Developing a B2B blog strategy is one of the best things you can do for your marketing.
Sure, blogging has been around since the early days of the internet and may not be as shiny as the other new marketing strategies. However, it has a proven track record of helping many B2B brands generate organic traffic and drive sales.
However, for blogging to help boost your content marketing, you must do it right. You must follow a proven B2B blog strategy.
And that’s exactly what we’ll help you with. We’ll show you how to create a strategy that drives traffic like crazy and converts like gangbusters.
Forget What You know About Blogging
Which of these are you…
“We tried blogging, but it just didn’t work for us.”
“A blog wouldn’t work in my industry.”
“We update our blog regularly, but it doesn’t produce anything for us.”
“I need leads right now. I’ll focus on my blog later.”
I hear this kind of thing all the time from startup founders and B2B growth leaders, and it’s just not true.
If you look at all the top high-growth companies in the B2B, SaaS, and tech worlds, you’ll see high-quality, well-written, entertaining, educational blogs all over the place.
Do you think these companies put so much time and resources into their blogs if they weren’t generating leads? No. They’d let them wither and focus their resources on ads, sales, and PR.
If you have the right B2B blog strategy and execute it consistently, you’ll generate inbound leads.
Why Consistent Blogging is Crucial to Successful Long-term Inbound Lead Generation
Before diving into the elements that go into a successful B2B blog strategy, let’s quickly look at why blogging is crucial to your inbound lead generation.
Gives You an Opportunity To Answer User’s Search Queries
One of the most important reasons for you to blog consistently is because it allows you to answer your target audience’s search queries. Research shows that B2B buyers spend 27% of their time on the buyer journey researching independently online.
For you to stand a chance of getting noticed, your content must rank high.
A blog gives you the perfect platform to answer your audience’s queries, resulting in them moving through your funnel.
Helps You Rank for Relevant Keywords
Another reason you must blog regularly is that it helps you rank for relevant keywords.
For that to happen, you must have a blog strategy designed to target keywords that matter to your brand. It must also include a content marketing strategy to help you create B2B content that ranks well and provides value to readers.
Boosts Domain Authority by Earning Backlinks
For your content to stand a chance of ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs), especially in a competitive niche, your website must have a high domain authority (DA). DA is a metric developed by Moz to indicate the likelihood of a website ranking well.
How can you boost your DA?
One of the best ways to boost your DA is to build backlinks to your content. And the easiest way to do so is to create high-quality blog content that attracts backlinks.
Establishes Your Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness (E.A.T)
With so much content being published online, ensuring that searchers get the best experience was becoming difficult.
That’s why Google decided to introduce its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. These guidelines are meant to ensure that the content published online is of high quality.
One of the stipulated guidelines is called E.A.T, an acronym for expertise, authority, and trust. Your content, website, and the creator of said content must exhibit these traits for you to have a high E.A.T score. And this is exactly what blogging and a robust B2B blogging strategy will help you achieve.
How to Start a Blog that Fuels B2B Demand Generation
Now that you know the importance of blogging, let’s quickly dive into how you can start one that fuels your demand generation
1. Choose a CMS
One of the first steps to starting a blog for your B2B brand is to settle on a content management system (CMS). CMS software allows you to create, edit, and manage a website.
Because of this, choosing the right CMS for your brand is a critical step to starting an effective blog. A few elements to look for in a CMS include:
- Speed: Speed plays a huge role in user experience. That’s why you must use a CMS that’s optimized for speed.
- Scalability: Choose a CMS that can grow with your website. Starting with an option that’s restrictive will only frustrate you down the line when you need more power and performance.
- Ease of use: Avoid a CMS that’s developer reliant. Instead, look for ease of use, as this will enable you to handle most maintenance tasks in-house.
Examples of content management systems you can consider include Hubspot, WordPress, Webflow, and many more.
2. Subdomain or Subdirectory?
Another factor to consider when starting a blog is to determine whether to structure it as a subdomain or subdirectory of your website.
What’s the difference?
A subdomain is a child of the parent domain, meaning it sits outside the main domain. The URL structure of a subdomain will look like this:
blog.exampledomain.com
A subdirectory, on the other hand, sits within the main domain, and the structure of the URL will follow the example below:
exampledomain.com/blog/
In essence, search engines treat subdomains as separate entities from the main website. Depending on your particular case, this can make or break the performance of your blog. For example, if your website has a high DA, publishing your blog as a subdirectory will help boost your SEO, as the link equity and authority of the main site can be passed on to the blog. This doesn’t happen for subdomains, as they’re technically separate entities.
For more on the SEO impact of subdomains and subdirectories, check out this article.
