Thank you for stopping by!

Would you give up your blog? Why do you keep writing it? If the newsletter is getting you more leads, why not ditch the blog and focus your energies on producing an e-newsletter every month?

You are correct, I haven’t sent out a newsletter in a couple of months. But even my only occasional newsletter generates lots of leads and sales where my blog which has been more regularly updated hasn’t.

By the way, have your read technorati’s State of the Blogsphere 2008?
http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/ It supports your point about blogging leading to wrirting and speaking assignmments as one of the key benefits.

Bloggers mention leads and sales as benefits too, but at the bottom of the list. And there wasn’t any evidence presented that it works for leads and sales. I’m still looking…

Sincerely,
Mac

M. H. (Mac) McIntosh
http://www.sales-lead-insights.com

The only B2B company I know that has used viral successfully is Cisco — they recently ran a viral campaign to promote the launch of a new router. I do not know how many leads they generated from the campaign.

I think social media is great for *influencing* purchasing decisions versus driving leads or sales. It’s also a great way for getting the word out about your white paper, launch, etc. in a way that an e-newsletter cannot.

Social media is also a great way to get “known” online. My client, for example, has a blog and due to it, was asked to write a regular column for an industry portal.

However, despite all the buzz about social media, I still think e-newsletters are wonderful because they do help drive leads and sales. It’s why I still publish one.

BTW, Mac, I haven’t received an e-newsletter from you in months.

After two years, my blog (www.sales-lead-insights.com) has won awards but has generated less than ten percent of the number of subscribers who have signed up for my newsletter (www.imninc.com/macmcintosh) over the same period.

More important, I can track lots of leads and sales from my newsletter. Only a handful of sales leads and no closed sales have come from my blog.

An evaluation of my blog’s readers who are RSS and e-mail subscribers shows that most are either other B2B marketing bloggers, suppliers of B2B marketing products or services who post comments as a way to promote their own business, or competitors. Few are actual decision makers or key influencers at the kinds of companies that buy my sales lead consulting and marketing speaking/training services.

Not content to learn from just my own experience, I’ve been asking bloggers and other B2B marketers who use blogs and social media, to show me more than anecdotal evidence that those tools are driving B2B leads and sales.

Unfortunately none have been able to, with the notable exception of Blendtec’s “Will it Blend?” campaign, a video-based campaign that resulted in a 500% increase in B2B sales driven by consumer demand created by the videos which are powerful demonstrations of the company’s blenders.

Dianna, if you or any of your readers have any quantifiable evidence of blogs and social media driving B2B leads and sales, please share the proof with me.

One of the benefits of blogging and social media I hear about most often relates to SEO. However, I think that if most B2B marketers put the same money and effort into organic search optimization of their websites, they would see a higher ROI than they get from their blogs and social media.

Dianna, I haven’t given up on blogs and social media, but at the moment I find them to be more effective at branding than at generating leads and driving sales, and have come to believe that blogs and social media are a “nice to have” rather than a “need to have” tools in the B2B marketers’ toolkit.

Sincerely,
Mac

M. H. (Mac) McIntosh
http://www.sales-lead-experts.com