The Business Blog and Content Flywheel

Businesses blogs drive traffic and improve search rankings. Next to that blogs drive email subscription sign-ups where then the email can drive impressive engagement and conversions. So how do these to work together in a B2B context?

Blogging takes resources you could possibly be using elsewhere, so there needs to be a return on the resources you are spending. You need to make it successful, at least as successful as it’s alternatives. Let’s tackle the topics today.

1. Publishing frequency
2. Targeting
3. Working with the team
4. Email marketing integration
5. Content promotion

Publishing frequency

Now tell me what is most important; Regular or quality posting? Regular blog publishing is a big commitment and will only happen if the business validates and stresses the importance. It ties into email marketing, because blog posts are often the source of content for newsletters. Blogging is an essential part of inbound marketing and as an activity needs to be given a fixed schedule and be reserved time for. If you try to “fit it in” where you can, it won’t happen.

Weekly or twice-weekly posts can be ideal, depending on your niche and industry of course - the associated creative workload will be manageable for most company blogging teams.

Not every piece of content needs to be “Epic”, experienced content managers will tell you that sometimes the easiest posts were the ones that had the best lead generating results. Or shorter content worked best as inbound link magnet. So mixing up long, short, “Epic” and easy posts will decrease the stress on resources and increase the frequency. The key to success is to maintain a high standard for the quality of your content.

Targeting and segment selection

B2B blogs often exist to increase targeted website visits. Think about your customer types and target readers. You want to attract the perfect audience. B2B targeting needs to happen on three levels; the company level, the role-responsibility level and targeting to the individual

Think about the needs of the company, the manager and the individual and how your business can meet those needs. If you can make life easier for an important contact person then the chances of doing business with them increases.

Your blog readers are not a faceless crowd. Thinking about them as individuals allows you to connect more effectively because you get into your readers’ ways of thinking. As a you refine your content you can think about the pain points someone is having, the life cycle (purchase) stage and the content that goes along with that. Getting more specific will allow for further segmentation in your email and a higher number of long tail traffic visitors than you would never get if content only stays high level. Many may say their tools don't allow for much personalisation, but there is way more possible than you think. Even if you only have a personal email account, you can set that gmail account to mail merge reaching quite a lot of people with personalised email.

Working with the in-house team

A blog is too often delegated to one person. Just as with other aspects of marketing it can work better if carried by the team. If you put together a team of people with complementary skills they will generate more ideas for blog posts your readers will find useful. The blog should use a consistent writing style and the best way to do this is to have one or two people editing the articles.

Other team members that don’t (or simply can’t) write, can still generate stellar ideas, do research and give suggestions. Of course you can also choose to outsource the content creation and focus on the business itself. A valid strategy, especially if there is appropriate budget. Ideally many of the particular insights you have in your business should be conveyed and formed into the content, so that at least would mean working closely together. Another great way of generating content is repurposing it or tying email and content into your events. If you were going to do them anyway, why not make the most out of them?

Email Marketing Integration

Your blog can generate leads in multiple ways; phone calls, direct contact requests and email subscribers. What one wants to avoid is that high traffic just means people passing by. So aiming for a Micro conversion in the form of a email subscription is a great start. Putting a sign up form on every blog page. There is much more you can do to increase the number of email subscribers.

Build a relationship with your readers. Yes, I know this is a business marketing to other businesses, but it will be real live people who click your subscribe button. Your emails will be sent to real live people who you want to keep top of mind to.

I for instance have an email list of several thousand opt-in subscribers, I would never be able to keep top of mind with that many people if I were to do it in person; phone calls, shake everybody’s hand? Spending a only minute with each of them would equal 2,5 weeks of work each month at this time. An opposed to personal communication, blog content together with email is scalable.

But doesn’t mean it cannot get personal. Ideally they know the brand and the people behind it, so it warms up any contact afterwards, provides talking points.

Subscribers must see (a lot of) benefits before they will allow you to send them regular emails. Things like early access to desirable products, preferential rates and invitations will cut the mustard. The most condensed PDF downloads, even a few pages, can work as sign up incentives, but watered down whitepapers aren’t going to work. Quality over quantity the end goal isn’t the a person to subscribe, it lies is beyond that. Think about this as a conversion staircase, there are several steps and bad quality will just promote them to turn around and walk away.

One way to increase email subscribers is to direct possible subscribers to different landing pages. The content on your different landing page sign up forms would vary depending the link that the viewer clicked on or even based on the rest of their browsing history and profile if that is available.

If someone has a profile or direct click that indicates a particular product category, then the landing page would be focused on that. If the would-be subscriber came from a link on a page about a whole different type of professional service then the landing page would be value add focused and probably include a decision making resource – like case studies for example.

With so many people using tablets and phones for browsing it is important that these landing pages are responsive. Around 53% of Email service providers now offering landing page creators inside their own tools (source: Email software Buyer’s guide ).

After studying the functionality vendor for vendor, you will see not all of that software offers responsive landing pages and pre-made templates. If that is important to your company, be sure to test it when making a tooling decision.

Content promotion

If content is King, then promotion is queen. And the queen is wearing the pants. Even though you are targeting other businesses, you are able to get traffic through social media. Most of Linkedin groups are primarily around business for example and people will share outstanding content through their social media accounts if you only thought that social was personal. Even if you only have a personal email account, with some work, you can use your skills in outreach and set that gmail account to mail merge reaching quite a lot of people with personalised email.

But before they can do THAT they need to first see your content, so that is where email also plays a part, in working towards conversion, direct promotion and indirect promotions through sharing. Every social promotion needs a spark and that can be the blog itself – and – an email pointing towards it.

Blog Monetization and tools

Obviously every blog will at some point need to return to their base goals and see if the content is adding to the business objectives. The toolset and types of content will depend very much on the goals you had starting out with.

Goal: Lead generation
Creating bottom of the funnel content that works to get in touch with (potential) leads. Either at demand capture phase or before. Tools are content marketing tools and of course lead generation and list growth tools.

Goal: Affiliate revenue
Creating Affiliate content like getting started guides, reviews and comparissons. The goal is to either get clicks (if PPC), or registrations (if per lead, customer). Helpful tools provide tracking, nurturing and specific affiliate marketing tools to guide the process.

Visibility, thought leadership and Brand awareness
This is a different kind of goal, less "hard" so to speak. Amongst the subgoals may be surround sound strategy of guestblogging, social media coverage and of course the own blog that has a mix of content. Think about tools like typical content marketing, event and online course software.

Making the Most of Your Business Blog

Your business blog can form an cornerstone for continued growth of your business. It can be the source of a sizable portion of your B2B leads, especially if you combine it with well-thought out email marketing campaigns, possibly lead scoring and the marketing automation that goes with that. There needs to be a return on the resources spent, so please do appoint proper measurement and track how it is working for you.

Jordie van Rijn, email and marketing automation consultant at emailmonday and member of the Dutch DMA.