3. Design for Frictionless User Experience and Conversion Rate Optimization
As you map out your blog structure, you must remember that while it is your blog, you’re creating it for your customers.
Because of this, you must design it to offer them a frictionless user experience (UX). To do this, make sure navigation back and forth on your blog is easy. Not only will this keep users on your blog for longer periods, but it will also keep them coming back.
Besides designing for a frictionless UX, consider conversions as well. Remember, your blog is meant to be an inbound lead generation machine. As such, you must design it for optimum conversions. A few tips to help you do so include:
- Understand your audience
- Create content that matches user intent
- Optimize your in-post email capture forms and call to actions
- Include social proof like case studies or customer testimonials
Creating an impactful blog requires following good SaaS web design best practices. Doing so will help you rank better and drive better leads to your business.
4. Create Logical Categories that Map to Your Products and Services
While your blog is meant to educate and empower your readers, you can also use it to drive sales. The best way to do that is by creating logical blog categories that map to your products and services. Doing this will help you better promote them in a non-salesy manner.
For example, if your product is an SEO plugin, create categories on your blog that cover all things SEO. Make sure to create helpful content for each category by using the jobs-to-be-done framework. This implies creating content around your audience’s pain points and showing them how to solve those problems using your product.
Creating logical categories makes it easier for users to find what they are looking for on your blog. It also helps search engines understand what each blog post you create is all about. As a result, your blog will stand a better chance of ranking. It will also convert better.
5. Create a Content Calendar & Publication Schedule
Before you dive in and start creating content for your blog, you need to create a content calendar. This will help you have a regular publication schedule to follow. It will also help you keep track of your writers and their responsibilities. Here’s a great example of Backlinko’s content calendar:
Why is this important?
Creating content on the fly may seem feasible when starting out, but the truth is that blogging is a lot of work, and you’ll quickly run out of steam. Having a content calendar will help you maintain the momentum of your blog. More importantly, it will ensure that you publish your posts in a logical order. Both are essential to running an engaging blog.
6. Create Content Guidelines & Editorial Standards
Besides a content calendar, you will also need to develop content guidelines and editorial standards.
- Content guidelines: These will help you determine which brand tone and voice to use in your content. This results in consistency, giving your blog a unique personality that helps readers connect on a personal level.
- Editorial standards: These are rules that determine the quality and trustworthiness of your content. It encompasses the writing style you expect from writers, sources to use (and those to avoid), and much more.
Establishing these two elements is critical to the success of your blog as it ensures you only publish quality content. It also results in a high Google E.A.T score, thereby boosting your chances of ranking.
7. Determine a Promotion Strategy Ahead of Time
Once you hit publish on a blog post, you can sit down and wait for the traffic, right?
That’s a resounding NO!
There’s a reason why it’s called content marketing — you have to market every piece of content you create.
You must have a promotion strategy in place.
Promoting your content will result in you reaching a wider audience and thus driving more traffic. A few blog promotion strategies and channels you can consider include:
- Sharing your latest posts with your email list
- Posting snippets of your content on social media
- Syndicating your content
- Paid promotion (on social and search)
All the time, energy, and resources you invest in creating a piece of content will go to waste if you don’t promote your content. Without promotion, you’ll only reach a fraction of the audience you could have otherwise reached.
Most Common Mistakes to Avoid When Blogging
Now that you know what to do when creating a B2B blog strategy, let’s look at the other side of the coin. Yes, we need to look at what not to do. This will help you avoid common landmines that cripple many B2B content marketing campaigns.
So, without further ado, let’s dive right in.
B2B Blog Strategy Mistake #1: Procrastination
One of the biggest mistakes brands make when it comes to their blogging strategy is procrastination. They put it off and focus on other marketing strategies because they don’t value blogging as an effective marketing strategy.
However, for SaaS and B2B brands, blogging should be a priority as B2B buyers rely on online searches to start their buying journey. Because of this, blogging plays a huge role in helping you drive top of the funnel leads.
B2B Blog Strategy Mistake #2: Inconsistency
Other brands do well, and they start their blogging journey. But unfortunately, they lack consistency.
Consistency is a crucial element of a winning blogging strategy as it helps boost your search engine rankings. It also helps establish you as an authority in your niche, leading to better conversion rates.
B2B Blog Strategy Mistake #3: Shortsightedness
Many B2B brands jump into content marketing with the expectation of getting fast results.
This is shortsightedness.
Unfortunately, blogging is a long game. It takes time for content to rank and start driving traffic. But once that happens, the results will be worth the wait as you get organic traffic and leads coming your way for as long as your piece of content ranks.
Never give up on blogging after a short time. You’ll end up losing all the momentum you’d have been building.
So how long should you wait?
