Why is B2B blogging important? First and foremost, it’s a huge driver in organic SEO – Google loves great B2B blog posts. Plus, an active blog shows prospects you’re smart and capable of solving their problems.
The statistics bear out the importance of business-to-business blogging. We recently conducted a market research study of 100 B2B marketing professionals. Almost two-thirds said they plan to increase their investment in content creation in 2019.
More than half said they blog at least month, with forty-six percent producing multiple posts per month:
It’s hard to argue with those numbers. Clearly, blogging is here to stay on the Mount Rushmore of B2B marketing strategies.
Do you want to turn your blog into the linchpin of a great content marketing program? Here are five quick steps you need to know to write a B2B blog post that gets results.
There are tons of examples of business-to-business bloggers getting stuck at this step. The trick is to not overthink it.
Consider what you do, and the problems you solve. Those problems are what your potential buyers are searching for! If you provide an answer, they’ll learn to trust you – and ultimately think about buying from you.
In other words, if you make employee scheduling software, give tips and templates to help managers schedule their employees. If your software helps police departments manage investigations, produce useful content for investigators.
What you shouldn’t do is get overly philosophical or cute. The last thing the web needs is more hot takes and pop culture connections. Readers want good, solid, actionable information.
Once you have a general topic, it’s time to determine your focus keyword. This, according to Yoast SEO, is:
Picking a focus keyword, or keyphrase, is an art. It takes years to master it. But there is one tip that beginning B2B bloggers can use to get most of the way there.
Google it.
Seriously.
Think to yourself what your post is about, and Google that term. Then look at what content is returned on Page 1, and who wrote it.
Does the content look something like what you have in mind? If it does, you’re probably in good shape. But if it’s way off – like a different industry using the same phrase in a different way – you probably need to try something else.
If the Page 1 content is written companies much larger than you or massive content organizations, you probably need to use a longer or more specific focus keyword. If it’s companies around your size or smaller, you’re good to go.
The most important thing is that your focus keyword matches your content exactly. You can’t fool Google. Write the best content about your topic.
Here’s more on keyword strategy from Yoast:
Yes, we’re advising that you think about images before you start writing. This is important for two reasons:
Images are critically important to B2B blog posts. They give the reader context and add information in an easy-to-parse format. Plus, Google loves them.
(Just don’t forget your alt text. People always forget the alt text.)
This is actually the easiest step when we’re teaching someone how to write a B2B blog post.
If you’ve read Step 1, you know you should be writing about what you know. This isn’t a treatise on the state of the world, or an attempt to shoehorn “Jersey Shore: Family Vacation” into your industry.
It’s just what’s in your brain about a topic, translated into words on a page.
If you know how to do something that your prospects need to do, tell them how.
And if you know where to look for resources your prospects need, make a list.
If you know best practices or strategies are changing, tell them what the new ones are.
Writing a B2B blog post does not need to be a slog, even if you’re not a writer. Remember the KISS principle:
Here are some tips for writing more effective B2B blog content:
At this stage, you’ve:
Now all that’s left to do is tune it up and let it fly.
If you’re using WordPress, use the Yoast SEO plugin (ideally the premium one) and get both the Readability Analysis and Focus Keyphrase fields green and smiling, like this:
Remember, Yoast is only as good as the focus keyphrase you enter. It scores based on that. If your keyphrase is a non-starter – like if we used “blog” instead of “how to write a B2B blog post” for this one – you’re not going to rank, period.
If you don’t rank in organic search, nobody sees your post. And if nobody sees your post, you wasted your time. Bummer.
Other content management systems have their own search engine optimization tools:
Once your SEO suite is happy, preview your post. Does everything look right? Are images where they should be? Any typos?
(Typos can actually hurt your SEO, believe it or not.)
Give your B2B blog post one final read and hit “publish.” You’re done!
Well, almost. Unless your site is a content monster (or live indexing is a real thing), Google won’t pick up your new post immediately.
You can’t force the search engine to crawl or index your post, but you can ask it nicely using the URL Inspection Tool (the new version of Fetch as Google). Likewise, you can submit a new XML sitemap to Google Search Console.
Now you’re well and truly done. Sit back, give it a few hours (or a few days) and search for that focus keyphrase of yours.
If you’ve done it right, you’ll show up on the search engine results page. And if you see your result, your prospects will, too.
Happy blogging!
Don’t feel like learning how to write a B2B blog post yourself? No worries – you’re probably busy enough. Altitude’s content marketing team would be happy to lend a hand. Contact us online or give us a call at 610-421-8601 x122 to learn more about how we can use content to drive qualified business-to-business traffic and leads your way.
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