Let’s be honest, blogs have become a pretty integral part of our online culture. And when companies with an active blog generate 67% more leads per month, they’re quickly becoming an essential part of any B2B Marketers content toolkit.
But with over 13,700,000 results for ‘marketing blog’ in Google alone, how are you supposed to make yours stand out from the crowd?
Fear not! We’ve taken a look at some of the top companies and influencers of 2014 to see what they can teach us about becoming an inspirational blogging machine.
Wistia are an online video hosting and analytics company based in the US. But these guys don’t just blog about video hosting – they talk about anything and everything that takes their interest including Rhode Island, Tractors and Comic-con.
Along with their extensive how to’s, client stories and staff intros, they don’t limit their content strategy to their own industry and as a result, have loads of engagement and a super loyal following too!
Lesson: Don’t be afraid to get outside the industry box with your blogging. Try scheduling in one or two posts that move outside your normal ‘topics’ and use Lead Forensics website intelligence to track traffic, pages and content success.
What started as a one-man blog from Brian Clark has very quickly become the content software and training company, and is now everyone’s go-to site for content marketing guidance.
With comprehensive ‘How to’ guides, Ebooks and free courses, their whole strategy is to educate and teach the wider marketing community about content, social media and blogging. And with it’s modern look and use of images it stands out from some of the more word-dense B2B blogs that exist.
Lesson: According to digital Sherpa, blogs rank among the top 5 “most trustworthy” sources of information, don’t underestimate the power of blogging to put your brand ahead of the competition. Add value to your blog by educating your readers about issues that are relevant to them.
Midsize Insider is a relatively new blog hub from tech giants IBM. It’s an educational hub covering a wide range of business and tech topics, but each post is targeted at one audience only – Midsize businesses.
With such a huge hub of content, IBM recruits a number of ‘insiders’ to write the blogs, including leading thinkers such as Bryan Kramer, Steve Farnsworth, and Lori Richardson. Each ‘insider’ has a category to blog about, always putting the information into perspective for midsize businesses.
Lesson: 76% of B2B buyers search for content that is relevant to help them make an informed decision about a product or service. Knowing your audience before you start blogging will help define your tone of voice, level of detail and even length of each blog. Consider using Lead Forensics website intelligence to identify which businesses are visiting your blog pages, collate this information and use it to build your audience persona, based on real-time data.
Who are your top bloggers of 2014? Tweet us @LeadForensics #B2BGuru
This blog was originally posted on the Lead Forensics website. Read the original post here.
