Tried-and-True Blogging Tips

Companies are adopting blogs as a powerful B2B communications tool, but the thought of managing a blog on a timely basis can be overwhelming. Yesterday, Promotional Consultant Today shared five important tips to make your blogging more effective in moving prospects along the sales pipeline. Today, we’re sharing five more tips.

1. Break Up Your Posts with Headers
Scanning is the way people read on the web. Make it easy for readers to scan your blog posts by providing headers to break up the copy. Creating section headers will also help you organize your writing into appropriately-sized chunks. If you have a list (like this), make sure the headers have numbers.

2. Speak in Your Customer’s Language
Marketers frequently stick to company-preferred terms in their communications, but a blog is a place to test alternate terms, especially those that your customers use. Be aware of how your customers describe your products or services and adopt some of that language in your posts. It is likely that company prospects use similar terms, so using them can make your blog posts more accessible and discoverable.

3. Make Posts Easy to Share
The nature of social media encourages sharing, even for B2B companies. Make sure to include sharing buttons so your readers can share your posts with others in their networks. Test which buttons work for your readers, and keep them to a minimum. Too many buttons could reduce how it’s shared. Also, ask yourself if the content is worth sharing. Would you share it with your network? Is it helpful, valuable and educational?

4. Include a Call To Action
Blogging is the best method for generating leads using social media. But the only way to generate those leads is with a call to action at the end of every blog post, or at least in the sidebar of the blog. What can you offer your readers to turn them from prospects into leads? Is there an ebook or webinar that extends the content of the blog post? What about a case study that shows how other companies dealt with industry situations? For what would your prospects trade their contact information? That’s what you should offer as calls to action.

5. Publish Consistently
Once you decide to start a business blog, the pressure to publish is on. The way to develop good habits and readers is to set a schedule and stick to it. Start with one day per week. Once you have worked that into your schedule, see what it takes to add a second day per week. Start looking for others in your company to blog to expand beyond what you can do on your own. Do not scale too quickly, as you want to maintain the schedule you set, not slide backward.

Source: Jeffrey L. Cohen is managing editor of SocialMediaB2B.com. He is also a social strategist at salesforce radian6. Cohen works with B2B and B2C enterprise companies to assess their social media strategy and adoption, and advises them on how social media marketing, communications and engagement can help them meet their business objectives.