25 Awesome B2B Blogging Tips

Why are so many B2B businesses, from the providers of a credit card processing service to the makers of GPS for vehicle tracking, blogging today? Because they recognize the potential power blogging represents—when done right, blogging gives B2B companies a way to generate greater interest, leads, orders, brand awareness and brand loyalty. How?

Below, here are 25 quick ideas for making your B2B blog succeed!

Overall Guidelines

1. Know your audience: In order to reach your readers, you need to know who they are. Do research on your target audience, either on your own or with the help of an Internet marketing company. Then, write your content to reach those individuals.
2. Have a plan: In order to offer the best content, it’s important to plan ahead. Amy Izzo at Business 2 Community suggests doing this by “plan[ning] out topic ideas for at least a month ahead and hav[ing] a backlog of posts to fill gaps.”
3. Set goals: Why are you blogging? To boost SEO? To connect with customers? To increase traffic or generate leads? When you know your goals, you’re better able to strategize your blogging to accomplish them.
4. Always be on the lookout for topics: For a lot of bloggers, there’s nothing harder than coming up with topics. Prevent this problem by keeping an eye out for topic ideas any time you are interacting with others in your industry, hearing questions from customers, reading Twitter updates from those in your network, etc.

Blog Topics and Content

1. Provide interesting information: Your blog needs to be more than content filler. Make your posts useful by including information that readers will find interesting, whether statistics, stories, topical articles or customer testimonials.
2. Avoid jargon: B2B industries are notorious for being jargon-heavy in their communications. Stay away for highly industry-specific terms and write in a way that can connect with customers.
3. Don’t be overly salesy: Too many B2B blogs make the mistake of creating content that is all about them and reads more like a sales brochure than a blog post. Don’t talk about yourself all the time but rather show readers your knowledge and expertise in the industry.
4. Grab attention at the opening: Try to engage readers in the first few sentences of each blog post with a strong lead that asks a question or points out an interesting statistic or tells a story. The idea is to pull people in to keep reading—don’t bury the lead.
5. Be scannable: Most Web users will skim information on blogs, so one of the best things you can do to appeal to them is make your content scannable. Use headers to break up the blog posts into readable chunks of info.
6. Write in lists: Research shows that readers like blog posts with lists—and so they’re more likely to promote and link to them. What’s more, writing list-style posts (like this one!) are often easier to write, as you have a sort of built-in outline to fill in.
7. Incorporate images: Images make your blog more visually interesting to readers and can amplify your ability to communicate a message.

Tone and Voice

1. Write conversationally: By nature, blogs are informal—usually written in first or second person. Write like a human being, not like a textbook.
2. Write consistently: To be most effective, write with one, solid, consistent, personal voice, one that engages readers and enhances the sense of your brand.
3. Write professionally: Just because it’s a blog doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to be professional. Proofread before publishing and be on the lookout for typos or grammar mistakes.
4. Have an opinion: Don’t just copy and paste other articles. Add your own commentary and perspective to topics in order to draw readership.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

1. Be SEO friendly: By working keywords into blog titles, image alt tags and content, you increase your ability to show up early in search engines when users look for those terms—increasing the traffic that comes to your site.
2. Pay attention to headlines: The titles of your posts matter, both for bringing in readers and for boosting SEO. Write effective headlines by incorporating keywords and communicating benefits to readers.
3. Update often: Search engines like it when blogs post regularly. Keep your content fresh and current to gain the best SEO advantage!
4. Use SEO tools: Choose a blog theme that’s already optimized for SEO and, in softwares like WordPress, add the benefits of plugins like SEO Title Tag. Track stats, whether through Google Analytics or something else to see how your SEO strategy is working.

Teamwork & Networking

1. Ask the readers to do something: A call to action is vital to any online marketing efforts, as it instructs users on what to do. This may be calling your business, leaving a comment, subscribing or something else.
2. Use guest posts: Other people in your company or industry can make excellent guest posters—adding rich content for readers. You may even want to have a certain employee post once a week or month on a certain subject area.
3. Invite reader comments: Invite conversation. Conclude your posts with questions that invite discussion and interaction from your readers, and then, when people do comment, be sure to respond to them.
4. Link to sources: When you quote or pull information from another site, be sure to give credit and link to it. This not only builds your credibility but also can help your search engine rankings and exposure.
5. Take advantage of social media: Promote your blog posts on your company’s social profiles such as Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn in order to expose your content to your audience.
6. Be easy to reach: Your blog is meant to enhance your brand and business—so make it easy for readers to see how to learn more about your company and how to contact you for information. Keep your contact info prominent and easy to find.