If you’re serious about growing your business online and drawing in relevant, qualified leads to your B2B website, then blogging is a necessity. It’s the most effective strategy to bring inbound traffic to your website, and can add SEO value for years to come. Use your blogging strategy combined with inbound marketing methods, and you can effectively turn your visitors into leads, and ultimately into customers.
The big question everyone has to ask is always the same: how do you get started with a B2B blog? Although it’s become clear in recent years how important a good blogging strategy is, if you haven’t blogged previously then a blank page can seem incredibly daunting. For this reason, many companies are yet to make a splash in the blogging world, purely because they believe that they don’t have the idea, the resources, or even the commitment to keep up with a sustainable content plan.
This isn’t true! The important thing to remember is that although the impact of a good B2B blog can be huge, the time and effort to get going is relatively small. Once you’ve started, you can create a plan for future blogging that works for you, with the knowledge that you have already made the first step. All you really need to get going is sound knowledge of your industry, a good understanding of your audience, and the desire to improve as you go along. Here are some of our top tips on getting started with your B2B blog.
You might already have some ideas in mind for what you want to write, but it’s important to think carefully about who you’re writing for. Before you get started, consider your customer base and your ideal prospects. It can be helpful to chat to your sales team - find out what the most common questions they get asked are, and what buyer persona they most often engage with. It’s a good idea to also conduct some research in your industry that is focused more on your intended audience. Check out other blogs, forums, social media and comment sections to discover the important questions that are being asked or answered. Don’t just copy what you see though - make sure that you are being original, and adding something new to the discussion.
Once you’ve figured out your buyer persona, come up with a few blog titles that it’s likely they would be interested in. Consider the professional problems that they face, their ambitions, and the tone of voice that will appeal to them. Once you have 4-5 blog titles, you can start creating a content plan that works for you. If you have limited time and resources to dedicate to blogging, this may only be 1-2 times a month, but if you can, you should aim to post once a week at least.
The easiest way to get started with your B2B blog is to just dive straight in. You should plan out a brief of your blog post, including sections to keep it on track, and create a few bullet points for each section to show what needs to be covered. Once this is done, you can much more effectively break your writing into small chunks. Make sure that you’re providing an answer to the problem or question that you are addressing, and that your writing is easy to understand, and tailored to your audience.
One tip that gets around a lot is to draft the body of your blog first, then focus on creating the perfect introduction and conclusion. This means you can get straight into the topic that you know, without stressing too much about grabbing reader attention at the start.
You don’t need to spend days drafting, redrafting, and editing your first post. The important things are that it’s written, that it addresses your topic, and that it is posted! If you are just starting your B2B blog, it’s natural to worry about how your first few posts will be received. But if you keep on creating, and keep on posting, you will not only improve as you go, but will also build up an impressive backlog of posts to entertain your readers. Make sure that your content is factually and grammatically correct, but try not to keep going back to it. Write it, post it, and move on. Although, we do always recommend proofing all work - pass it to another member of your team, as they may spot errors that you missed.
Once you have the ball rolling, it’s important to keep it in motion. As mentioned, you should be aiming to post around once a week at first, although you can post more or less dependent on your time and resources, Don’t let your posts become part of one of those B2B blogs that are abandoned or forgotten about after a handful of entries - consistency is key, and it’s important in the beginning not to bite off more than you can chew.
One way to combat this is to plan out your posts and use a scheduler to make sure they post at the correct time. If you’ve just started your B2B blog, the excitement has probably taken over, and you’re itching to post your first five posts, right off the bat! Resist doing this - it is much better to write the posts, and then schedule one a week until you have written more. This helps to spread out your content, and also leaves you plenty of time to start planning the next block of blogs. It’s a good idea to create a content calendar, and use it to drop in any ideas and stay on top of work. If a few people are working on the blog, make sure that they know when their posts are due, and don’t let them shirk their duties!
Still stuck on how to craft your first post? We’ve created a helpful template to get you started. Download it below to start making your B2B blog posts stand out, with helpful tips, tricks and best practices to help turn your blog into a lead generation machine.