Elevating Your B2B Blog Q&A

Our recent webinar “Elevating Your B2B Blog: Content, Conversations & Conversions” resulted in more questions than we had time to answer so we’ll provide a personal reply on our blog to each question over the next few days.

Question from Matt:

When blogging about products, services, etc, what is the best way to drive traffic to a specific site/media to measure the effectiveness of the blog as part of a marketing campaign?

First, review your blog article content and your keywords. Does your blog article contain keywords that will help it get found via search engines? Think about the words your prospects use, which may be different from the keywords for which you strive an online presence. Increasing your blog’’s SEO gives more visibility to not only your particular blog post, but also to your entire website.

When writing about a service or product, be sure to have strategically placed calls-to-action to move your reader to the next action. Buttons place on the sidebar keep your next-step message on the same level as your blog post. Offer useful information, such as a report, white paper or product sheet. Some audiences can be persuaded by surveys accompanied with small incentives. Simply asking a question at the end of your blog can prompt comments which can lead to further conversation. These actions can be tracked and used to help measure the effectiveness of the blog.

As B2B marketers we can be inclined to champion the value and quality of your product or service in blog posts. Consider mixing the message and perhaps sharing a specific customers’ issues, interview a client, reveal a day-in-the-life, or answer questions. Focus on providing useful and interesting content, not a constant sales pitch.

Don’’t just rely on getting found by organic search and blog subscribers. Take an extra 10 minutes to promote your individual blogs in all social media arenas where your customers reside. Begin a discussion on relevant LinkedIn groups, tweet your blog’s link and ask for re-tweets from influential Twitterers. Facebook page promotion and sharing a link on your outgoing email stationery can be an effective method for increasing readership.

Increasing page views and inbound links should be your primary measurement for blog posts. Benchmark your blog’s traffic early, then note the number of page views and inbound links on each blog. Look for trends by topic, author and date of post. Although the number of comments in a blog post is a good measurement of reaching your audience, don’’t get discouraged when you have few or no comments.

Thanks for the great question, Matt. Look for more answers in the coming days on B2B Ideas @ Work Blog.