Q&A with Dayna Rothman, the Director of Content Marketing at EverString.

In a recent blog post, you talk about helping “shape the story for the business.” How does storytelling translate to lead generation?

Storytelling and content marketing are a critical piece of lead generation.

In fact, I believe that content should be the basis of all lead generation campaigns that you run. As all marketers know by now, your buyers have changed.

They are not only self-educating along the buyer journey, but they also have extremely high expectations. Your buyers want a brand they can relate to — they want a brand that tells a story.

The more enticing your story and your content is, the more likely it is that people will give you their information. Then, you can use those stories to move buyers through their journey.

Note: read Dayna’s post, Creating a Category Through Storytelling: Why I Joined EverString

Tell us about what you cover in your book, “Lead Generation for Dummies”?

All aspects of lead generation for all different levels and company sizes. The book discusses everything from hiring a team, creating a lead gen strategy, to all of the different inbound and outbound lead gen tactics you should take, what metrics you should track, and more.

Note: Buy the book at Amazon, Lead Generation for Dummies.

Before Marketers start blogging for lead generation, what must they do first?

Marketers need to understand their lead gen goals as it pertains to the blog. How do they want generate leads? Through subscribers? By having visitors download content assets from your blog? Are you using your blog in outside lead gen campaigns? Once you figure out your goals, you can optimize your blog and individual posts.

What blogs do you read to help inform your own blogging?

Well, the Marketo blog of course! When I was there, we focused on optimizing lead generation through different avenues. I also love Copyblogger, MarketingProfs, and sites like Gawker and Mashable.

How do you measure the effectiveness of blogging to drive lead generation?

There are a few ways to measure effectiveness. You can look at blog subscriber growth, content assets downloaded from individual blogs, referral traffic, where do people go after reading your blog, etc.

B2B Blogger Meetup

Want to hear Dayna speak? In October in San Mateo, we’re holding a B2B Bloggers Meetup. Dayna will do a presentation on “Blogging for Lead Generation.”

Tell us what you plan to cover during your Meetup presentation?

I will cover how to think about lead generation when it comes to your blog. I will discuss how to optimize your blog and what different CTAs you should consider to collect lead information.

I will also talk about how to format your posts and what outbound campaigns you can use to drive traffic to your blog and increase leads.

Meetup Details

Everyone is welcome to attend and the Meetup is free. All of our Meetups take place in San Mateo, CA.

October 28, 2015 [Wednesday], 6:30-8pm: Blogging for Lead Generation, featuring Dayna

Hope to see you there!

Note: I originally published this post at LinkedIn.