Blogging Tips for the B2B Professional

We have many B2B clients who are technical experts and have great deal of thought leadership to offer, but to enitce them blogging is a tall order.  For the busy technical professional writing their first blog post is a bit like jumping in to a pool, but when there’s nothing to lose, it's worth taking the plunge.  Sharing thought leadership through blogging gives your firm a voice to communicate on a hot topic to a wide audience.  B2B businesses gain interaction and feedback from their audience, while providing them a valuable information resource. 

B2B Blogging Goals

• Thought leadership
• Brand awareness
• Client engagement
• Enhance corporate image
• Drive traffic to their Web site

Tips for successful blogging for beginner bloggers with a lot to say (even if they don’t know it):

Blogging basics

• Posts should be short (about 400-800 words), conversational in tone, offer personal views and opinions, and are updated frequently.
• The author offers unique views on a topic of interest to attract readers.
• Blog posts invite reader comments.

Measurement

Blogging is one of the most effective ways to bring more visitors to your Web site.  Most people won’t visit your site if they are familiar with the company (other than to grab an address) unless your site is frequently updated with new, interesting information. Companies who blog get up to 55% more target traffic than companies that do not.  As a matter of fact, our Web page stats come out to almost exactly 55% traffic to our blog pages (the colored pieces of the pie chart represent blog related page visits):

Print Article vs. Blog

Print articles are great and as we discussed in a previous post, you can get a great deal of mileage from a single print article.  That said, blogging and article writing are completely different tactics.  The chart below explains the differences.

Getting started

• Start with a plan!  I can’t emphasize it enough.  Brainstorm topics and plan to blog on a regular basis (we recommend once per week).  Plan out topic ideas for at least a month ahead and have a backlog of posts to fill gaps.
• Read other blog posts for reference.  Blog about what you read and engage with other bloggers.
• Choose a recent hot topic.  The beauty of blogging is there is no waiting period—write, proof, post, share—allowing you weigh in on what’s hot now.
• Choose Compelling Title.  Posts with relevant, compelling titles get more reads. 
• Be casual.  Even for technical topics, you want to appeal to those who are not experts. 
• Recognize the online reader is looking for quick information.  Consider breaking up posts over 1,000 words into a series (this is also great way to encourage people to come back to read more).  However, keeping your posts over 250 words increases optimization. Use headings to break up long blocks of text.
• Keep your post open to comments. Keep the discussion open by inviting comments and feedback.  Leave some questions asked and unanswered.
• Make it multi-media.  Mix it up by adding photos, graphs, video, etc.

B2B professionals new to blogging, share your first posts!  For those more experienced bloggers, let us know of any tips you have found valuable.