B2B (business to business) blog content can increase website traffic, boost your brand, attract new customers and increase sales revenue. We recommend the investment for most B2B companies as part of their larger B2B marketing strategy.
In this article, we will discuss how to create a B2b blog strategy and how a blog content strategy can help your business.
The Benefits Of Running An Effective B2B Blog
Here are some benefits of including blogs in your marketing strategies:
Builds brand awareness
Your website is often the first interaction that customers have with your company. By posting blogs with valuable content, you can generate a brand voice and make your company more recognizable to your business audience.
Provides an opportunity for linking
A successful blogging strategy will allow you to introduce backlinks that are crucial for ranking higher on Google search rankings.
When you are creating a blog post, it needs to be valuable for potential new customers as well as other companies in your industry. This will make it easier to include relevant links to companies with some authority in your industry.
Builds a larger email base
You may get a lot of visitors who read the blog post title or the whole blog and then leave your website.
Make an effort to get the emails of those reading your blogs by suggesting they sign up for your newsletters so that you can reach them again.
Attracts new customers
A measure of your content marketing success is whether you are attracting new customers. You can use a variety of blog topics to attract potential customers to your website. You can also reach potential clients in new markets through B2B marketing blogging
Boosts sales
Blogs can increase organic traffic to your website. Both existing customers and prospective customers may be drawn to your site and start browsing, which will lead to an increase in sales.
Conversion optimized posts about specific products or services can also motivate people to engage with your posts and draw more customers, leading to more sales.
Creating A B2B Content Marketing Strategy: Key Hints & Tips
We have compiled some tips to keep in mind for a successful B2B strategy:
Research your target audience
You need to keep in mind that your ideal customer consists of professionals with a set goal for their company. This means you have to craft educational content that your intended audience will enjoy. You’ll need to provide them with enough information to convince their company to buy your product or service.
There are certain steps you can take to find out more about what your audience wants to read:
- Design customer feedback surveys on your website or send them via email.
- Talk to other companies in the industry.
- Engage on social media or through a community forum.
Understand how B2B SEO works
SEO is key to any content strategy to get traffic to your website. Therefore, you need to have a decent understanding of SEO and how it works if you wish to get the most from your B2B marketing.
The key to SEO is to deliver content that will rank high on search engine result pages (SERPs). Search engines crawl through websites to look for relevant keywords. Your marketing team will have to do keyword research and include these keywords in your content to ensure you rank high on SERPs.
Create a B2B blog content calendar
A Blog calendar should be your first step in creating a B2B blog strategy. In addition, they can include all your social channels and can be integrated to include blogs and social media posts.
Here are some more things to keep track of on your calendar:
- Holidays – do you want to post any holiday content?
- Seasons – Are there any busy seasons for your business that you must keep in mind when it comes to business blogging? Do you need to plan around financial seasons?
- Events – Are you attending any events in your industry?
- Vacations and leave days – plan your content strategy around when your writing or sales team is going on vacation.
Use images and video
Focus on creating high-quality content including, images and videos to share statistics, solve pain points, or introduce new products.
If you plan on using images in your blogs, make sure the image alt text will boost your search engine rankings. Videos are great for social sharing on sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.
Create original content
The best thing you can do for your B2B content marketing is to create original content. Here’s how:
- Show the inspiration behind the company and products.
- Give your brand a human face.
- Focus on your customers.
- Show the local community.
- Have a cause.
Track your results
Use your business goals to determine metrics against which you can measure the success of your marketing strategy. Metrics include:
- How many people are viewing your content (both from unpaid sources and paid ads)?
- How long did a visitor visitor spend on your page?
- How much engagement was there on your post?
- How many people became customers (i.e., the conversion rate)?
- Which channels brought visitors to your page?
- What was the click-through rate?
Make sure to give your B2B blog strategy at least a year to start delivering measurable results.
Use strong CTAs
Having a call-to-action (CTA) on your page will make future marketing efforts easier. If you have strong CTAs, people will engage with your site more.
Here are strong CTAs that you can use:
- Request email address at the bottom of a post.
- Post your social media links and ask for shares.
- Encourage readers to tweet your content.
- Blog subscription
- Ask a question that readers can answer in the comments.
Hire a good writing team or writer
An experienced writing team will generate content ideas and excellent blog posts. Blogging is the star of your content strategy, and having a team that can create content of high quality will boost traffic to your site.
In addition, good writers can also help you identify blind spots in your marketing channels.
Well-written blog posts can be used through the buyer’s journey and at all phases of the sales funnel. However, they are most important when you are trying to raise brand awareness.
How Long Should A B2B Blog Post Be?
Studies have found that the ideal blog is between 1,000 and 2,500 words long. Staying within this range means you will likely rank higher on search results, have more shares on social media, and generate more backlinks.
Our team provides a deep analysis of how long specific blogs should be in order to provide the most value and have the highest chance of ranking on Google.
How Often Should A Business Post A Blog?
The more frequently you post, the more traffic you will generate. Ideally, a business should blog 3 to 5 times a month to get the most benefits from their blogging.
How to Assign Blogs to A Writer
Now that your B2b blog strategy is in place, it’s time to start writing. Whether you’re ordering a copy from a team, freelancer, or assigned to an internal writer, your process needs to be fine-tuned.
These are the steps we take when working with writers.
Define the type of blog
Always define the type of blog that you’re working on. This could be anything of the following and more:
- Listicle
- Expert Guide
- Pillar Post
- Comparison Guide
- Curated Round-Up
Searcher intent
Make sure to define the searcher’s intent and the stage of the sales funnel your target reader is in.
- Awareness & Interest
- Consideration & Evaluation
- Decision & Purchase
Establishing searcher intent allows your writer to speak directly to your audience and address concerns at a specific stage in their customer journey.
Describe the audience
It’s time to grab that buyer persona that you’ve created. If you don’t have a buyer persona make sure to create them!
Send your writer as much detail about your audience. Age, gender, occupation, income are basic demographics that you should have available. Take it to the next level by addressing your target audience’s needs and desires.
Describe your style
Your business has a style of communicating. Make sure your writer knows your style. This can be:
- Casual
- Scientific
- Funny
- Mixed
- Journalistic
- Other
Feel free to send your writer your brand guide if you have one!
Target word count
Let your writer know how many words they should write. This should be researched based on the current top raking blogs already out there. See what your competition is doing and make it better (longer).
Include target keyword and other words to include
Good content will go on deaf ears if nobody sees it. Make sure to have your content optimized for a specific target keyword and include similar words. Don’t stuff keywords, but letting your writer know what the target keyword is will give them guidance.
Similar ranking blogs and statistics
Send your writer the blogs from your competitors that are currently ranking. Seeing what is already working on Google and creating something better is a great start!
Make sure to include some statistics with external links if you think it will add credibility. This will give you some added authority and allow you to link out to credible sources.
Internal Links
Provide a list of suggested internal links that you think are related to the blog that your writer is creating. Internal links are a great way to keep users on your site longer and improve page rankings.
Due Date
We are only human. Make sure to set realistic due dates to allow your writer to prioritize their job. This allows everyone to be on the same page of expectations.
To Sum It Up
Having a solid B2B blog strategy may seem daughting, but it does not have to be! Blogs create traffic and solid content can last for years. Do you have any questions? Is your blog performing as well as you think it can? Send us a message with any comments or questions!
