You’ve done all the work. You’ve identified your audience, come up with a great topic, spent hours researching and writing 800-1,000 words of copy… and now what? Crickets. It almost seems that the effort wasn’t worth the result, doesn’t it? While this is a frustration a lot of content marketers feel, it doesn’t have to be that way. Follow these 8 simple and essential B2B blogging tips and watch your blog traffic and engagement grow through the roof!
Learn the 8 essential B2B blogging tips that will get you noticed
What is a Blog?
A blog is an online periodic resource that offers readers insights and information on various topics selected by the author of the blog. Blog posts are articles that make up the blog. A blog can have multiple contributors or authors. Blogs are an important part of a content marketing strategy as they provide businesses the opportunity to share their subject matter expertise and points of view.
Blogging Tip # 1 – Start with a Key Phrase
This B2B blogging tip is #1 for a reason. Blog content is always written for two audiences; your targeted persona AND the search engines. Topics for blogs and other digital content are flushed out during the Planning Phase of our B2B Lead Funnel Framework. However, a topic is just an idea, a concept, that you believe your customer would care about. Now you need to express this topic in a way that includes a key phrase that will get you ranked in Google. This is a main reason you might be getting ignored. If you don’t start with a key phrase, then you probably are missing out on traffic from search engines. At Vende, over 60% of the traffic to our blogs comes from search engines. (see example below showing a #1 organic listing in Google for one of our recent blog posts)
Be sure to use the key phrases in the headline or subheadings, the blog title (H1 tag), and within the body content of your post to give you the best shot of ranking well.
Blogging Tip # 2 – Consider Your Persona
It is critically important to speak the language of your audience when writing a blog post. The best way to accomplish this is to select the desired persona for each post. In the B2B blogging world, there are 3 primary personas:
- The C-Suite — Often, the decision-maker. Their focus is mostly on top and bottom growth. If your article is focused on the C-Suite, then write about strategies, trends, or opportunities to improve revenue, profit, or equity/shareholder value.
- VP/Manager Level—Managers are most often the point of contact for the sales team. Managers execute the vision of the C-Suite and are interested in methods, frameworks, and best practices to improve productivity or effectiveness. For content targeting the Manager, focus on how easy/difficult integrating and managing your solution will be.
- Knowledge Worker/Influencer—This persona is a valuable voice and often a front door into businesses. Articles targeting knowledge workers should focus on ways to make their lives easier and how to get more done in less time. Tactical how-to’s, guides, and tips & tricks work well at this level.
If you don’t have personas fleshed out, don’t worry, we’ve got your back! We have developed a worksheet called the Persona Developer to help you think through how to position your company’s solutions in this way. Also, check out this blog on how to stop writing boring content and speak to your audience in a way that gets them inspired.
Blogging Tip # 3 – Develop Your Headline
Too many B2B bloggers don’t take enough time to develop a good headline. The reality is that without a good headline, your content will be ignored. Your headline is actually the salesperson to your blog article. Its job is to cut through the noise and say, “Hey, this article is important to you. Take a few minutes and learn something valuable.” Your headline must accomplish the following 3 goals:
- Get readers’ attention
- Make a promise to educate them and make their life better somehow
- Sell them on at least scanning your blog article
Blogging Tip # 4 – Create the Gap
This blogging tip is almost always ignored but is critical if you want buyers to actually read your blog post. Your B2B audience is consuming blog content primarily to learn how to solve business problems. A good blog needs to create a gap by identifying a single problem and then shedding some light on how to solve it. Establish the problem either in the headline or the first paragraph or both. For example, the promise of this blog is to deal with the problem of blog posts being ignored. This is an issue for lots of content marketers out there. You go through all of the trouble of writing a post, but then no one reads it. Our solution is the 8 Essential Ingredients you are learning about right now.
Blogging Tip # 5 – Put Meat on the Bones
In the ‘80s, Wendy’s kicked off a successful ad campaign against rivals McDonald’s and Burger King that promoted how much more beef they offered customers over their competitors.
While beef is the key ingredient in a hamburger, useful information like tips, tools, resources, statistics, research, and points of view are the key ingredients of a blog post. Think of it this way; it takes 5-10 minutes to read a blog. Your goal should be for the reader to think to themselves, “that was a good use of 5-10 minutes of my day” after they have consumed the information you shared. Take time to provide content that over-delivers on the promise you made in the headline, and your blogs will get the attention they deserve.
Blogging Tip # 6 – Ask & Answer a Question
Blog readers are often looking for an answer to a question or problem. Thinking about the primary question a blog post answers, and then highlighting it as a call out, will get more people to read the entire post. As a bonus, this will also give you access to Google’s answer engine and help combat Zero Click Search. This is known as “snippet bait.” Snippet Bait is a 40-60 word block of content specifically designed to rank, not only in the Featured Snippet spot but in voice search as well. See below for an example:
Blogging Tip # 7 – Add Key Takeaways
Over half of the visitors to your blog will spend less than 15 seconds on a given post. A skimmer will read your headline and then skim through the items on the page that catch their attention. Key Takeaways will give the skimmers a brief summary of the points and concepts of your blog post. The best way to create Key Takeaways is to reformat your sub-heads as the actual bulleted takeaways. In fact, when I write a blog, I actually start with the takeaways. These are the concepts I want to emphasize with the reader. Then I turn my takeaways into the sub-heads for the article, and then I put meat on the bones for each sub-head. That’s exactly how this post was created.
Blogging Tip # 8 – Always Include a Call-To-Action
Blogging is part of your content marketing strategy. When you include the word “marketing,” there is an implication of moving the buyer through a process. Always include a call-to-action for the reader to engage deeper with your company. Use this section to connect the dots between the issue being discussed and additional resources and support you can offer the reader. This might include other blog content, downloadable or gated assets, or asking the reader to schedule an appointment with your sales team.
Key Takeaways – 8 Essential B2B Blogging Tips
Don’t go through all of the effort of writing a blog post without adding these essential elements:
- Always include a key phrase that will get you search engine exposure.
- Consider your persona so you can speak their language.
- Develop a headline that grabs the reader’s attention.
- Create the gap by highlighting a problem the persona is dealing with and offer a solution.
- Put meat on the bones by over-delivering on the promise of the blog with useful content.
- Ask/Answer a question as a call-out to help with SEO.
- Add key takeaways to summarize your blog post for readers who prefer to skim.
- Always include a call-to-action and invite the reader to take the next step.
How Can We Help? (psst… this is our Call-to-Action)
If your blog isn’t one of the largest sources of traffic from search engines and social sites, then you are probably missing one or more of the 8 essential blogging tips (BTW, “blogging tips” is our key phrase for this blog) mentioned in this post. Vende offers multiple ways to help shed light on how to improve your B2B digital marketing performance, including content marketing and blogging. We have been helping B2B’s develop winning online solutions since 2000. Contact us today for a complimentary consultation, and we will be happy to take a look at your blog and offer some tips and suggestions for improvement.
Would you like to learn our B2B Lead Funnel Framework and apply it to your business?
If you are looking for help producing quality leads and sales for your business, our B2B Lead Funnel framework course is for you. Traditional methods just don’t cut it anymore. Enroll today and let us put our 20+ years of B2B digital experience to work for you.
