How to Create Blog Content for Media Companies

You want to start a B2B blog for your TV or radio station because you know it’s a way for your team to stand out as thought leaders, generate sales qualified leads, and boost sales. Maybe you’ve started in the past, but your efforts fizzled out as you struggled each week to come up with topics to write about. Or perhaps the whole process took on a life of its own and became overwhelming.

If you’re ready to commit to content creation, we have 10 tips that will set you up for success.

10 Tips for Getting Started with Blog Content

1. Appoint a Project Owner

This is the person who will spearhead the project and keep things on track. This can be an official position, such as a blog manager, or someone on your team who can commit several hours a week to keep the content process moving along. If you're working with an agency like LeadG2 then it will require far last time internally but you'll still want a project owner internally for approvals. 

2. Brainstorm a List of Potential Blog Topics and Titles

Gather members from your team for a brainstorming session. Before the session begins, compile a list of questions you receive as buyers move through the sales process. Don’t limit the group to sales or marketing; be sure to get input from, and include, anyone who has customer contact. Once you have your group together, use the list of frequently asked questions as a starting point to brainstorm potential blog topics related to the common questions your team receives.

Important to note here: There is a lot more that goes into building a strategic content strategy but this is meant to highlight one important part of generating ideas that align with the needs, questions, and objections of your prospects. 

3. Create a Content Calendar

Once you have a list of titles and have determined how they align with your over-arching inbound marketing strategy and campaign plans, the project owner can assign them to people on the team who are interested in writing for the blog (if you aren't outsourcing this to a content creation team like LeadG2). Assign a due date, keeping in mind that you’ll need time to edit the post, get approvals, and upload and optimize the post. Use the calendar to plan and track which posts you’ll publish, so you aren’t scrambling to create content at the last minute. 

4. Distribute the Content

Creating great content is only half the battle. Your content marketing must involve a strong, consistent, and strategic promotional plan that, at the very least, incorporates sharing your content on social media and email marketing (in addition to being fully optimized to show up in search results).

In additional to promoting your content, the best media companies are also teaching and encouraging their salespeople to use this content in the sales process as a way to nurture and engage prospects throughout their journey. As new questions or objections arise, your blog content should directly apply to these scenarios due to the way that you brainstormed in step two.  

Additional Tips for Creating High-Quality Content

5. Publish Consistently

Commit to a publishing schedule, and create content consistently. Whether you’re publishing blogs five days a week, or once a week, your existing clients and prospects will look forward to seeing fresh, educational content from you. Don’t feel like you have to create all of the content yourself. You can: 

• Hire a company to handle the creation of your content. Ideally this would be an agency that knows and understands the media and advertising space. 

• Divide the content creation responsibilities among members of your team. 

• Curate and highlight content from other thought leaders, like we do with our Friday email digests. 

• Seek out experts to contribute guests posts and mix those into your rotation.
  

6. Keep Your Target Persona in Mind

Tailor the content to what is going on in the business environment today. The topics your potential advertisers find pressing today are not the same problems they worried about six months ago. 

For example, right now small and large businesses alike are focused on the ways COVID-19 and a down economy are affecting revenue and their ability to survive. They need help with strategies related to reopening, remaining viable, pivoting, and thriving in uncertain times. And you have the expertise to deliver solutions. Know who you are writing for, and keep your target persona in mind as you create content.  

7. Be Relatable

Your B2B blog doesn’t have to be serious all the time. Let your personality shine through. You can use video, interview team members, and highlight client successes. By allowing your clients and prospects to get to know you, you’ll further enhance the strong relationships you have worked so hard to create in your market.   

8. Address Their Fears About Doing Business with You

You don't want to forget about the bottom-of-the-funnel content, which is the content that helps buyers who are close to making a marketing decision (i.e. advertise with you or the other guys). Create some posts that help prospects understand the sales process and help them understand what it’s like to work with you. They probably have questions about ROI, new technologies, cost, and the creative process.

And, you can bet there are lots of things they believe they “should” know but are too afraid to ask. Give them the information they need to have the confidence to ask informed questions. If you address their concerns up front, you’re less likely to encounter stalling tactics later in the sales process.    

9. Help Them Research

One beautiful thing about having a blog is that you’re giving your prospects the ability to research and find your business 24/7, which means your blog is doing the heavy lifting, even if you’re out of the office or your salespeople are unavailable. Some ways to help your prospects get the information they need include: 

• Offer solutions. What is on your target’s mind right now? Create some posts that provide actionable solutions.

• Share case studies. Help them imagine doing business with you by showing how you’ve helped other businesses in similar industries or with similar challenges
  

• Help them see the possibilities. Posts that offer solid tactics and help the prospect visualize their own path to success by helping them imagine what you can do for their business.
  

• Be a community partner. If your company works with any community organizations, create some posts around this. We all want to be associated with others who are going great things in the world
  

• Show them how to overcome obstacles to advertising. Are concerns about ROI, budgeting, measurement, and reporting holding them back? Demystify the process by showing your prospects how you will deliver results.  

10. Remember the Call-to-Action (CTA)

Including a call-to-action will help you connect with your readers using follow up content such as eBooks, consultations, webinars, email campaigns, and free consultations. The CTA gives you another way to develop long-term relationships that will ultimately lead to new business and is the primary way you can drive leads on your B2B website. 

Creating strong, strategic B2B content for your station will help you stand out in the increasingly competitive media landscape. These tips will help you get organized and provide valuable information to position your sales team as thought leaders and start generating leads.