B2B Blogging has gained popularity thanks to such incredible results it brought to marketers. When b2b marketers have used b2b blogging consistently for over a year or two within their marketing plan they could notice many aspects of their marketing have improved including lead generation, conversion rates, website traffic, and brand awareness.

But what about today? is b2b blogging good for business or is the competition already too big and it does not make sense to include this content marketing strategy in the b2b marketing plan?

What made me address this question is that recently I have been in a bookstore, discovering new books to learn about marketing, investments, and relationships.

And as I have been browsing around the bookstore, I have heard a conversation of a young couple around 15 years old:

Boyfriend: “Wow, so many books, I wonder if there are still people reading books?”

Girlfriend: “I think only very old people who can’t use a computer or mobile.”

Ouch…

I mean, I am 27 years old, reading around 30 books a year and I consider myself a technology savvy person.

Well, but that doesn’t matter, what matters is, what about the b2b blog, is still somebody reading it, or is it already dead for businesses and b2b marketers should move to somewhere else?

Let’s answer this question:

How do Humans Receive Information Nowadays?

Marketing is changing year by year with new upcoming and improving technologies.

Due to that,  people have different needs and requirements on how they want to receive the information.

But what I have found very interesting is that even tho the technology is evolving, the way how we consume data is not that much.

What I mean by that is how people consuming data have not changed that much in the past few thousand years, as we still rely on our senses to absorb information and learn.

But what has changed is the way how we create and deliver the information to other people who might be interested in what we have to say.

Yes, how we record our knowledge from stone craving to YouTube has changed a lot but this has to do only with technology.

For example, we still learn from observing and watching other people, we still learn from reading materials and listening to people whether it is in person, on a blog, newspaper, book, or YouTube.

Our senses are our prior way of how we learn new things. For example, learn better if you observe rather than reading or just listening.

By Invisia, viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10% when reading it in text.

So, The Question Is, Does Technology Push Away Blogs?

Thanks to improving technologies like mobile phones and internet speed, video marketing is on the rise, and some data shows that video marketing is the next trend within digital marketing.

  • By 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic — 15 times higher than it was in 2017. [Source: Cisco]
  • YouTube is the second most popular website after Google. [Source: Alexa]

Therefore, this influence the b2b blogs has prospects slowly moving to the video formats rather than reading blogs. The study said that 59% of executives say they would rather watch a video than read text. [Source: Wordstream]

Why is Still B2B Blogging Good For Business?

Yes, video marketing is going to rise thanks to improving technologies, but blogging is and will be relevant in the future. Furthermore, it has more potential than ever before.

B2B Blog is still very much effective, and it is not dead. Blogging is still a very relevant and effective marketing strategy for businesses to drive more traffic to their website and improve lead generation and conversion rate as long as search engines like Google are a popular way to find answers. So, helpful and educational content is a key to making the b2b blog strategy very effective!

As we can see from statistics that 77% of internet users regularly read blog posts which brings us that people are still interested to search and reading blog posts, as long as they see the value within them.

Also, 71% of B2B buyers consume blog content during their buyer journey to educate themselves before they even reach out to vendors. By IDC most of the decision-makers complete 56% of the buyer journey before they first contact the vendor.

Therefore, b2b marketers have cited that content marketing including blogging is one of the essential lead generation strategies for them to drive qualified leads at a lower cost. 89% of B2B marketers cite content marketing as a very important strategy.

But you should be aware that there are criteria for successful B2B Blogging marketing such as:

  • SEO is an essential part for blogs to rank and appears in search engines, so people can discover them.
  • Helpful Content is another essential part of blogging as creating useful blogs brings readers back again and increases brand credibility and trustworthiness.

There are more, but these are the two main aspects of successful blogs. Once you get these two rights you will start driving leads to your business.

Why is B2B Blog Important for Your Business?

With that being said, you can see that business-to-business blogs are still in their place for marketers to drive great results for their businesses.

So, if you do not use b2b blogging marketing strategy then let’s discuss a bit more about why a b2b blog is important for your business and what benefits it can bring to marketing, the sales department, and your company.

