See how marketing powerhouses create engaging posts
Back in December, Rand Fishkin at SparkToro asked, Can You Still Blog Your Way to Visibility & Credibility? Fortunately, he concluded you can (and thank goodness, or I might be out of work). His question was especially timely, because even though I’d been a B2B blogger for years, I’d also just finished a quarter-long project to deepen my understanding of successful B2B blogging in marketing. I showed the results to my marketing team, but then figured, why not share them more broadly? So, here are my tips for standing out in the crowded landscape of B2B marketing blogs.
Note: These tips progress from basic to more advanced.
Tip 1: Be succinct
You want every post to engage your audience; however, you’re not writing the next Pulitzer Prize winning novel. Think with Google is a great example of this brevity. They often have very short pieces that are jammed with educational info, but light on fluff.
Tip 2: Optimize your email notifications
Emails in the middle of the night are easy to overlook. Optimize your email send times so readers receive emails specific to their time zones. Not surprisingly, I’ve found mornings have the highest open rates.
Craft the subject line, preview text, and body of the email to have different copy. After all, each one is an opportunity to grab readers’ attention, so why have the same copy throughout? Thought-provoking questions, eye-popping stats, and pithy quotes are excellent ways to differentiate your copy for each section. I subscribe to Salesforce’s blog and they do a great job of this.
Tip 3: Give your readers options
Having subscribers receive an email for every post is great if you’re posting a few times a month. However, as you grow into a blogging juggernaut, like Adobe Experience Cloud, which is posting multiple times a day, then offering personalized subscriptions by topic is an ideal option. That way you don’t inundate subscribers with too many emails.
Hubspot’s B2B blog has some outstanding, customizable features. They have a pop-up window that offers a free piece of otherwise, gated, content. They also have sections like a “Most Popular” and “Editor’s Picks.” Implementing these features would give you more chances to interact with readers and showcase your awesome content.
Tip 4: Follow a tagging strategy
I suggest creating tags that can encompass smaller topics and avoiding tags that are too specific. This helps keep your tags organized by theme instead of one-offs. Also, make your tags easy to find on your homepage and allow readers to search by tags. This encourages them to explore your site and stay on your page. I like how Tableau prominently displays their tags in a dropdown menu on the center of their page.
Try to use one or two tags per post. Otherwise, readers will have suggested posts that aren’t that related to what they’re reading. Also, using one or two tags will help keep you focused on your audience when writing.
Tip 5: Use original pics
Using original pics will give your post an authentic feel. And with advanced cameras on phones and other technologies, original photos can look professional. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions does a wonderful job of using original pics that are high-quality.
How can you avoid generic pics? If you have a cloud-based file sharing system, like Microsoft SharePoint or Google Cloud, then you have access to an account to which all your employees can upload pictures. Encourage them to upload pics through contests, financial incentives, etc., to this shared folder. Then your internal teams, like legal and tax, can approve these pictures for public facing content. Voila! You’re on your way to creating a library of original pictures.
Don’t feel like you have to start doing all these now. Do what resources allow, because even a little bit goes a long way. Want to see more B2B marketing tips? Subscribe to our B2B blog.
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