Sounds amazing, doesn`t it? It is. Sounds too good to be true? Well, I am still pinching myself...so I'm not dreaming. About a week ago I decided to try an experiment. While I have had many people comment that my From Click to Closed blog had some amazing content, no one really knew about me. Partners I had worked with called me their best kept secret. Well, I decided to do something about it.

Location, Location, Location

I researched all the blogs that accepted guest postings. I came up with over 50 different sites. In deciding which site to guest post on, I looked at how much traffic each site received in addition to their page rank. But more importantly, I looked at which sites had a high level of engagement. While guest blogging is great for generating links, traffic, subscribers and branding, I wanted to take it one step further. I wanted to find a site that would actually drive targeted traffic back to my site, that would lead to sales leads. Based on my research, I decided to post on Social Media Today. This site has everything I was looking for: high traffic, high page rank, and high engagement.

It Starts with a Plan

I then researched which types of posts got the most engagement on that site. I actually went back and reviewed the posts for the past year. In my analysis, I looked the posts that generated the most links, comments, and social media shares. From my analysis of Social Media Today's post history, I came up with three subject areas that resonated with their readers: 1) how-to articles; 2) hot topics in the news, and 3) sex.

1st Post - It's All About Sex

With this new insight in hand, I decided to write a post for each area. Since I was starting on a Friday thought I would be a good time for the sexual post. My research had also revealed that Twitter was an extremely popular subject on the website, so hence the post "Why Twitter is Like a One-Night Stand" was conceived.
Intentionally designed to be as risqué as I thought would be allowable for a Friday afternoon post, I related some educational content about how to turn a random tweet into a loyal following. The results were impressive; check it out:

• 4,630 page views
• 218 Tweets
• 29 Facebook shares
• 273 bookmarks/other social sites

2nd Post - How-to Time.

Since this was going to be a mid week post, I decided to try a "how-to" post next. Analysis of previous posts demonstrated that getting corporate buy into for social media had always been a popular topic so I wrote the post "How to Sell Your CEO on Social Media Marketing". Drawing on my years in sales and training of over 1,000 sales people, I wrote this article from a salesperson's perspective rather than that of a social media expert. I hoped that this different approach would be received as different yet helpful. And man, did it. Check out the results from less than a week:

• 11,164 page views
• 305 Tweets
• 49 Shares
• 317 bookmarks/other social sites

3rd Post - Ripped From the Headlines

One Tuesday night I was watching many news shows trying to figure out just what topic to choose for this post. There could not have been better timing. Charlie Sheen was everywhere. I could not turn the channel without seeing something about how Charlie Sheen had lost it. With that, I had my subject. I quickly put a post together, matching a little headline grabber with controversy and "Charlie Sheen: Raving Lunatic or Marketing Genius?" was born. Oh, and what a subject that was. See for yourself:

• 8,652 page views
• 259 Tweets (not to mention variations)
• 111 Facebook shares
• 382 bookmarks/other social sites

So a quick tally shows that there were over 24,446 readers (and this does not include RSS, etc.), 782 tweets (note this does not include all tweets; I found that certain URL shorteners are not found in the search), 189 Facebook shares, and over 972 other bookmarks or social shares - all in one week. (Side Note: I had to change my Google Alert setting for the term "inboundsales" from "as it happens" to" daily" -my inbox was being bombarded). Then we received almost 1,000 new followers on our Twitter account @inboundsales. But that is only half the story...

Sounds Great... But Where's The Money?

While all that publicity is great, the bottom line is, show me the money. In using my marketing automation software, here are the increased performance as a results of my blogging efforts:

• 784 Visitors to the website
• 46 Marketing Qualified Leads
• 13 Sales Qualified Leads

These 13 sales leads represent over $503,000 in yearly revenue. A very effective lead generation program to say the least. Given our current conversion rate, that represents almost $400,000 in yearly revenue. Some of these deals, due to the size of the companies, will take a little while to close, but overall, it is still very rewarding. When I look at our current operating margins, combined with how much time this project took (2.5 hours for writing and posting, 12 hours for research and development) my hourly wage on this would be over $10,000/hr. You read that right. Scary, but correct. While I do not expect that these results may not fully repeat themselves, it has proven to be a worthwhile project. It I will definitely try more guest blogging projects (I'm already researching other opportunities) and will be a regular contributor on Social Media Today... as long as they allow me to.