B2B Marketing Blog

Does your company want to get its feet wet in the social media world, or is trying to and spinning its wheels?  If so, what can be done to improve the situation?

First, re-analyze why you have a company blog in the first place:

1. We have a blog because competitors do and we don’t want to seem out of the loop.
2. We have a blog due to the fact we wanted a way to promote our brands and services.
3. We have a blog for the simple reason our owner likes to talk a lot and this was one way for him/her to spout off.

So, what would you say is the correct answer to the three options above? If you said the last one, maybe your company needs more assistance than some realize.

While choice number one may be part of the reasoning for your blog, number two should be the obvious choice. Quite simply, company blogs are great tools to not only promote your goods and services, but stay in the social media loop.

With that being said, don’t just write to write.

• Your company’s blog needs to have worthwhile content on it so people will read it in the first place.

• Secondly, it requires regular updating so that readers will come back to it and search engines are more likely to pick it up. If you update it once in a blue moon, not only will readers be gone but the search engines will pick up more worthwhile entries.

• Another reason that readers will come and go from a company blog is if they are leaving valid, appropriate comments and you are not responding. Would you follow someone if you left them several comments and they ignored you? Companies need to take the bad feedback from consumers with the good, so respond accordingly, but do respond.

Companies need to determine if the blog materials they’re covering are appropriate for their readers in the first place. Relevant information draws people to blogs, so know what you want to write about ahead of time and be concise.

Are you placing relevant internal and external links and keywords in your company’s blog?

While SEO writing may not be for everyone, it is not rocket science either. If your company covers the auto insurance industry, your blog better be insurance related in order to drive more worthwhile traffic to it.

The most important item brings us full circle to the first point….why are we blogging in the first place?

Some companies decide its best to hire full-time staff to write, edit and oversee blogs. It allows for the boss/bosses to delegate one more item to professionals who can get the company’s message across.

Others, meantime, decide to do it on their own and give it more of a personal feel from the man or woman at the top.

Both ways can have their advantages and disadvantages, so decide what is best for your company. If you try one approach and it is not working for a period of time try another until you find the right solution.

A company blog can be a very useful tool to drive business your way; determine how blogging can best serve your business and get writing.

Dave Thomas is an expert writer on items like a document management systems and is based in San Diego, California.  He writes extensively for an online resource that provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs at Resource Nation.

Blogging is considered to be one of the most effective methods of pull marketing. Prospective buyers are drawn towards the valuable content offered in the blog.

Another channel that can be used for sharing valuable content to increase your inbound marketing reach is to publish and engage in social media.  Sites such as Twitter and LinkedIn have proven to be great tools for B2B companies, and Facebook is not far behind.

Twitter, a micro-blogging community, provides a portal to learn the behaviours and habits of the end consumer.  For B2B companies, this is a fantastic tool to understand their customer’s customer.

LinkedIn is a social media portal designed for businesses and business-people to connect with each other and share knowledge, ideas, and opportunities.  This has become the go-to tool for finding experts, employment opportunities, and potential employees.

ActiveConversion recently conducted a webinar on SEO, Content, and Social media. This webinar examined inbound marketing and the value of content in generating thought leadership and credibility for your company, products, and services.

Martha Boulianne also recently published this blog on FoundPages, that discusses the value of blogging and outlines eight ways to improve a corporate blog.

Here are the main points suggested by Martha on improving your corporate blog:

1. Spread the word.
2. Add quality content.
3. Blog early, blog often.
4. Link to your own old posts.
5. Add links and images to your blog posts.
6. Write comments on related blogs.
7. Write title tags for both your readers and Google.
8. Cover topics that need attention.

Read the rest of the blog here…

Related articles

• Corporate Blogging Tip: Use Your “More” Tag (socialtimes.com)
• Guilt-Free Business Blogging – 7 Ways A Blog Can Grow Your Business (blogherald.com)
• Corporate Blogging: You’re Doing It Wrong (blogs.sitepoint.com)
• Whiteboard Friday – Corporate Blogging Tips (seomoz.org)

SEO, Content, Social Media

Search Engine Optimization (SEO), social media and content are collectively the three most important components of inbound marketing. For this webinar, we’re calling them “The Three Musketeers of Inbound Marketing”. Between them, they are capable of winning you the best qualified leads in this modern marketing battle of quality lead generation from various online medium.

