A professional-looking online presence is crucial for salespeople, including cold calling telemarketing salespeople, who want to build their businesses by improving lead generation and booking more appointments.

In part one of this article, we looked at blogs and learned how you can use blogs to connect with prospects that matter… with prospects who become sales leads. (As a refresher, Blogs - short for "web logs" - are online diaries that allow bloggers to post their thoughts, ideas, and to interact with the world around them. Blogs have been around for many years, primarily as a way for individuals to record their thoughts and feelings. Only in recent years has it grown in popularity as a mainstream way for businesses to generate sales leads and serve customers). In this article we will "drill down" to talk about how you can configure your blog and create individual blogs that help your telemarketing business succeed.

When it comes time to post your sales blog, pick a topic and decide what you are going to say. A great way to start is by looking at other sites, blogs, newsletters, and magazines to see what other people are saying about the topic. Quote references and talk about other people's opinions then discuss your own opinion on the matter. This will make your topic timely and relevant and that helps increase appointments because readers will learn to trust you for timely information.

Another excellent way to build readership and have something to say is to talk about a recent experience you have had and then extrapolate a valuable lesson from that experience for your readers. For example, if you sell bug repellent, you might say: "The other day I was at a picnic. The mosquitoes were terrible! I learned that I should always bring mosquito repellent to picnics." Then, if appropriate, include a link to your sales page.

People who read blogs do not want to read cold hard facts or obvious sales messages. They want to connect with the blogger. Once they've connected with you, then they will be more likely to book appointments. On your blog, be sure to include plenty of opinion, insight, and experience in each of your posts. Links are helpful, too. When prospects find you helpful they will be more likely to stay on your site and you will be more likely to generate sales in the future.

Other helpful ideas for your blog include:

•Enabling comments. This will allow your readers to read and then talk about your ideas. Sometime the comments will be frank and honest, other times people will give you encouragement. Blogs are all about sharing ideas and getting feedback from others. And, it helps to increase a sense of ownership among prospects so that they will be more willing to book appointments.

•Participate in other peoples' blogs. Other people have blogs and if you comment on their blogs, there is a good chance that they will come and participate on yours. That's a great way to generate leads! The blogging community is a tight community. Just remember that you are a business so when you comment on other people's blogs, these could be potential customers and thus your comment should be positive. If you give comments, you'll increase the likelihood of receiving comments (and probably regular readers) and sales meetings.

•Add blogs to your blog roll and try to get listed on others' blog rolls. Many people have "blog rolls" on their site which is a list of blogs they read. (Hint: You should have a blog roll on your site). Appearing on other people's blog rolls is a great way to get read by more people… more prospects for more sales.

•Include Links 2 U. Be sure to link to past posts you've made on related topics. If you blog about dogs and you are blogging today about poodles, find previous posts in which you blogged about poodles and link to those, too. Prospects who are engaged in the topic will look at post topics and that's another opportunity for you to make a sales presentation.

•Include Trackbacks. Trackbacks are references to other people's blogs. When you blog on a post inspired from another blog, send that person a trackback. When people read the other blog and click the trackback, they'll read about what you had to say and may become loyal readers of your site… and potential customers.

•Tag your posts so that readers will be more likely to spread the word. Add links that make it easy for your readers to send your posts to aggregators like Del.icio.us, Reddit.com, and Digg.com. Use these tagging aggregator sites to help you get a surge of traffic to your blog. Each of these sites encourages users to vote or label content on other sties to make it more useful to users. Reddit.com, for example, enables users to select and rank news stories. Digg.com is submitted and voted on by the users. Del.icio.us.com has users bookmarking sites they find helpful so that others will go there too.

Now that you have configured your blog, what do you do? In the previous article about blogging we talked about creating a blogging schedule to help you write frequently. In order to enjoy the most success on your blog (and more sales in your telesales business), you should plan to write at least once a week… preferably more frequently, like once a day. Your blogs do not have to be long but they should be regular and frequent.

Blogging is a great way to connect with your customers and your prospects by posting information, insight, and opinion that is interesting to them. You will build up a loyal readership and that readership can convert into sales.