Never underestimate the power of a good blog or outstanding blog writers. Not only do blogs provide the opportunity to push influential words out across the World Wide Web to build your company’s brand, they are also excellent for encouraging two-way interaction with customers through comments. B2B blogs can incorporate sophisticated SEO strategies and community-building campaigns, becoming a very effective part of your content marketing strategy.
So how do you make your B2B blog effective?
As a starting point, Joe Pulizzi, the founder of the Content Marketing Institute, suggests keeping three key points in mind:
- Encourage conversations with your blog articles. Don’t fear ‘bad’ comments – every comment provides an opportunity for customer engagement. If you do receive a negative comment, it’s important to respond to the comment, acknowledge the issue, and offer the chance to discuss it in more detail.
- Participate in other blogs, not just your own. Find out where your customers and prospective customers are ‘hanging out’ online and aim to make informative comments on 10-15 key articles per week.
- Loosen up. Rather than being too caught up in making your blog entry perfect, let your personality shine. “Authenticity trumps perfection when connecting with readers,” Pulizzi says.
Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s okay to have spelling errors or inaccuracies in your content, and clearly a B2B consultant can be a bit more personal than someone creating content for a large B2B enterprise.
From our perspective, a detailed content strategy and good planning pave the way for highly relevant topic ideas and blog content that will appeal to the right audience. You’ll also want to be sure to include some outstanding thought leadership content in your mix.
Top 10 tips for blogging success
With that as a basic framework, here are our top 10 tips for making your company’s blog successful.
1. Use compelling titles – Similar to the cover of a magazine, article titles need to draw the reader in and encourage them to read the story! Titles should be very specific, and utilise relevant keywords where possible. From research conducted at the Content Marketing Institute, blog titles that contain one or two numbers are especially effective. For example, 5 Content Marketing Trends to Consider in your 2015 Strategy.
2. Focus on the problem – This is where a blog entry should always start. If blog writers focus on solving common issues or problems experienced by your company’s target audience, the blog is much more likely to be successful.
3. Less is more – There’s no need to ramble on about an issue. If the articles on your blog do, they are likely to lose the focus of your readers! Keep content concise and instructive. When you’re ‘optimsing’ content for search engines, you might be encouraged to create lengthy content to compete with existing articles on the topic. And that’s fine if you’re able to extend the content on that topic in a way that extends the value to the reader. If you’re not good at writing articles, engage an article writing service to write your content.
4. Think about the call to action – Every blog article should encourage readers to take action afterwards, such as downloading an e-book, following your company on social media, signing up to an e-newsletter, or signing up to a webinar.
5. Maximise usage of your content – Continually think about how you can take blog posts and repackage them into something more substantial, such as an e-book or white paper.
6. Spread the love through guest blogging – Conduct a search for the top 15 blogs in your industry and offer to do relevant guest blogs. It’s a great way to build your company’s profile and search engine presence.
7. Promote key influencers with lists – Create a list of the top influencers in your industry, then write a blog about it! It could be a list of the top 10 industry blogs, websites or social media pages. Then make sure you share the list with those influencers and create a press release.
8. Measure, measure, measure – There are a number of blog metrics that you should constantly refer to in order to assess whether the blog is meeting the goals set out in your content marketing strategy. Ensure your whole team is aware of the goals, and can access the metrics. Alternatively, engage a good blog writing service to create your content, measure performance, and update old content to keep it fresh.
9. Do an influencer question-and-answer session – Ask key figures in your industry to host a question-and-answer session, or do a podcast interview. You not only get some great material to post, it’s also likely that they will further share the content, expanding your reach.
10. Outsource – According to Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs research, more than 50% of companies of all sizes outsource their content marketing. Content agencies, such as Article Writers Australia, can help take your company’s blog to the next level.
If you’re looking for a content marketing service to assist with strategy, or a full blog writing and updating service, speak to us! Our full blog management service incorporates a rolling content audit with writing, updating and measuring the performance of your blog content.
Leonie Seysan is the Director of Article Writers Australia, and manages the team of professional writers and editors. She holds a Bachelor of Communications Degree (Media Studies).