View this live Webinar which took place on Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 12:00PM MDT.

Inbound marketing “pulls” potential buyers towards your business and your products. In today’s shifting marketing paradigm, where your potential buyers research and dissect all the available options before they contact you, there is also a need for a strong inbound marketing capability. After all, you should be among the few that your potential buyers read and investigate about. Inbound marketing is executed with strategies such as: search engine optimization (SEO), relevant and compelling content, and social media.

In this webinar, Jim, our inbound marketing specialist will walk you through some tested and proven inbound marketing strategies that will enable you to know:

• How SEO can help you get found on the internet?
• How social media, marketing content and blogging can contribute towards a more informed inbound lead generation strategy?
• How marketing automation generates leads from various sources, and how it can help you make intelligent decisions?

Many small to medium sized oganizations are taking the leap to starting up a company blog. Blogs often get neglected until there is a major press release or news event, which can be very infrequent for SMBs in products and services. It is common to see a company blog that hasn’t been updated in months, or over a year. It can be a struggle to come up with ideas to blog about therefore, I wanted to offer help ideas that will have you blogging on a regular basis.

My company is a services company, what can I blog about?

Projects in the works, recently completed projects
If you offer development services, post about projects that have been recently completed. For instance,  if you are a realtor, post about recently sold properties. If your organization works with other larger organizations, post about that. These kinds of posts will help re-enforce confidence in prospects and highlight services that your existing clients may not know you do. It’ll also keep you top of mind of your interested prospects and clients.

Process Highlights
Highlighting processes in the way you deliver your services to your clients can be the differentiator between your company and your competitors. It’s important to pitch your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and it can be better received if it’s passively served via your blog.

My company is a product company, what else can I blog about?

Your products are your bread and butter and when possible they should also be the focus of your blog.

New Products or Vendor/Suppliers
It’s not uncommon for companies to bring launch products and fail to appropriately announce it. Use your blog as a channel to highlight when your company has something new to offer and the problem it solves.

Featured Product
Sometimes an organization has many products. With so many choices, prospective customers may find it hard to find the right product. Other times, product information pages can be too limited for customers to get the information they want. Highlighting products, particularly ones that are of high popularity can help your company around those issues. It’s particularly effective if images or videos are available with these postings.

Product Promotions or Discounts
Everyone likes a sale, particularly if you sell consumer products – a promotion/discount announcement can be picked up by one of the many popular consumer deals sites online.

Other Common Topics

• Success Stories
• Commentary on industry events or commentary from other industry leaders
  Posts that reference well known individuals are particularly effective in driving traffic from searchers online. Both commentary and client success stories help establish credibility for your company, which helps to differentiate your company and reinforce confidence in prospects.

I’m Still Stuck

Sometimes you just don’t have anything to talk about.  At those times, you have to defer to the backup plan.

• Best posts of July, September, 2009, etc
• Links to other industry blogs…
  If you choose to blog about another blog or resource, you should notify the person you are promoting and many bloggers will make a post about it, hopefully crediting your company or blog. This will help build up your blog’s network and credibility.

The Most Common Mistake

The most common mistake for company blogs is to only post company news or press releases. Although those types of posts can be a part of your company’s blog, they should be the minority of the posts. If you make this common mistake, the only people who will read it will be your company’s staff or your competitors.

Business blogging is regarded as the domain of experts, experts willing to spend lots of time each day telling the world about an industry or a sector.  We’ll call this “hard blogging”.  The benefits of hard blogging are many, but the time commitment of hard blogging is usually a huge deterrent so most SMBs balk at it because they feel that a) they don’t have the time to think up analysis or insight that anyone would read, and b) there’s nothing to blog about my business that my customers would be interested in reading (e.g. after I buy a granite countertop for my kitchen, I’m probably not interested in following the granite countertop industry).

