Add a blog to your website and say good-bye to brochure-ware.
(1) Comment So Far... What do you think?| Author : Susan Pascal Tatum February 13, 2008In the past, the standard B2B technology website was simply an extended online version of your marketing collateral. That is no longer enough.
Ours is now an interactive world. Visitors to your website expect not only to find and consume information, they also expect to be able to comment and collaborate with you. And, they expect fresh, updated content.
How do you provide that?
One good way to start is by adding a blog component to your website. By posting regularly to a blog and encouraging comments from readers you’ll not only begin a valuable two-way conversation with your customers and prospects, you’ll also be helping your search engine ranking since search engines love new content.
A few words of caution, however, before you jump into the blogosphere.
- This is not your usual marketing channel. While I consider blogging to be an essential part of successful B2B marketing, if you approach it as a conventional command-and-control avenue of communication you will get burned.
- Neither is blogging just another sales channel. It’s okay to weave the occasional sales message into your blog, but too much of that will quickly cost you readership and potential new business.
- Blogging takes a significant time commitment. While there are reportedly an incredible number of new blogs launched every day (one per second according to the New York Times), just as many – if not more -are abandoned. You or someone on your team (a group of people is fine) must be able to keep up a frequent posting schedule. Once a week at minimum.
- Bloggers should have decent writing skills. I disagree completely with some blogging experts who say that typos and poorly constructed sentences are part of the allure of blogging. Your writing need not be formal, but misspelled words and wildly wandering thoughts not only fail to communicate your message, they also make you look stupid.
- Prepare to take the bad with the good. Some people will disagree with you. Some people may have bad things to say about your product or your company. These are opportunities to learn and to fix problems. You must be willing to let these voices be heard.
If the above doesn’t scare you off – and I hope that it doesn’t – here are some good resources for learning more:
- Debbie Weil’s blog: Blogwrite for CEOs.
- Bernie Borges’ blog: Find and Convert
- Blogging for Business by Shel Holtz & TedDemopoulos
- Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble & Shel Israel
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One question I hear a lot from B2B marketers is – how often would I need to blog to have a successful blog? The answer isn’t a magic number as much as it is to show consistency. If a blog is consistent about the topics covered, the personality of the blog and the relative frequency, that’s what matters most. Whether it is once per day, once per week or once per month, what matters is that you have something to say that is of interest to others. That said, more frequent is better than less frequent to keep people interested in your blog.
Cheers,
Bernie