlines, and Daimler Chrysler. In addition to having one of the longest titles around, the article also gives a quick and clear idea of how various companies are using their sites to improve their businesses.

John of John’s Jottings introduced me to this case study about how Triple Point Technology uses internal blogs to improve internal information exchange. Essentially, employees use the blogs as compliments to email to share information and make that information easier to find.

Asheville Cabins uses it’s Asheville North Carolina Cabins Blog & News created by Blizzard Internet Marketing to update customers about regional events and general news in order to promote its customers. The inexpensive add-on to their site is a great way for Asheville Cabins to add content on continuous basis without having to get into the technical details of managing a website.

In “Your Daily Art: A great example of leveraging blogging” the great Dave Taylor covers how Martha Cleveland, the owner of Youngest Daughter Jewelry uses the Your Daily Art blog to promote her jewelry. I have subscribed to Your Daily Art for a while now and while Martha does still promote jewelry through the blog, it seems to have taken on a life of it’s own. Either way, it is a brilliant example of using a blog to gather a crowd so a product can be showcased.

Kevin O’Keefe of lexblog.com gives us this list of Fortune 500 companies that use blogs. It was written in 2005 but it is a heck of a good start. Does anyone know of a more updated list? It escaped my searches.

Roland Piquepaille wrote “How Boeing is Using Blogs” which is a great post in itself and includes links to other great articles as well.

Using Blogs to Generate Sales Leads

Believe it or not, it is hard to find companies (that are not online marketing companies) using blogs for the primary purpose of generating sales leads. I will be able to give a few more examples later and I am actually working on building two company blogs to generate sales leads right now but they will not be out for a few months at least.

“How to Write a Blog that Generates Leads” from RSS Pieces is a good article to start with. The post (and blog) is really aimed at generating real estate leads but the general idea of it is applicable to most businesses.

Chris Garret of chrisg.com discusses selling with blogs in Sales Lead Blogs - The Art of Selling with Your Blog and reminds us of how well it matches with AIDA. His summary:

Bottom line, use your blog to build desire effectively and you will find you are generating hot leads faster than ever before, without resorting to strong-arm pressure sales tactics. Better for you and your customers I am sure you will agree.

Chris followed up the article with “Where Blogs Fit Into Your Online Marketing Strategy” which you should also read.

My bottom line is that blogs are only growing in reach and acceptance among everyday internet users. Companies can use them internally for product launches, internal promotions, information sharing, and even to drive direction and purpose. Publicly, companies can use blogs to quickly and regularly create additional content, update visitors and customers about products and services, engage those visitors, and to generate additional sales and sales leads.

To get more sales leads from your website, call me at (832) 628-0987 or email me at chris@leadoptimize.com.