There are many factors to consider. However, check out our post on how long SEO takes for a detailed overview.
Honorable Mentions
Suppose you’re not getting results from your blog. In that case, chances are good that you’re either procrastinating on investing in a thorough strategy, inconsistent in your execution, or you just aren’t giving the plan enough time to work.
With all that said, if you’ve never run a B2B blog strategy that generates leads before, here are a few other common mistakes you might be making:
Mistake: You’re producing content that no one is searching for.
Solution: Research search keywords in your industry. Write about what other people want to read, not what you think is interesting. If you have a unique angle on a topic, figure out a way to connect that angle to a search phrase that you can confirm has search volume behind it.
Mistake: You talk about yourself too much.
Solution: Give value. As much as we want to talk about how great our company is, most people are too concerned with their own problems to care. Especially in the B2B world, if you aren’t helping someone figure out a solution to a business problem, they will move on. Stop all the self-promotional content and start focusing on how you can educate your target prospects on things that matter to them.
Mistake: You’re asking a marketing aficionado to write technical content or content that requires very specific domain expertise.
Solution: Let a writer handle the writing work, and a marketer handle the marketing work.
Mistake: You’re asking a writer with domain expertise to handle marketing tasks like SEO, keyword research, and copyediting.
Solution: Let a writer handle the writing work, and a marketer handle the marketing work.
How to Create B2B Blog Posts that Delight Potential Customers
The success of your B2B blog strategy hinges on the quality of your blog posts. That’s why you must know how to write blog posts that delight your customers. Let’s quickly dive into some tips to help you do so:
1. Understand Search Intent
Understanding search intent is one of the most important keys to creating blog posts that delight readers.
Search intent refers to the reason behind a user entering a particular search query in search engines. This means going beyond keyword research and digging deep into what searchers are really looking for. Doing so will enable you to create content that answers their questions or provides them with the information they’re looking for.
Why is this important?
Creating content that helps readers understand a concept or solve a problem will help you establish yourself as an authority. It also increases the chances of repeat visits and social shares.
2. Consider What Decision-making Stage Your Reader is In
To create content that impacts your bottom line, you must strategically target it toward the right audience. This means understanding the stage that your reader is at in your buyer journey.
No, this doesn’t mean you need to be psychic. You just need to create content for each stage of the buyer journey. Here are some typical examples:
Awareness
This is where the reader has just become aware of your brand and the solution you offer. At this stage, focus more on informational keywords, intent, and content. Create content that educates and empowers your audience for success.
Evaluation
At the evaluation stage, readers are considering whether they need your content or not. To help them decide, create content that shows them how to solve a problem using your product or service. Executed well, these blog posts will lead to readers settling for your product.
Delight
After your target audience has converted and purchased your product, you must create content to keep them engaged. This is especially important for SaaS brands as it helps reduce churn and increases your retention rates.
Creating content that targets each decision stage makes it easier for readers to go down your funnel until they convert. It also helps you build an engaged community around your product or service.
3. Identify Your Unique Perspective that Differentiates You from Your Competitors?
There are over 5 billion searches made online every day. This means standing out in a crowded niche can be very difficult.
That’s why you need to identify your unique perspective. You need to discover what makes you different from your competitors. Doing so will help you find a unique angle for your blog. This will make you stand out from other brands in your niche.
People are tired of bland, rehashed content and are looking for unique content that makes a difference. Finding your unique angle will help you do just that.
4. Develop a Compelling Title
One of the first things readers see on SERPs after searching is the post’s title.
That’s why you must ensure you create compelling titles.
Your blog title is your first opportunity to show readers that your content is valuable. You can be likened to an elevator pitch. For it to attract readers and drive clicks, it should be:
- Short and direct: Long titles can get truncated on SERPs, making them lose meaning.
- Meet search intent: Your blog post title must show readers that they’ll find the content they’re looking for in your post.
- Use active voice: Using active voice in your headlines makes them actionable. It also elicits a response from readers.
Despite being one of the smallest elements of your blog post, the importance of the headline makes it warrants a lot of time and effort in making it. However, no matter how powerful your blog post may be, it won’t bring you the desired results as long as it has a weak title.
5. Create an Irresistible Intro
After your headline, your intro is the next important element of your blog post. Use your introduction to show your readers that they made the right decision by clicking on your link on the SERPs. To do this:
- Hook them with a question, story, or a statement that triggers curiosity
- State the problem your post is addressing
- Tell them that you have a solution
- Reiterate the problem and hint at the solution
Doing this will elicit an emotional response, mainly curiosity. As a result, readers will delve deeper into your post.
