59% of B2B marketers consider blogs the most valuable channel. But why is that?
Well, numbers don’t lie, and marketers love some strategy supported by data. Here are some stats that show why marketers value blogs as part of a successful B2B marketing strategy:
Websites that have active blogs have 434% more indexed pages than those without.
Websites with active blogs also have 97% more inbound links than those without.
On average, businesses with blogs see +67% more leads per month than companies that don’t blog.
If a blog is so valuable and is an important B2B marketing tool, do you NEED to promote your blog in addition to the work you put into creating the content? Isn’t the point of a blog to promote your website? Well... YES and YES.
An organization’s blog presents the opportunity to drive traffic to the website and promote the products and services through search, but it needs help to work. Think of your blog like a garden that’s meant to feed your family. The purpose is to create food – but you must diligently and consistently feed it, water it, and tend to it to get the desired results: the food. The same is true with your blog.
Consider these numbers: Currently, there are over 1.5 billion websites and over 50 billion web pages, 8.5 billion Google searches each day, and 7.5 million blog posts published every day. A mediocre blog doesn’t stand a chance against those odds, and even the best blogs are worthless without readers. So, how do you get people to your blog?
![Are You Just Blogging? Or Are You Strategically Blogging? [VIDEO]](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/109236/87142818-22ee-49c7-961f-e4f56b0f986a.png)
1. Know Your Audience
2. Create Remarkable Content
3. Remove Roadblocks.
4. Share on Social.
5. Leverage Online Communities.
6. Email is not dead. Use it.
7. Reuse. Recycle. Repurpose.
8. Utilize Your MVR’s (Most Valuable Resources).
9. Track. Analyze. Adjust.
10. Equip the Sales Team with Sales Enablement Content
Let’s dig into each of these below.
This will always be my number one recommendation. If you don’t know WHO your audience is, WHAT their pain points are, WHEN they are looking for information in the buyer’s journey, WHERE they go for information, and HOW they find information and search in the sales process, your efforts will likely fall flat. Take time to research your target audience, their buyer’s journey, and even identify differences amongst the different verticals and industries within these.
We’ve heard SO many times that content is king, but the real king is GOOD content that is effective and really stands out. No amount of promotional tricks will help you if your blog is terribly written, boring, or blatantly self-serving. The first step to any successful blog promotion strategy is to create a blog that’s helpful, unique, engaging, and relevant to your target audience and their buyer’s journey.
Don’t create roadblocks to your success by making your blog difficult to find.
Optimize your blog content for SEO. Utilize keyword research to determine how your audience asks questions and searches for solutions to their pain points, then develop a consistent keyword strategy that matches that to your solutions.
An optimized and responsive website also affects search performance, so ensure the website is well-oiled and running smoothly. This helps to increase visibility and attract new site visitors and organic traffic.
Once you get a visitor to your site, make it easy for them to subscribe and receive more content from the company if they like it. Simple, 1-field SUBSCRIBE forms are ideal. It’s a small commitment, and you get to add another contact to your database.
When you’ve identified the social platforms that are most utilized by your target audience, share your blog content to these platforms and drive visitors to your site. Titles, preview images, and descriptions can be key to ‘stop the scroll’ and get clicks to your blog posts.
Many social platforms have created ways for like-minded individuals to connect in the community. Identify groups and communities on your audience’s preferred social platforms to share your blog content that speaks to their needs or pain points, answers the questions that they ask in the group, or enhances the conversations happening within the group.
As mentioned in a previous point, growing your database of contacts cumulatively makes an impact on views and conversions over time. It might seem small at first as you watch your list grow one by one, but every conversion that grows your subscriber list is an opportunity for future engagement, lead nurturing, and potential customers.
What might first begin as an interested consumer wanting to educate themselves on your area of expertise by subscribing to your blog could evolve into a sales qualified lead when the time is right and potentially a future customer. Ensure your emails are optimized, use integrity with your email strategy, and use best practices for email deliverability and engagement. Stay consistent and automate the emails sent from your new blog posts with marketing automation software like Hubspot for efficiency and effectiveness.
Recycling isn’t just good for the environment! Reuse/Recycle/Repurpose old content by resharing it in different ways or on different platforms that link back to the original blog post content. There is no law that says you're only allowed to share your blog posts once or in one way.
Create visual content like infographics or quote graphics from points in your blog posts to share on social channels and link back to the original post.
Record a podcast episode. Take the topic and points from a blog post and turn it into a podcast conversation.
Produce videos to share on different channels, like whiteboard videos of the points in the blog post, or thought leaders and blog authors can record themselves diving deeper into the topics mentioned in the original blog post and linking back to it.
Create a lead nurturing email series that uses different points in a blog post or even multiple blog posts to educate your subscribers.
Curate an ebook from a set of blog posts that relate to one topic.
In another blog post, I share how a company's employees are one of the most valuable resources (MVR’s) for marketing, and how employee advocacy is an effective strategy to generate more traffic, more conversions, and, yes, even more sales. Create content they are proud of and want to share. Make it easy for them by creating content for them or sharing links/verbiage that removes the fear many non-marketers have of ‘what to write’ so they can copy/paste and edit it slightly to make it their own. Another way to get your employees engaged in your marketing efforts is to have them contribute to your company’s blog posts as authors, which would be great content for them to share!
Regularly monitor and track what’s working, and be prepared to make adjustments along the way. In addition to tracking visits and conversions, you should also monitor trends, such as which topics, authors, and formats perform best.
Are there topics that receive more traffic over time?
Are there old blog posts that get a lot of traffic you should update and promote again?
What blog posts are gaining external links and getting linked in third-party publications and sites?
Which social media channel or content drives the most traffic back to your blog?
There are many ways to analyze your B2B blog and its promotion.
A bonus or perk of blog posts is that the sales team has a library of educational content they can use in their sales enablement content library. They can answer prospect’s questions in the sales process, answer questions in groups on social media, and stay in touch with prospects over time by utilizing blog posts in their communications. While sales enablement wouldn’t necessarily be a promotion tactic, it is an important value addition to a B2B blog that should not be overlooked!
Bonus: Have your sales team contribute their expertise and author blog posts that help them build trust, establish authority on the topics and pain points they discuss with prospects, and grow their thought leadership.
Following these B2B blog promotion tips will ensure more traffic to your blog and increase the overall health and success of your sales performance.
Is your B2B blog content contributing to your lead generation? Discover where your lead generation efforts stand and uncover actionable insights to supercharge your growth with this free Lead Generation Quiz.
*Editor's Note: This blog has been updated since its original post date.
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