Practical ways to ensure that your effort results in increased traffic.
There are somewhere around 152 million blogs according to Harvard Business Review. That’s a lot of competition for your blog and with b2b blogging steadily increasing, it’s only going to get more difficult to get attention. Â
You may be wondering why your company should have a blog, so lets address that first. A strong B2B blog offers valuable SEO benefits and will improve your sites ranking.
And with a connection that clear between ranking and click-through rate, you can’t afford not to have one.
With that settled, how are you going to ensure that all your effort results in increased traffic?
1. STOP TALKING ABOUT YOUR PRODUCT
Most companies have an entire website dedicated to marketing messaging and product details. While it may seem counter-intuitive, keeping product off your blog will actually generate more leads. HubSpot reports that companies with active blogs generate 55 percent more traffic to their marketing site and that blogs can be directly associated with customer acquisition. Focusing your blog on opinions and advice will build relationships with your audience. Then, when they are ready to make a purchase, your brand will be trusted and top of mind.
2. COLLABORATE WITH LIKE MINDED FOLKS
According to Harvard Business Review peer recommendations influence over 90 percent of buying decisions. Bringing in subject matter experts or customers will enhance your credibility.
Contributors will often share their contributions with their networks. This can be a great way for companies to reach a wide target audience without paying for it. An added benefit can be backlinks created by having the post linked to from your contributors. Backlinks help SEO and as we already covered, better ranking means more readers.
Reach out to other companies whose offering compliments yours and who share your target audience. “Co-innovating with a wide range of partners is essential” said IT networking leader Cisco and they aren’t alone. More than 50% of buyers consult third-party sources. Authentic, natural relationships will enhance your brand and your network.
3. SOCIALIZE YOUR BLOG
Each blog is another piece of content you can share on your social networks. It’s another impression, another view and another chance to engage. Don’t limit strategy to only sharing what’s new, if the topics are relevant, you can give new life to older blog posts by sharing them again. Keeping hot topics alive will give your readers something to talk about. While they’re sharing, your blog will be meeting lots of new people and gaining traction. A regular cadence will strengthen your readership and help continually expand your influence.
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As with most marketing tactics, the key to success is relevance. A strong blog with content created for your audience can establish credibility and when used properly, can increase quality traffic to your website and help lower your cost of acquisition. Be sure to keep your blog focused on being helpful, foster relationships with influencer people and companies and leverage social media to extend your reach and you’ll start to see an increase in blog traffic. Tools like Google Analytics can help you track which connections are driving the most traffic, you can invest more time and energy into those relationships. These same tools can help you monitor where your readers go from your blog, and help you build a complete ROI story for your content marketing investment.Â
