You started a blog with excellent intentions. Your prospective customers can see the stellar effort you put forth on your website. But they’re looking into the past. You haven’t updated your blog in years. Your blog likely failed because you didn’t have a strategy. Planning a business-to-business (B2B) blog strategy can help you attract your target audience, build brand trust and ultimately move prospects to a purchasing decision.
The Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs latest survey results show 60 percent of B2B marketers believe blogs will be critical for content marketing success in 2018. So, how can B2B companies produce and maintain better blogs?
First, clearly define your audience by creating a buyer persona, which is a fictional, generalized representation of your ideal customer. Go beyond demographics and consider what role your targeted readers have in their organizations, what goals drive their behavior, how they think and how they make purchasing decisions.
The content of your blog should address important topics and trends in your industry to gain customer trust and loyalty. It should also showcase your personality to stand out from all the other blog posts being read and shared across the web. B2B blogs in particular should try to solve problems and answer questions. Doing so positions your business as an authority in your industry and builds credibility with prospective and current customers. Content is particularly king when it comes to your website ranking high in search engine results. The more blog pages you create on your website, the easier it will be for search engines to find your site.
Regularly updating your blog and incorporating keywords into your content are also important for boosting your website’s search engine optimization (SEO). Better SEO increases traffic to your website through organic search engine results, which translates into more prospective buyers seeing your products and services.
Internal linking in blogs is not only good for SEO, it drives blog readers deeper into your website to learn more without you having to shamelessly pitch products in your blog content.
Remember to write a unique headline for your blog post. Powerful headlines include lists, how-to tutorials, questions and solutions. Strike the right balance by using a mixture of common, uncommon and emotional words but be concise and clear. Consider what your targeted audience would be searching for when they come across your blog topic. Remember, the majority of B2B buyers begin the buying process with a Google search. Make sure your blog headline grabs their attention.
The next step is to ensure your audience reads through to the end of your blog post and hopefully shares it with others. Keep your readers’ attention spans by making your blog easy to read. Use bold text to highlight interesting information. Break up paragraphs with subheadlines, bullet points, numbered lists and images.
To conclude your blog, include a call to action. Be clear about what you want the reader to do after reading your post. This may include filling out a “request for more information” form or subscribing to your e-newsletter. You should also include easy-to-use tools, such as social media share buttons and links, that encourage readers to share your blog across the web. Finally, your B2B blog strategy should include self-promotion.
Use social media to distribute your content and get the attention of individuals and/or companies you are targeting. Publicize your latest blog in your e-newsletter. Send an email to coworkers and ask them to help you share your post.
Your end goal should be to get your blog in front of the largest audience possible, so your blogging strategy should be based around piquing visitors’ interests, keeping their attention and getting them to share your content. This will ultimately increase your chances to convert your blog readers into customers.