My first B2B blog post was a total disaster!
I was all confident about blogging. I had been writing my personal blog for many years, and I had ghostwritten and managed the blog of a company’s marketing director for a year. I knew my stuff. And after all, blogging was easy; blogging was fun. You just do it.
The post was about an international conference in Germany. I was excited; all I needed, was to use my storytelling talent and share my experiences from the show. It would be personal, and it would be engaging. Everyone loves stories. They work. So this would be a great story, and it would work. Boy, was I wrong!
A B2B Blog Is Nothing Like a Personal Blog
When I came back from the conference and sat down to write, it suddenly hit me. I had no idea what my audience would want to read.
We cared about how many leads we brought home, but why would the reader? We were proud of how well our promotional quiz went, but would our prospects? Not likely. Would they want to read about the entertainment program? Maybe, but they didn’t need our blog for that. Would they be interested in how many companies exhibited, where they were from, what they offer? I had no idea.
Blogging-Freedom Comes With Responsibility
The thing about blogging is, you have a lot more freedom than with case studies, white papers, email campaigns, and marketing copy. On the downside, that passes all the responsibility over to you as the writer. You need to decide and define stuff and set the guidelines yourself - or figure them out.
For example, when you’re asked to write a landing page, you’ll be told the goal is for people to sign-up to a webinar on the topic of cybersecurity in a specific industry and to collect their email addresses. That’s specific. That sets the message, the purpose, the audience, and the time frame.
Or, one of your sales reps may say, “I have this top client with a great success story about implementing our analytics features, and they have agreed we write a case study. Here’s the contact person.” Again, that’s specific. You get a framework and guidance. You know where to get the details and who to talk to.
There's More to a Blog Than Writing it
On a blog, none of this is predefined. It’s all on you to set a distinct purpose, craft a unique message, and target a specific audience for a given topic. Then figure out which info is most relevant to that audience and supports your message, and where to fin it.
Unlike a case study where the client describes their challenge, in a blog post, you’re left to discover the pain points yourself. A marketing campaign may promote a new feature or offer a discount. That determines the benefits to highlight in your email content. In a blog post, you can focus on any chosen benefit and present it in various scenarios, blog types, and for different audiences, it’s up to you. If you don’t determine these, your content comes out vague and slides all over the place.
Strategize, Plan and Get Results
There are enough reasons for a B2B company to publish a blog. A blog supports SEO rankings and drives traffic. It’s also an effective way to build authority.
The content manager will usually plan a blog strategy and maybe a content calendar. If you don’t have one, create one.
Why? A blog shouldn’t be limited to one target audience or one type of content or article. One of the core ideas of a blog is to provide variety and reach a wide range of prospects in different funnel stages. Planning ahead ensures you have everything covered.
Ideally, the content calendar includes topics that address different audiences, i.e., some could be more technical than others. Every once in a while, you could share something about the company or the team. Make a mix that covers different interests.
Each post needs a definitive message to the chosen audience. Simply schmoozing about something you think is interesting will bore the reader. They don’t read your blog for entertainment. Trying to stuff multiple messages in one post is confusing to a reader. You can add a lot of data as long as it supports your core message.
A blog needs to bring results, just like any other marketing content. That’s why it’s critical to set a purpose for your posts. Do you want the reader to click-through to another page? Do you want them to sign-up for something? Or do you want to build authority and brand awareness? Attribute a purpose to the posts.
9 Tips to My Younger Self
Here’s what I would tell my younger self before I crashed that blog post about the conference:
Instead of just having fun, and thinking your talent will do the magic - prepare!
First, decide who’s going to be interested and will read such a post.
Next, decide what message you want to convey.
Research anything you can find about the conference, the background, the history, what status it has in the industry, what it means to people.
Find anecdotes or highlights that might have come out of it - i.e., in 2010 XYZ-company first introduced its blabla at this conference.
Look at some statistics that may be interesting - people always like to see growing numbers. Decide which statistics are worthwhile comparing with the current numbers.
Take the list of exhibitors and search for meaningful companies to your business and/or your customers. Make sure you know where to find them in the exhibit space.
Draft some questions that you can ask the reps of these companies at the conference.
If any of them hold presentations, mark them in your calendar, so that you can attend.
Make a list of tasks for yourself at the conference, information to collect, things to pay attention to, and so on.
Had I done this seven years ago, I might have written an interesting blog post that builds credibility and drives traffic. Instead, I struggled with collecting data after the show and produced a boring chitter-chatter with no valuable insight.
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