A few times a year, we have a company-wide step challenge to see who can get the most steps in to foster some friendly competition and some good health. In fact, I just got back from a quick walk on my lunch break to see if I could squeeze in a few steps for today.

Before I left, I had a call with a prospect who was expressing some frustration they're having in trying to get their sales team to contribute to their blog. They know their sales team has some great ideas and great thought leadership and subject matter expertise, but they just can't get them to share.

I hear a lot of people in marketing and business development that tell me that they "blog." But I want to know what they are doing with their blog... are they getting results from their blog or just wasting time to say they "blog" with no proof of success? Do they even know? Or... do they even want to know?

When creating content for your company blog, you’ve likely asked the dreaded question: What do we write about next? You may feel as if you’ve run out of post ideas or you’re writing about the same topic over and over. Regardless of your content dilemma, there are a few sources that you can use to extract new blog post ideas.

It’s important to note that when using these sources, however, the ideas aren’t always obvious and may not jump out at you instantly. Rather, this method requires you to dedicate time to collect information, analyze it, and brainstorm topics based on your findings. While this may take some time initially, it’s more than worth the investment. Not only will you have a list of new blog post ideas, but you’ll have the tools you need to create blog content that is relevant to your target audience - and their needs and interests - and that will most likely drive engagement and increase conversions.

Consider the following sources to help you generate more post ideas for your company blog:

Salespeople can be great sources of blog content. They engage with prospects and the market everyday. They're hearing questions and overcoming objections, and their responses to these questions and objections are great content for blog articles because this is what your prospects want to know, read, and learn.

THE CHALLENGE: How do you get your salespeople to get the info out of their heads and into the blog? How do you get your salespeople sit down and write?

Your blog is a digital hub for the valuable, educational, and entertaining content you create for your target persona. Its goal is to increase awareness, drive traffic to your site, generate leads, and establish authority – leading to profitable customer action.  

But running a successful blog is a challenge for some businesses, and it requires constant analysis to ensure your current content strategy is effective. This can be done by reviewing the content you’ve created, assessing what worked or didn’t work, and creating a plan of action to improve going forward. Or in other words, conducting a blog audit.  

This process can help you uncover what content resonates most with your ideal prospects, and in turn, guide your content strategy and increase your awareness, engagement, and even conversions. It gives you a high-level view of how well your blog is (or isn’t) performing, and identifies gaps and opportunities in your blog strategy.  

The good news: it’s not as complicated as it sounds. And if you’re wondering where to start, what to evaluate or how to apply your findings, we’ve created a simple system to help you evaluate your own blog and begin seeing real results from your content. 

A few years ago you started to blog. It went well. Your brain was fresh, and ideas for new articles flowed. But then life happened. You got busy at work, and you got busier at home. Before you knew what happened, your once-a-week blog update slowed to once-a-month. And then it slowed further to one new update every few months. And then you woke up one day and realized that you haven’t posted an update to your blog in over nine months. 

Lack of time is an easy excuse. However, I guarantee you that if your blog was producing the results you thought, it would, then you would find the time. Let’s be honest. It’s not really the lack of time. It’s the lack of results.

Does blogging help with SEO? 

Hubspot explains that, "Blogging helps boost SEO quality by positioning your website as a relevant answer to your customers' questions. Blog posts that specifically use a variety of on-page SEO tactics can give you more opportunities to rank in search engines and get customers to visit your site."

What are the benefits of blogging?

• SEO
• Thought Leadership
• Education for Prospects and Customers
• Attract Qualified Leads
• Content for the Sales Process
• Lead Nurturing
• Lead Conversion
• And MORE!

So, how can you utilize this tool to benefit your business? The expert team at LeadG2 has put together a list to help you optimize your blog posts for search. Use this checklist with each post you publish to help you increase your search rankings and drive quality leads to your site before your publish and distribute your posts. 

As we kick off the new year, it's safe to say that content still reigns as king in the B2B world, and it seems that it's going to stay that way. With B2B marketers who use blogs saying that they get 67% more leads than those who don't, and companies who blog see 97% more links to their site than those who don't, it's clear that blogging should be a part of your B2B marketing strategy. 

So, do you really need to spend time to promote your blog? Isn’t the point of a blog to promote your website? Yes and yes. Your blog is, indeed, a big opportunity to drive traffic to your website and promote your business as well as your products and services, but it needs strategic guidance to be successful in driving traffic and converting leads. Many industry experts preach the 80/20 rule when it comes to content and promotion, saying that 20% of your time should be spent creating content, and 80% of your time should be spent promoting it. Think of your blog like a garden that's meant to feed your family. The whole purpose of the garden is to create food—but you need to feed it, water it, and tend to it to get the desired results. The same is true of your blog. 

When people ask us, "Where should I share my blog?" we suggest these eight free ways to distribute blog content. There are additional distribution channels that include paid promotion and advertising, but this list focuses on eight ways you can share you B2B blog content immediately that we've found successful for our clients and ourselves.

Attempting to tackle your entire content marketing to-do list in one day could be overwhelming. Actually, it would be VERY overwhelming. But if you can commit to doing one thing each day over the next 12 days leading up to Christmas, you'll be on the road to improving your overall content marketing efforts that will have you ringing in the New Year on the right foot!

You have a blog. Great. Are you analyzing it? Are you tracking its performance? Do you know if your efforts are paying off? Time is money, and if you're spending time on a blog for your company, that's money. And if you're investing dollars in your blog, you'll definitely want to know if it's paying off!

If you are tracking blog analytics, what are you tracking? Traffic? Great. That's good. But you know what's great and drives sales? Conversions! Here are 5 tips to optimize your blog content so that it helps to increase conversion rates and get more qualified leads.