An alternate form of blogging that brings it’s own basket of  benefits is what I’ll call “soft blogging”; not blogging analysis but rather easier, once a week, announcement-like content.  Here are five examples:

1. Customer testimonials; getting testimonials from happy customers is an obvious best practice, and when you do, a blog is the perfect venue for maximizing the return on that testimonial.  Include a small description of the service or product rendered to get the testimonial.
2. Portfolio of projects; this is for companies with fewer clients but bigger projects – this is a case study in effect.  Nothing makes you real like a list of real projects you’ve completed, far more so than all the “motherhood” statements on your website.
3. News and Press releases; all companies should put out press releases, submitted to an online wire service like PR web, once a quarter. They are like little golden micro-sites devoted to your company that deliver visitors for years.  Examples of what to put in them include a new management hire, a major client landed or project completed, a new service you now offer, or a new product line you’ve begun carrying (here’s a bigger list).  Publish to your blog as well.
4. Job postings; hiring people says your company is growing and the job description is a wonderful grab bag of what your company does well.  Blogging a job posting is one of the only ways a small business can attract attention to a job posting on its own without relying on a 3rd party website.  Once you hire someone, change the post to a hire announcement and re-publish.
5. Marketing and Sales collateral; you have brochures, and you have digital versions of them. Do a paragraph summary of what they contain and post them online.  Instead of emailing a PDF to a prospect, your sales person can now email them a link to where it resides on your web page, and if they do come to investigate it, they may partake more of your messaging on your website/blog.

A key element of this strategy is that the blog must be sub-domained to your website; the search engines will then see it as part of your website.  This is a bit technical, but here’s a company that will do it for you.  This approach is search engine ‘gold’.  You are adding new content to your website on an ongoing basis (I’d suggest once a week) and you are educating search engines (i.e. Google) about what you do.

In some ways for many companies “soft blogging” is more beneficial than “hard blogging”. Testimonials and /or a portfolio of projects is often a more powerful aid in getting new business than stating your opinion on topics many of your prospects will likely not have the time or inclination to read.  Getting new business is the acid test after all; will this activity bring you more business?  The answer is yes.  This approach will bring more visitors to your website, and you will convince more of them you are a real company that has happy customers.  More visitors will identify themselves and ask questions and request quotes.  Go “soft blogging”!

We at ActiveConversion make use of various social media channels – with our presence in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn groups, Slideshare, YouTube, Digg, StumbleUpon, Flickr and many more. Keeping track of all these social media channels and updating them on a regular basis is difficult and time demanding, but if we use them smartly they work very well to our advantage. With the advent of Internet and as the web 2.0 matures, the online community is an ever growing powerhouse, and it is quintessential to engage with our audience.

Broadcasting

Traditionally websites were developed as a brochure, with static content, one way communication. But as Web 2.0 matured, websites became more than just a brochure. It was necessary for companies to adapt to this ever changing World Wide Web where two- way communications was more than a necessity for any B2B type company. This communication can be in any form; blogs, forums, and online community etc. Similarly, social media channels started as a means of personal use. Twitter & Facebook mainly started as people to connect with their family and friends to let them know where they were or what they were doing or simply share activities and photos. Now B2B companies can also use Facebook and Twitter, but it is important to know the difference between using these channels to broadcast your message versus using them to engage with your targeted audience.

I recently attended “The Art of Marketing” event and found a very close connection in all the speeches that had a common theme of “Engaging”. It is important to understand that our users or customers, and our audiences are the most powerful and the biggest advocate for our products. For B2B companies, the new way of creating customer relationship is by engaging and knowing who their audience is and what are they talking about. Here are some of the speakers who talked about engaging with the audience:

Mitch Joel, the author of “Six degrees of separation” said the Internet is almost going to be as important and pervasive as the electricity”. In the social media world where B2B marketers are trying to connect with as many people as they can and create a solid followers base, it is important to understand that it is the basis of who is following you more important than how many followers you have.

Engaging

Gary Vaynerchuck, author of “Crush It!” cleverly stated that “Internet is just a baby and it still has to grow up and unleash its power”. Whether you are in B2C or B2B, Twitter, Facebook’s and similar social media accounts are a must have. If you don’t have either of these, it is not too late to jump on the bandwagon. Facebook credits are soon going to be precious currency and if we don’t use Facebook, and there is a big chance that companies might miss out on large opportunities in the future.  Social Media should be used intelligently in a way that we not only broadcast our messages and offers but to engage and be involved with our audience. Having a conversation with our audience, providing opinion, resolving issues on the go and engaging with our audience is a key.

Sally Hogshead, the author of “Fascinate” said, “Create messages for our network’s network”. Don’t ignore the larger network which is linked to our immediate network. Social media lets you connect to this web of networks that you simply can’t ignore.

So go ahead and start engaging in conversations!

