By David Gutierrez.
No matter for how long you’ve been maintaining your B2B blog, and how successful it’s been in the past—even the most popular blogs tend to reach a plateau eventually.
If you’re going through this, it means that you have to adopt new practices. Here are five approaches that can help.
1. Stick to blog post formats that have proven their value
Not all blog post types are created equal, and this is especially true for B2B blogs. Before you write compelling content, you should understand your audience’s needs and preferences.
B2B readers look for value—they want useful and actionable information, presented in a concise, easy to digest format. Some blog post types work better than others in these respects. Effective formats include:
- Beginner’s guides: there are many topics in any industry that beginners struggle to grasp. They will be happy to read a detailed explanation by an expert.
- Tactic lists: business pros are always on the lookout for new, useful, actionable tactics;
- Process descriptions: a lot of online content lacks depth. Often, tips from self-proclaimed experts are vague and general. Do the opposite and provide detailed descriptions of processes, along with supporting graphics.
2. Hire a professional
What are your blogging goals? Likely, they include increasing brand awareness, attracting new customers, and finding new partners. But you’ve got a lot on your plate, and multiple channels to manage, and…blogging may not be your core competence.
Best practices in blogging continually evolve, and to remain effective in this field you have to constantly study and improve. This may be the time to make a decision: is it more effective to devote your time to this, or to hire someone who is already dedicated to this career?
There are plenty of places where you can find affordable specialists in content marketing—e.g., Torchlite Marketing allows you to request a particular type of specialist, and you don’t even have to hire him full-time.
Of course, don’t ignore the professionals you already have on your team. It’s vital to encourage your internal subject matter experts and other knowledgeable members of your team to blog.
3. Use proper formatting
Content is king, but the king should be properly presented. Therefore, you should follow specific formatting rules. Use a concise, clear and catchy title—keep it shorter than 70 (or, better yet, 60) characters, so that it is fully visible in search results. Most people decide whether or not they want to read a post by the title, so make sure it’s as intriguing as possible.
Use lots of whitespace and images. Open space makes the textual content appear less daunting, while visuals are easier to perceive and process. Use subheadings, lists, and bold text to make your post more scannable. Include a meta description stating what your post is about.
4. Create case studies
Case studies are one of the most effective types of content in B2B blogs, for a variety of reasons. They are unique; while one can lift a general theoretical or how-to post from another resource and reuse it in its entirety (or at least parts of it), a case study is a tightly-knit amalgamation of facts, data, real-life situations, and conclusions that can’t be neatly divided into parts.
So, when people read a case study, they know the story is mostly likely unique content that can’t be found anywhere else. Learn how to write them, and give your readers what they want.
5. Create long content series
People usually visit blogs because they get interested in a particular piece of content. After reading it, they often satisfy their curiosity and leave for good. You can prevent this from happening by creating long-term content series that take weeks or even months to complete.
When someone stumbles upon a post from the middle of such series, he or she is likely to seek out the previous entries and subscribe to read those that will come after.
Do you know of any particularly useful blogging practices that can be helpful in 2019? Share them in comments!
David Gutierrez started his career as a web designer in 2005. In 2012 he founded a creative design agency. Now it serves clients all over the world across multiple industries with a specific focus on FMCG and Fin-Tech.