Rod O'Connor, President, Briware Solutions
“I'm glad I ignored the opinion of my marketing guy and went ahead and joined the ERP Software Blog. I do feel it's the best decision I could have made.” – Rod O’Connor, Briware Solutions, ERP Software Blog member since 2015.
We’ve heard plenty of fancy marketing consultants say it before…. “Don’t post on a group blog, that will only benefit them. You need to keep your content on your own site.” Dave Foreman has a nice answer to that one. “So if someone gave you the opportunity to post on the New York Times website would you say no, because it would only benefit them? Of course not, the exposure is priceless”.
Posting on a large site like the ERP Software Blog or the CRM Software Blog is not just about traffic and leads. A very real benefit that many companies overlook is exposure and notoriety.
It took Rod O’Connor, from Briware Solutions, a long time to make the decision to join the ERP Software Blog and now he is very glad he did. In this post, Rod explains the very real benefits he has seen:
More Exposure
“When I was blogging on my website, people started to read my stuff, but it wasn't really getting out there. I was just doing it because every marketing class I went to told me my website needed content.
So at the time it was really about giving people something to read after they got to my website. When I started publishing articles on the ERP Software Blog, it was more about people finding my website because of what I had written.
I would say that a big part of winning the Microsoft MVP award was the exposure that my blogs got on the ERP Software Blog. Not just that I was writing them, but that people were reading them, and following them, and sharing them. It's definitely given me more notoriety, I guess is the word, than I had before.
One post in particular that I published on the ERP Software Blog, “My 30-Day Experiment: Can I Run My Small Business on Dynamics 365”, got a huge amount of traffic. It actually had a big contingent of readers from Microsoft, which was something that I wouldn't have anticipated. Based on that post, I had three different groups of people from Microsoft reach out to me to see what they could do to help me along with Dynamics 365. And I was asked to do presentations with Microsoft at various events as an example of a partner that was using the product.
I certainly don’t think that post would have gotten so much attention, at quite to the level that it did, if it had just been published on my own website.
I recently posted a follow up article to that post, about how my business looks one year later. That post got the attention of Jason Gumpert at MSDynamicsWorld and he turned it into a podcast interview. That's the first time one of my posts has ever done that.”
More Traffic
“A big benefit of posting on the ERP Software Blog is literally the numbers. Last time I looked I was getting more referral clicks from the ERP Software Blog to my own website than from any other source. I think I've picked up a number of Twitter followers that way too. If I was only posting on my own blog site, I don’t think I’d see those kinds of numbers.”
More Leads
“I have had a couple of direct leads sent to me from the ERP Software Blog. I haven't been able to close any yet, but I am working on having a better process to do that.
However, I can confidently say that we have gotten calls from prospects directly based on content we put on the ERP Software Blog.
Again, that 30-Day Experiment post in particular. I got a call out of the blue from a chap who was actively trying to decide to stay on Dynamics GP or not, and he had read my post, and it did turn into an engagement with him. I've got a post out there that talks about setting up the Workflow 2.0, and we've had a couple of engagements to do that for new customers. And I've picked up other work here and there just based on folks who had either read my posts or heard from folks who had read them.”
The Right Decision
“I understand that we still want to have fresh content on our website , so I do post blog articles on my own website too. I try to look at it from an audience perspective. If it's something for a wider audience, like a leadership post or more of a technical post I'll put that on the ERP Software Blog. But if it's something that's more about Briware, for example, I had one that talked about who I feel is the perfect Briware Solutions customer, I’ll put that on my own site.
Certainly, being on the ERP Software Blog is getting my posts further reach than I would have expected. I'd say it's all about exposure, because people are going to the ERP Software Blog to get great information, and to have my post included in that is valuable.
I couldn't be happier with the decision to actually sign up for the ERP Software Blog.”
If you are considering joining the ERP Software Blog or the CRM Software Blog, consider the traffic and the leads but don’t forget that it just could make you famous.
By Anya Ciecierski, Collaboration Works Marketing
Follow me on Twitter: @AnyaCWMktg