6. Narrate a Story and Give Examples
Human beings love stories. As a content marketer, you can use this to your advantage by leveraging storytelling in your blog posts. One reason storytelling is o powerful is that it makes your content engaging. It also makes it easier to remember your content.
Besides storytelling, you should always try using examples to prove your point. Examples make your content more relatable and add an element of authority. As a result, readers can better understand you. But, more importantly, you win their trust.
7. Add Visuals
Another tip for crafting blog posts that delight your customers is to add visuals. This includes anything from images, videos, GIFs, and infographics, to name a few. Besides the engagement factor, visuals are an excellent way to make your content:
- Easier to understand
- More memorable
- Sharable
To ensure that the visuals you use add value to your posts, make them relevant to each section you add them to. Also, try to use images that showcase what you’re talking about as much as possible.
8. Optimize for SEO
Remember, your blog post is competing against thousands of other posts like it. To stand a chance of being found by your audience, you must optimize your blog posts for SEO. A few tips to help boost your B2B SEO include:
- Conduct proper keyword research
- Optimize for search intent
- Use SEO-friendly URLs
- Craft clickable titles and metadata
- Use keywords in image file names and alt tags
- Build strategic internal links
- Build backlinks
SEO is a broad topic that can’t be covered in a short section like this one. Check out our B2B SEO guide if you want to dig deeper.
9. Focus on Readability
When churning out blog posts for your site, consider every type of reader. Some will only scan your post. Some will abandon it halfway while others will read from start to finish. You also need to consider that all your visitors will be at different reading levels.
Because of this, you must focus on ensuring your blog posts are readable for everyone. Aim for content that can be read by an 8th grader or lower.
To make your content easy to read for all audiences, be sure to:
- Utilize bullets
- Break up wordy paragraphs (5 sentences per block is ideal)
- Utilize sub-headings
- Employ block quotes
- Add images
There are many tools you can use to help you ensure your content has a good readability score. A few examples include Grammarly and SEO plugins like Yoast, AIOSEO, and others.
10. Add a Precise Call-to-Action
Your blog posts are supposed to help you achieve your business goals. Because of this, you must use them strategically to get readers to take actions that further your business.
However, readers may not know what action you want them to take after reading your blog post. That’s why you must craft calls to action that direct readers to take the next step. This can be anything from a request to share your blog, drop a comment, subscribe to your newsletter, or simply visit your catalog.
Whatever you want your readers to do, make sure you clearly let them know what you’d want them to do. Be clear, precise, and direct about it too.
Examples of B2B Brands Who Have Crushed Their Blogging Strategy
Before we wrap up this B2B blog strategy guide, let’s briefly look at some B2B brands that are totally crushing it with their blogging strategy.
Hubspot
Industry: Marketing Software Company
Hubspot provides marketing automation and sales software designed to help companies meet their sales and marketing quotas while transforming the industry with their inbound marketing knowledge center.
What they do well:
- High volume and consistent blog post output
- Content at every stage of buyers journey
- Content tailored to every target persona
- Well-optimized content for SEO
Results
Every year since 2011 they have grown organic traffic by 80%.
Hubspot also dominates the SERPs for almost every important keyword they target.
Ahrefs
Industry: Search engine optimization
Ahrefs provides a suite of tools designed to help businesses better design SEO and content marketing campaigns. They offer tools for keyword research, rank tracking, and much more.
What they do well:
- Creating educational content that helps readers solve a problem
- Breaking down complex concepts into easy-to-understand blog posts
- Promote their product in a non-salesy way through content
Results
Ahrefs has become an authority in the world of SEO, resulting in the brand generating an annual average revenue of about $100 million. Very few players in the SEO tools niche can match that.
RevenueZen
Industry: B2B inbound and demand generation
RevenueZen provides inbound generation strategy and content planning for B2B and SaaS brands. Many B2B brands trust us for demand generation solutions, SEO, and B2B social selling. We’ve helped many startups and established brands drive sales through content and boost their bottom line.
What they do well:
- Industry-leading research and analysis that leads to targeted content
- Advanced content planning
- Expertly executed content
Results
RevenueZen has generated millions of dollars for clients and for the agency through SEO and blog driven content marketing. The brand’s impact has not gone unnoticed as we start to climb into top spots for our most valuable keywords. Like “B2B SEO Agency” (:
Put Your B2B Blog Strategy to Work
Now that you’ve got all the information you need to craft an effective B2B blog strategy, go ahead and design one. With the tips and strategies highlighted above, this should now be an easy task.
However, if you feel strapped for time and don’t have the expertise or confidence to develop one for your brand, feel free to reach out. B2B blogging is our forte and we’d love to help you turn your blog into a powerful lead generation machine.
So, go ahead and get in touch. We’re excited to build out that b2b blog strategy with you.
