9 Ways To Build a Successful B2B Blog

It’s no news that blogs are one of the best ways for companies to build their brand and spread their message, and they have become an essential part of every successful marketing strategy. Blogs represent a tremendous opportunity for companies to establish industry expertise and grow your audience through social media. While it can seem intimidating to generate content and post compelling content, these 9 steps will take your Blog to the next level.

Maintaining your Blog is a lot of work and takes careful planning to gain the best results. By posting your content at the wrong time, you can lose engagement and struggle to establish a following. Define how often you’re going to post and be realistic about this schedule. Is every day too much? Once a month too little? If you realise that your audience is clamouring for more after bi-monthly posts, increase to posting weekly. Also, time of the day is critical for when you post, a post made at midnight is going to gain much less traction than one posted at noon or 5 pm when people are generally more engaged with media platforms.

Conventional wisdom has held that the more content the better, but this is becoming increasingly untrue, and audiences seek quality over quantity. By focusing on quality content, your blog will become an expert voice in the industry, and your business will build a reputation based on knowledge, expertise, and experience. Focus on in-depth articles that inform the audience and provide a unique perspective, not just filler to boost the total number of posts on your blog. Try to make content that solves a common problem or gives a new user a deeper understanding of a specific topic.

When you launch a new blog, it's essential to have a realistic expectation of its ROI. A blog won't generate a large audience overnight, and it's easy to get discouraged in the early stages. Consistent, quality content is critical, and your audience will grow exponentially as people discover your blog and share posts on social platforms like LinkedIn. Define how you will measure success and analyse your engagement to deliver content that is consistently performing well. Without having a defined scope, it's difficult to understand if your blog is underperforming or if you're just coming at it from an unrealistic perspective. 

Your tone is what makes the first impression with your audience, and you want to come across as an expert but not a know it all. Sure, you’ll need to get keywords and other technical terms into your blog posts, but it’s important to write naturally and purposely. Your tone should convey your expertise, knowledge, and experience without coming across condescendingly or overly confident. Readers want to feel comfortable and engaged, by connecting with a natural tone your blog will resonate with readers and generate authentic engagement. 

Any thriving blog shares one key trait; consistency. Develop a realistic posting schedule and stick to it. If you generate content or post every week and suddenly find that you have run out of new topics or can’t find the time to create content, your audience will notice and stop returning to your blog as it goes stale. Blogs fail when they slow down, or worse, stop posting altogether. If your goal is to create a successful B2B blog, having consistent, relevant topics will build a loyal audience, and regular posting will be critical to retaining that audience.

Often corporate blogs have a narrowed focus for their specific industry. Still, by focusing on relevant topics adjacent to that industry, blogs can become more than just niche platforms or, worse, echo chambers. Branching out allows your readers to find relevant content in one place, which will grow your audience and bring readers from a broad range of backgrounds. Choose five topics pertinent to your industry but not directly connected to it and explore how they impact issues you’re an expert in.

Readers often prefer long-form content that takes an in-depth look at a specific topic exploring it from different angles and pinpointing particular problems and solutions. Typically long-form blog posts generate more organic engagement and shares. By comprehensively covering a given topic, you can provide your readers with an insider's opinion and voice that offers expert analysis and solutions. Longer articles also generate better SEO as keywords appear more frequently and boost your performance in relevant searches.

Maybe writing isn’t your main talent, or you don’t have time to generate relevant blog content, but you want to gain the benefits of a blog. Consider finding a copywriter with the ability to conduct research, or that has relevant knowledge of your industry. By utilising a professional copywriter, you’ll be able to focus on planning your content strategy and generate a more robust blog that will help with SEO. Also, professional copywriters are accustomed to adopting different voices and can create posts that naturally engage with your audience while creating a brand identity.

Naturally, some posts will generate more engagement than others. Analyse the number of shares, comments, and links you get from each post, and update your top performers to generate even more engagement. Updated blog posts will allow newer readers to discover popular posts from the past and readers that have been with you from day one will remember a great post. Allowing comments on your blog will also give you insight into what blog posts generate a real connection with readers and what upcoming topics may generate top-performing content. Both of these are critical SEO tactics that can take your blog to new heights and grow your brand with exceptional results for an affordable, accessible marketing strategy.