You work and sweat over your business blog, you have a heard of loyal traffic, but still no sales. All this effort and nothing to show for it, your business blog even has comments and visitor interaction. How to increase sales from a business blog?

Listen up, just because you have traffic to your business website doesn't mean you'll have buyers. Message board systems had the same problem. Unless you are actively capturing and converting your visitors in separate marketing systems you'll likely be frustrated with your results.
This is because several types of people visit business blogs:

1. Information gatherers. They may not be looking to make a purchase, nor have the ability, but they are really interested in the topic of your blog.
2. Self promoters. The guru's are telling marketers to post on other blogs to get traffic for themselves, this artificially increases activity for you.
3. Industry big mouths. These people have something to say and they are going to say it where ever they can, but instead of working they read blogs all day.
4. Prospects considering a purchase. These individuals want to answer specific questions before they make a purchase, they are active readers looking specific information.
5. Buyers staying informed. Your existing customers will visit your blog to learn how to improve their results with your product, and answers around their questions about your solution.
6. Industry experts staying informed. They come to your site to stay ahead of trends, changes in the market place, and to increase their understanding of your field.
7. Your competitions sales team. Watching your every move to maintain a competitive advantage, this group monitors what you say, often echoing the same theme in their own words.
8. Content and affiliate marketers. Looking for high payout keywords, these individuals often scrape your content for advertising sites or to build association with their own websites.
9. The lost and confused. Stumbling onto your website from search engines, cross references, and not really doing anything, but still showing up in your web analytics as visitors.

The reason many business blogs fail to be profitable or to create customers is because contributors cater to all these types of visitors. With the misguided thought that “Success is measured by traffic“, they think any visitor is better than none.
I'm here to suggest the only traffic you create content for is prospects and buyers. Yes, sometimes categories overlap, however, your focus must always be on those who can purchase something from you.
Each one of these categories come to your business blog for their own reasons; seeking specific information, and they want your site to benefit them. Only with prospects and buyers does their benefit include your benefit.
In another article I'll talk about what to write when focusing on prospects and buyers, right I want to challenge you to change your measures. Instead of looking at traffic from your website, measure business blog results by the number of leads sourced from this publication.
It doesn't matter how much traffic you get if you aren't getting qualified leads who over time become customers. There are a number of great ways to capture leads on your website, but the best way gives you the ability to follow up and is specific to a certain line of product.
If you want measurable improvements in the value of your business blog, then focus on your best prospects and buyers. Measure business blog success by the number of leads captured that turn into customers and everyone is happier.
© 2009 B2B Website Profits, All rights reserved.

Justin Hitt and Hitt Publishing Direct helps technology thought leaders turn words into profits, attracting the right buyers to their business website for maximum conversion. For a complementary no-obligation site analysis visit https://www.jwhco.com/