Well, how adorably meta of me. Blogging is one of the most important aspects of your B2B marketing strategy, and one I didn’t realise even existed when I first got into the marketing world. Blogs can really make you shine and draw in the leads. Let’s take a look and how you can use blogging as part of your strategy and exactly why it might be the one thing you’re missing.
To say I was intimidated starting a job in a sector I knew nothing about is an understatement. To me, a marketing agency was a bunch of people in glasses type typing at computers in a drab, beige room. (Might seem harsh but it’s the truth, scouts honour). And yet my very first day at this (assumedly) spreadsheet-filled job, I was asked to write my first blog post. Huh? A blog post? What does that have to do with being a B2B technology marketing agency. How would that help us with our clients/leads in any way? But I dutifully went to work researching a topic I knew nothing about (digital B2B marketing) and tried my best to make it sound like I knew what I was talking about. You be the judge of if it worked or not. I was then told that this would be a weekly occurrence, so here we are on blog post 27, and I’m still finding marketing topics to babble on about.
There are many reasons why blogs are becoming one of the most common aspects of a B2B marketing agency, but let’s start with your favourite three letters that you’re almost definitely sick of hearing from me: SEO. That’s right, blogs can increase your business’s SEO ranking far better than a regular web page can. The reason? It all comes down to how frequently you post and how varied your topics are. There’s no need to constantly updated all of the pages on your website, in fact it could be more damaging than helpful as it implies a sense of instability to your site visitors. On the other hand, one of the core aspects of a blog is to keep up a regular schedule. Google values sites that have regular activity on them, so a blog is the perfect way to achieve this without compromising any integrity.
Furthermore, the range of topics blogs allow you to cover mean you’re likely to come up on a much wider number of search result lists. And every time someone clicks onto your blog post, you’re essentially funnelling them through to the rest of your site and a possible future conversion. They are also guaranteed to spend a decent amount of time on your site (depending on how long the blog post is) which whilst not explicitly said to, Google seems to like. It might boost you even higher on results pages as longer time spent on a site demonstrates that it has useful and interesting information on it.
But SEO isn’t the only benefit of a blog – far from it. Blogs and social media go hand in hand, and they certainly make your job a hell of a lot easier. In order to create a decent social media presence, a regular schedule of posting varied, engaging content is needed. Sounds exhausting, doesn’t it? Don’t worry, not all of it has to be brand spanking new content – in fact, constantly flashing new content screaming “look at this!” “look at this!” might actually turn your leads off a bit. Try to stick to posting every other day and insert a mixture of new and repurposed content to maintain a healthy balance. Yep, you guessed it, that’s where the humble blog comes in. If we focus on LinkedIn, which by now we all know is the biggest social media platform for B2B marketing, and their articles feature. All you need to do is tweak your blog post a little to fit the tone and format and then post it on your page as an article. Boom! You’ve not only put your stylish, informative words in the face of another audience, but it serves as yet another way to link back to your site.
Did you do a really cool campaign a couple of months ago that everyone seems to have forgotten? Are you redoing your site and losing that lovely little section you wrote on ABM? Time to repurpose that lovely content – into a blog post! This not only allows you to give that content a fresh look and tone, but also lets you go into a lot more depth about it. It also allows you to talk to your audience about all this information in a much lighter, more conversational tone. Be friendly! Jokey! Now is the time to show yourself as not just a highly knowledgeable marketer but a hilarious, down to earth human being as well. Trust me, there is a perfect balance (of which it is up to you to decide if I’m hitting it or not). Following on from the down to earth human being reasoning, blog posts are the perfect place to talk about the exciting things happening within your own business. Have you hired a fabulous new team member? Threw the most incredible Christmas party at the top of the Eiffel tower? Why not show off a bit! There’s nothing wrong with being excited about the changes in your organisation, and a blog is the best place to show it.
Last, but certainly not least, let’s go a tad more into depth about how blogs help conversion. Blog posts are the perfect place to put a CTA, leading them to more information on you/your services. Chances are, if they have taken the time to read the entire blog post, then they are already quite invested in what you have to say and will be curious to find out more. Place a CTA after each blog post to lead them to a form where they can input their information to further access resources of yours such as case studies, white papers and booking meetings.
So there you have it. A blog post from a B2B marketing agency all about why you should write blog posts in a B2B marketing agency. Wow how I feel like I’ve come full circle! So…what next?
