The way customers interact and discover brands has changed over the years. Gone are the big phones books full of businesses. Customers now discover brands online and look for ones that are trusted experts to help them solve a problem, make a purchase, or discover something new. Becoming a trusted expert requires a content creation strategy that will build a relationship with your customers. A blog strategy for B2B businesses is one of the best ways to connect with your audience and become a trusted expert in your industry.
What is a B2B Blog Strategy?
Chances are you’ve interreacted many times over with content marketing from other brands and businesses without even knowing it. A content marketing strategy is one that revolves around creating and sharing content on a consistent basis that is relevant to your audience. It can take many forms like social media, newsletters, blogs, and videos.
For your content to be seen by the right audience (without paying for the privilege), it needs to be optimized for search engines. Marketers have learned that search engine algorithms, like Google’s, prioritize content that is relevant and high quality. Writing content just for the sake of it isn’t enough anymore. Content has to be purposeful, targeted, and optimized to be found online.
When content achieves those three goals, it can help you become a thought leader and increase your credibility on search engines. With the correct keywords, you can associate relevant keywords with your website, boosting your online signal to customers. By sharing the content on your social accounts, you can drive additional traffic to your site. Posting information that helps solve questions can begin the sales funnel process for customers which can turn into leads.
Why Investing in Blog Content Has Long-Term Benefits
Research from Hubspot shows that businesses with quality blogs have better digital results than businesses without. Their research shows that, on average, a business that invests in high-quality blogs has 55% more online visitors, 97% more inbound links, and 67% more leads. When you invest the time, energy, and resources in creating high-quality blogs, it pays off in the long run. The long-term benefits of a blog content strategy for your business mean that you can generate more leads, share resources and educate customers, create a space for meaningful discussion, build a name for yourself, and establish your business online as a trusted expert.
We’ve seen lots of trends come and go when it comes to digital marketing. And while some tactics fall quickly out of fashion, blogging is here to stay. It’s a strategic and cost-effective way to get SEO wins. You can easily introduce new keywords onto the pages of your site and the content stays on your website forever, giving you complete control over it. While blogs do require a time investment and should always be high-quality, blogs are cost-effective because they can easily be repurposed into different content. You can share it on your social media channels, recreate it into infographics or use it in email campaigns. Because blogs live on your site, you can continue to update them with relevant information or create new blogs when your industry shifts.
How to Implement a B2B Blogging Strategy
Creating a blog strategy for your business needs to be carefully laid out. If you’re going to see results and invest time in this, you need to implement it correctly. Here are our tips on how to implement a blog strategy for B2B businesses.
- Know Your Audience – When you have a clear understanding of who your target audience is, it makes it easier to write content for them. Know what their challenges are, what questions they ask, and the problems they want solved.
- Connect The Content to Your Audience’s Questions – A successful B2B blogging strategy starts with identifying your company’s valuable queries. The best blogs target keywords that answer specific questions. Remember, to consider keyword volume; the keywords your customers are using should drive the content that you write, not what you like to write about.
- Drive for Clarity and Consistency – We’ve already covered this but it’s worth stating again. For blogs to stand out and drive traffic they must have a clear purpose for what you want to achieve, and you have to invest in the long-term for this to be effective. Consistently posting quality content will be rewarded by search engine algorithms as you build topical authority.
- Deliver Value – Select topics that are engaging and solve problems. Make sure you select content that stays relevant and fresh over time. Refresh your blog strategy every 3 to 6 months to ensure you capture new trends.
- Integrate It into Your Sales Funnel – What we don’t want to see is people leaving your site once they’ve read your blog. Blogs should be used as an opening to your sales funnel. Add internal links in your blogs that take the reader to your service pages. You can also use blogs to create ‘gated’ content like white papers or case studies where you can capture lead information in exchange for content.
- Don’t Forget a Call-To-Action – Every blog needs a call-to-action (CTA). It doesn’t matter what your marketing goal is for the content piece, it needs to show the reader what action to take next. Your CTA’s can vary for different blogs and should include action words like learn, discover, start, or view.
Get a B2B Blog Strategy That Works
Have we convinced you yet that a blog strategy is valuable for B2B business owners? A blog strategy is a cost-effective way to generate more website traffic and increase leads. It is also critical for a successful SEO Strategy. A successful blog strategy comes down to useful content that is targeted to your audience, integrates targeted keywords and delivers value to the reader.
We’ve been successfully using blogs in content strategies for our clients that have delivered tangible results. Get a blog strategy that is effective for your B2B business and see the difference. Chat with us today on how we can help your business grow.