Social media is becoming a popular avenue for businesses by creating a voice for their business and attracting prospective leads by distributing details, free offers and news about their product & services. For a long time, social media was looked upon as a personal communication channel, where you could provide your opinion about personal things. Since that time Social Media has greatly evolved into a channel for businesses that want to leverage social networks to share their respective experiences and how others can benefit from their offering.

Many have seen Social Media as a distribution channel, a value add asset for potential leads, and a means to offer promotions that will in turn entice people to follow them and be their customer.

Join Yves Matson, as he shares emerging best practices that effectively integrate Social Media into online marketing.

Webinar Title: How to use Social Media in B2B Marketing

To access the webinar recording, click on the link below:
http://www.foundpages.com/social-media-webinar.html

Topics included:

* Utilizing newsletters, blogging, case study publishing, and webinars for social media marketing
* Using Social Media as a distribution channel for blog, newsletter, or website content
* Case Study: How ActiveConversion uses Social Media Marketing for B2B marketing and how they measure ROI using marketing automation.

Whenever the oil and gas industry is mentioned most consumers think of gas bars and service stations, typically operated by a few multinational brands like Exxon, Shell and Chevron.  Gas bars and service stations are actually the tip of the energy industry iceberg, representing so-called downstream activity.  Further upstream there are many thousands of companies involved in exploration and production with their own particular role in the search for hydrocarbon deposits.  Many of these operators such as geophysical and drilling contractors are service providers who in turn contract with other service providers to perform specialized functions within their field.

The relationships between these companies is obviously business to business (B2B) and often well defined so why bother with a marketing automation solution or sales intelligence if you are a energy services provider?  The main reason is probably timing.  Exploration activity is project oriented and the decision to drill is at the core. Wouldn’t it be useful to know exactly when a new or existing customer is looking to buy something you provide?

Industry insiders pride themselves on what’s going on in the oil patch.  They seem to know where the deals are and when they’re sales-ready.  An advanced marketing automation solution will enhance their ability to strike, by providing automatic alerts.  A Sales 2.0 solution will not only identify which companies are sales-ready but will also indicate the ideal time to call in the sales cycle.

Sales reps for these leading companies retain a competitive advantage by being notified when a desired prospect has downloaded a particular specification, watched a video, or visited a certain page like pricing on their corporate website.  Or when they have a proposal out, and are waiting for indication that they are being considered for the ‘short list’. When this information is delivered in real-time, sales reps stand a much higher chance of winning these multi-million dollar bids.

Another advantage is intelligence.  Just knowing which companies are researching your offering is often worthwhile. Some companies may not have been on the radar, and can often lead to new business.

And with an advanced marketing automation solution , marketing personnel can track the results of trade shows, mail, email and other campaigns, in addition to being able to build and send emails to keep their brand top of mind.

Having sold to the ‘oil patch’ for many years, I can see why ActiveConversion is used by many energy industry manufacturers and service providers, to auto-nurture prospects and to optimize their sales time.

The title of this article from BizReport is “92% SMB owners recommend business-focused online networking“, which is a great stat.  But in my opinion the bigger result from the survey conducted centers on ROI:

59% have won customers or done business as a direct result of online networking sites.

Furthermore, as business networking (the survey definitely shows a divide between “social” networking such as Facebook and “business” networking such as LinkedIn) shows significant ROI, the love is returned:

78% are open to purchasing from contacts made on such sites

While these results are from a survey conducted in the UK, I’m going to say that empirically they are valid for the business environment on this side of the pond.  For those of you who are skeptical of the power of social networking, some powerful numbers are starting to make a pretty strong case, all the more so when you can start measuring the result.  It’s one thing to engage in social networking on a gut call, it’s another to get measurable returns that justify the investment.

ActiveConversion recently released another in their popular series of “eHow To” guides.  This one deals with using Marketing Automation to leverage B2B Blogging.  From the summary:

Lead nurturing is the process of communicating with prospects who are not yet ready to buy. B2B Blogging enables marketers to contact such prospects on an ongoing basis.

Only 10 to 25 percent of all leads are sales-ready. A similar percentage of leads are not qualified at all. This means 50 to 80 percent of all leads generated are potentially wasted if no appropriate action is taken.

With B2B Blogging marketers can realize significant benefits. Leads that are not sales-ready are not lost and significant online lead generation effort is not wasted. Automation of lead nurturing increases the ROI of all online marketing activities.

To download this whitepaper on implementing a blog for your business, click on the image!