Five Lead Generation Tools You Should Be Using Now

Lead generation is what gets your prospects hooked. It leads them to your front door without spending an extraordinary amount of time, effort, and sales dollars on prospecting. With the explosion of the Internet and social media sites, lead generation has become easier, but it also has become more confusing and segmented.

Here is a list of the top five lead generation techniques you should be employing right now. Don’t launch all five at once. Start slow and you’ll see how far your reach can go.

1. Blog.
At this point, starting a company blog is a no-brainer. Not only do frequent blog posts keep fresh content on your website and drive organic traffic, but they provide a real service to the customer. In your blog, you can explain how your products or services relate to Customer A. You can write simply about what’s going on in the industry to provide readers with a unique viewpoint. Your blog gives your company a voice that a product list—or even a staff biography—cannot.

2.  Microblog.
 Twitter is all the rage for a variety of reasons. From an Internet marketing point of view, it allows a type of interaction with the customer—or potential customers—that did not exist before. Start by searching for and adding others in your industry, post your blog entries, and respond to others’ inquiries (even if they have nothing to do with your company).  In a later post, I’ll discuss how to take your “Tweets” to the next level.

3.  Republish Content.
Use reputable sites to take your blog posts or articles, republish, and get valuable link backs. I republish a lot of content on Work.com and Google Knol.  Knol is similar to Wikipedia, but with more control. There you can publish your own original content about most any topic. Others can edit your content, but you have some regulatory control over what they can add to your content.

4.  Join the Masses.
And by masses, I mean the big social networks. Create a Facebook Fan page or group where you can get out even more information about your company, products and services. You can also link up with others who are simply there for networking purposes and are more than happy to help you get the word out. Other massive networks of worth are LinkedIn and Plaxo. Join where you can and make connections. Word-of-mouth has turned into word-of-wall-post.

5.    Assess Your Website.
All of the previous steps will drive traffic to your website, often in a big way. Is your website ready? Imagine the way a new user would look at the site. Is it easy to navigate? Can you quickly find a way to contact the company? Is the design eye-friendly? Most companies don’t have the time or budget to completely redesign, but minor tweaks can make a big difference.

In the next five blog posts, I’ll expand on these techniques and show you how they’ve worked for other companies and what you can do to make them work for you.

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Originally published in 2009 by Bizmanualz, Inc. under the title Five Lead Generation Tools You Should Be Using Now. All rights reserved. Reproduction permitted with attribution only. www.bizmanualz.com