B2B blogging can be tricky, but rewarding all the same. The hardest question may well be whether you even want to start one in the first place. That’s one of the questions the folks from Aggregage posed to a number of B2B blogging thought leaders in a new whitepaper titled: B2B Blogging Trends in 2011.
It’s a 42 page snappy presentation of tips and insight which will help your organization make the right moves when it comes to blogging for business. And when you consider that only 50% of businesses out there have blogs, you can see the need for some thoughtful expert advice in this area. As well, it also means that opportunities to leverage blogging and establish your company as an authority abound in the coming year. Amazingly, with one of the most powerful marketing tools in existence today, you still have time to get in on the ground floor!
After reading this report with the wealth of insight from people such as Jay Baer, Tom Pick, Samir Balwani and Erik Qualman, you shouldn’t be asking if you should be blogging, but when.
The experts agree that blogging needs to be integrated with your marketing planning. It can’t be an afterthought or dropped on someone’s desk as one more thing to get around to when time permits.
Don’t start a blog if you can’t invest the resources to get it right. You don’t want it to get too bogged down in approval cycles and such, but you still need a plan, an editorial calendar (at least as a guide) and a gatekeeper (editor). It’s good to involve as many people as want to contribute, but you always have to have someone overseeing things.
There’s a lot of bad B2B blogs out there today and there will be more of them. In order to rise above that noise level, you must be good and to be good, one thing you have to be is relevant. To do that you need to indentify what your market wants to know. Social media monitoring and engagement is definitely one good way to find out. Another good way is to come right out and ask (often) what your market wants to know more about and then deliver it with some style and authority. As pointed out in the report: Listen first and move from a monologue to a dialog.
“Content curation” is another topic which is mentioned in the report and that relates to something a lot of us have been talking up regarding B2B business blogging. There’s no doubt that producing new content for a blog can be resource intensive! However, there is a lot of great relevant content out there which you can “find and filter” for your market. Figuring out how to present content from other sources (including your partners) in an engaging way is a must.
B2B Blogging Trends in 2011 is an excellent place to start as you consider your online marketing strategy. Blogging is a very powerful tool in B2B marketing and not something you should dismiss lightly.