B2B Blogging

What is B2B Blogging?B2B blogging is the use of a blog or online journal to promote a company’s thought leadership, products or services with the goal of increasing conversions and driving revenue. In contrast to personal or individual blogging in which a single blogger may blogfor personal fulfillment or journalisc commentary, B2B blogging is a revenuegenerang acvity for a larger organizaon that drivesinbound markeng, engagement and new business through B2Bsales and interacons. Although B2B blogging or corporate blogging may be comprised of many individual bloggers from the same organizaon, they arecreang content under a single messaging umbrella with the samemarkeng objecves in mind. The overarching goal of B2B bloggingas a demand generaon tool is to convert blog visitors and readersinto new leads and customers.

Glossary TermsBlog – A contracon for “weblog,”; an online diary or journal

B2B Blogging – Also known as corporate or organizaonal blogging; involves the use of a blog or online journal to promote a company’s products or services with the goal of increasing conversions and driving revenue

Inbound Markeng – A type of markeng characterized byprospects and customers seeking out and finding companies rather than vice versa

Lead Scoring – The process of determining the sales readiness of leads using a predetermined scoring methodology and ranking them accordingly

Markeng Asset – A piece of markeng content (e.g. whitepapers,videos, newsleers, webinars, etc.) used to educate and generateinterest for a company’s products or services

Search Engine Opmizaon (SEO) – The process of employing dierent taccs to improve a business’s ranking in organic or unpaid search results to ulmately increase conversions

Search Engine Markeng (SEM) – Also known as PayPerClick(PPC) adversing; the process of paying a search engine to adverse a product or service

Social Media – Any strategy, soware system or media outlet thatrelies on social interacon and the parcipaon of individuals orcommunies to create and publish content

Social Selling – Also referred to as Sales 2.0, the merging of Web2.0 technologies with tradional sales strategies, enabling salespeople to beer priorize their me and serve as experts—not just negoators— in the product selecon process

Web 2.0 – A term used to describe the second generaon of webtools and soware that encourage users to become more acveparcipants, creang content and interacng with each otherwithin webbased, social communies

B2B Blogging - Analyst Facts“Business blogs can shorten sales cycles when they connect decision-makers to the designers and thought leaders who shape new products and services.” – Laura Ramos,

“Markeng’s Role in B2B Blogging,” Forrester Research, 2007

“Among companies involved in one or more social media iniaves, thehighest percentage (70%) maintain company-related accounts or profileson social media sites. The second most popular acvies are monitoringcompany-related menons on social media sites and maintaining one ormore company blogs.”– “2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Study, ” Business.com, 2009

“People have a choice…and nobody is going to read your blog, link to your blog or quote your blog unless there's something in it for them.”

– Seth Godin, Seth Godin’s Blog, 2004

What B2B Blogging is NOTB2B blogging is NOT the producon of content without a specific,revenuegenerang goal in mind. Whether a company wants to useB2B blogging to build thought leadership, drive more trac to its corporate website or opmize search engine rankings, the goal ofany B2B blogging iniave should always be to convert qualifiedleads into customers and ulmately increase revenue.

While it is tempng to quickly adopt any component of social media markeng as the “next big thing”—including B2B blogging—it is important to think of blogging as just one part of your overallB2B markeng mix. For example, before creang content for a corporate blog post, consider its role within the larger context ofyour lead generaon and nurturing strategies, or how this contentcan help your sales team with its social selling iniaves.

Top Resources

• Marketo Lead Management Blog: blog.marketo.com

• Compendium Blogware Blog Blogging Best Praccesblogging.compendiumblog.com/blog.php/bloggingbestpracces

• Compendium Blogware Blog Corporate Blogging 101blogging.compendiumblog.com/blog/corporateblogging101

• Social Media B2B: socialmediab2b.com

• Groundswell Blog: blogs.forrester.com/groundswell

B2B Blogging – Advanced Techniques• Respond to comments on your blogs in a mely manner (e.g. within

24 hours) and make sure all of your bloggers abide by this rule.• Invite your best customers to blog and provide useful insight

on the ways they used your products or services (but avoid being too selfpromoonal).

• Use “related posts” at the end of each blog posng to not only educate prospects and customers, but to also increase page views and help SEO.

• Consider whether you want your blog to be part of your corporate site (which could increase trac to the main site) or toreside as a subdomain or separate URL (which could help searchengine markeng results through the display of mulple links).

• Use highvolume visits to specific blog posngs as key indicators of the topics that maer most to your target audiences and build up your markeng assets appropriately.

B2B Blogging – Basic Techniques• Establish a corporate blogging strategy that includes overall

goals and success metrics. Also consider the “do’s and don’ts” of the content (e.g. DO sck to corporate messaging; DON’T misspell words).

• Idenfy and recruit blog contributors in your organizaon. Having a reliable team of bloggers means you will benefit from blog content that is plenful and produced and updated regularly—qualies that will posively impact your search engine rankings and improve your inbound markeng.

• Blog with your keywords in mind—but don’t go overboard to thepoint where your content becomes nonsensical or unreadable.

• Include relevant links within your blog content to external sites that add value.

• Link to your blog from every page on your corporate website and include it in your other markeng vehicles as much as possible.

Informaon for this B2B Markeng Cheat Sheet was taken from Marketo and Compendium Blogware thought leadership including:• What’s Wrong with Social Media for B2B Markeng? -

blog.marketo.com/blog/2007/06/whats_wrong_wit.html • Considering Blogging? - compendiumblogware.com/landingpages/

considering_blogging_whitepaper_resources.html • Blogging’s Role in SEO and Social Media - compendiumblogware.com/landingpages/

blogging_seo_social_whitepaper_resources.html www.marketo.com

Top Metrics to Measure ROI with B2B Blogging• Increased number of unique visitors and page views of blog• Improved search engine rankings• Increased number of qualified leads from blogrelated links• Increased posive menons of your company, products, or

services by the media, other bloggers, or in usergenerated content

• Increased number of comments on blog• Increased prospect and customer insight garnered from blog

comments• Increased sales insight for greater eciency and improved

social selling

Common Metrics of B2B Blogging

From “Calculang the ROI of Blogging: A Case Study,” Forrester Research, 2007

Blog CommenngYou can benefit from commenng whether you’re the blogger, thecommenter on someone else’s blog or a parcipant in an onlineforum—here’s how:• As a blogger, write interesng blog posts that engage readers

and encourage comments. All too oen, corporate bloggers work in a bubble, wring about topics that are only interesng to themor, worse yet, use blogging as an opportunity to overtly sell their products or services. Use your blog to discuss things, not sell. Aim to start a twoway conversaon by oering engaging commentary that is insighul and smulates dialogue.

• As a reader, only comment when you have something valuable to say. There’s nothing worse than a person who only comments with selfpromoon in mind.

• When someone comments on something you’ve said, return the favor. Everyone wants to know that they’re being heard—so reply to them with something more engaging than just ‘thank you for commenng’.

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