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.

We hope you had a great Christmas and are enjoying this holiday season with family and friends. As we draw closer to the New Year, we are taking some time to reflect on 2018 and the success we've seen our clients achieve. 

Blogging is a mighty strategy when done correct, and it's a goal of ours to provide our clients and visitors top-notch, quality content to teach them and guide them to success. We've searched for the most popular blogs of 2018, and we've curated these lists that will publish each day this week to bring you some of the most educational and informative content from the year. Check out these top blogs on content strategy from 2018, and let them guide your content marketing efforts in 2019! 

Developing a solid inbound marketing and content strategy is something that most companies struggle with. In fact, a study from Ascend2 and its research partners revealed that 46% of the marketing, sales, and business professionals surveyed around the world said that the lack of an effective strategy and the creation of content are the most challenging obstacles to reaching the next level of inbound marketing performance. LeadG2 uses a 7-Step Lead Generation Process to help our clients navigate and embrace an inbound marketing culture.

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.

Have you been churning out quality content for years for your business and industry? Does traffic to your blog still come from old posts? Are ebooks published three years ago still converting? You're not alone.

There are some key components of marketing that fit together to create a solid B2B marketing campaign plan that drives results and delivers desired business results. Ensure you are utilizing each of these when planning your B2B marketing campaign plans. 

Content creation can be a robust process depending on the amount of content you are publishing during a set timeframe. To keep your process organized and strategic (and to keep marketers sane), we’ve found a detailed content calendar is key. This post lists a few benefits of using a content calendar and a few items we think should be included on every content calendar to make it most efficient and beneficial.

Creating compelling B2B content is only half the battle when it comes to a solid content marketing strategy for your business. While your content must be grammatically correct, educational, formatted properly, and a good representation of your brand, it must also be strategically created following proven best practices that most inbound marketers follow. These tactics are what help ensure your content isn’t just interesting or nice to read, but ultimately driving prospects closer to doing business with you and taking some kind of action or next step.

Is it Time to Update Your Content Marketing Game?

I’m starting to believe that content marketing as part of executing a growth strategy is reaching a point of saturation and diminishing returns.

Quantity over quality. Poor writing. Lack of strategic focus. Advertorial. One and done efforts with little to no promotion. Hiring cheap and getting cheap results.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.