The most common benefits of b2b blogging are:

  • Driving Qualified Traffic to Your Website: Thanks to great targeting opportunities of b2b blogs with keywords and questions that your target audience has. Because creating a b2b blog is all about having your B2B target audience in the mind and the problems that you want to solve or address.
    With keywords and questions related to your industry and solutions, you can easily target your audience.
  • Improve SEO = Higher Ranking: As all of us know, the higher you rank the more you drive traffic to your website. Especially when the first 10 position in search engine takes up 73% of traffic. The higher your website is ranking, the more people will come to your website. Therefore, having a blog not just improves your ranking but also, you will rank for more than a few keywords.
  • Establish Credibility and Expertise: Whenever you are sharing your knowledge, people are more willing to listen to you. B2B is a great platform to share how to solve problems and what to do. Therefore, if you genuinely provide help to your readers, they most likely will trust you.
  • Improved Conversion Rate: As I already explained with proper targeting you can drive only highly interested prospects to your website. Usually, these prospects are already prequalified as they have done the research, or they are in Mids. Thanks to that you will increase your conversion rate.
  • More Closed Customers also by bringing a better conversion rate you also improve your odds of closing your prospects into the customer. For example from my experience, many prospects have sent me a message saying:” We have learned a lot from your blog and we are interested in Demo from you, as your solutions seem suitable for our needs.” So, if you provide help, they are happy to come to you and paid for better help.

And those are the common 5 benefits and reasons why you should create a blog for your b2b company, but there are more benefits like shortening your sales cycle and increasing brand awareness as more websites are prompt to share your blog posts and link to you.

How does B2B Blog Align with Your Marketing Strategy? [3 Easy Steps]

Now, let’s discuss how you can put a b2b blog together with your other digital and traditional marketing strategies so you improve your overall marketing results.

Because the blog has many ways how it can be utilized to bring the results you want, that’s why you should be utilizing it within your marketing plan.

As I mentioned, a b2b blog has many ways how it can be used within the marketing, and therefore I definitely believe that business to business blog is not dead but very much alive as for example you can drive leads to your workshops and events, webinars or email list for lead nurturing campaign.

All of this will improve your marketing if it is done properly.

So how can you align your marketing with a b2b blog strategy?

Step 1: Define Purpose of Article

When you start writing or outsourcing an article you should have in mind what you want to actually achieve with this article.

Obviously, you want to drive more traffic to your website but what then?

When you are creating the purpose of the article, think of, where is the next destination for your prospect, is it your event, email list, or product page?

Remember, the article can have multiple purposes, but there is a prior purpose you should stick to, as you have some goal you want to achieve, the rest is secondary but still important to include.

Step 2: Use Appropriate Tactics

The next step is to choose a tactic that fits best to the purpose of your article so you can actually drive the leads where you want, as, without it, you can’t do much.

So, once you know what the purpose of your article is then you need to decide what will work best for you, for example, if you want to drive more email subscribers, you can choose marketing tactics such as a Lead magnet or Pop Up.

Of course, it all depends on the result you want to achieve.

Step 3: Create a Blog Post

Once you know what you want to achieve with your blog post and what tactics you will use, then you can write or outsource the blog post and optimize it for SEO keywords, on-page SEO, image SEO, and other SEO techniques to rank it in the SERP.

Obviously, if you are outsourcing the blog post, then you need to inform your writer about the keyword you want to target, the purpose of your article, and the tactics you want to use within.

And once the writer will know then he/she can create a high converting blog post that will lead readers to your desired destination.

How Do You Know When Should You Stop B2B Blogging?

Last but not least I would like to answer the question “How do I know is time to quit?”

via GIPHY

Okay, maybe the cat wasn’t necessary.

Many marketers are afraid that it will not be effective anymore after the year or two as when I tell them to start blogging consistently now and wait for a year or two to see the results.

My answer to this concern is that the popularity of search engines is still growing and definitely it will be in the next couple of years or even decades.

Obviously, the form of how search engines deliver the content to the searcher will change, but blogs will be here for the next 10 years thanks to a wide range of media options you can use within it.

So, does your B2B Blog will be only words?

Absolutely no! Thanks to the blog, you can include so much inside, like videos, infographics, written text, sound, and much more. Also, it is user-friendly as everybody is interested in their own thing, that is why the blog is great because you can easily choose what part you are interested in.

It is easy to find information as scanning blog posts are easy and 43% of people tend to skim blog posts. [Source: State of Inbound]

Remember, the blog post layout will change, and it is different now than 10 years ago. Now you should include Heading, subheading, video, and pictures within your blog post as you can cover more topics and provide better help.

So, the rules of a successful blog post will be changing but the b2b blog will definitely not disappear in the next 10 years for sure.

Conclusion

B2B Blog is definitely effective and will be effective in the next 10 years for sure, only that is changing is the rules on how to make blog posts successfully rank high in the SERPs to get a lot of traffic.

These rules include SEO and they will be changing every year and we as marketers need to follow new SEO trends.

But we can be sure that if we do that then the B2B blog will still drive promising results for your marketing department.

So, focus on proper SEO and SERP, make sure you have related keywords which answer the most common questions of your target audience, and the most important aspect of every blog is being helpful!

I hope you have enjoyed this article and learned something new let me know on my YouTube Channel whether you already blogging or you want to start.

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Disclaimer

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