The 8 Benefits of Consistent Blogging for Your Startup B2B Business
As a B2B startup, you have a lot on your plate when it comes to getting your new business off the ground. You need to learn about and understand the demands of your market, create buyer personas, develop products or services that will meet the needs of your target customers and their businesses, research and learn from your competition, market your business, and so much more. Maintaining a blog, let alone doing so consistently, seems like it would fall to the bottom of your priority list.
In case you don’t believe that blogging is so crucial for a B2B startup to get their inbound engine running, check out these stats:
B2B businesses that blog get 67% more leads than those that don’t
77% of people who use the internet read blogs
80% of business decision-makers prefer to get company information from a series of articles versus an advertisement.
Businesses that blog 16 times or more per month get 4.5 times more leads than those that only blog 4 times or less per month
So, now that you’re onboard and a believer of blogging, here are the eight reasons why you should consider building your library now as opposed to later.
1. Establish Your Credibility
In a world where just about every business has a website and a blog, how does a blog help a B2B business stand out from everyone else? While blogging might seem like an impossible solution for establishing credibility, the key is consistency. Producing consistent content on topics that you know a lot about, enabling you to showcase your expertise, is essential for building your reputation online.
2. Increase Website Traffic
As a part of your startup content strategy, blogging offers you a way to attract more traffic to your website. Posting consistent content as a part of your content strategy gives search engine bots more information to crawl more frequently. When you optimize those blog posts with relevant keywords, your website is likely to rank higher in the search engine results pages. The higher you rank, the greater the chances that potential leads will click on your link and see what you have to offer.
3. Generate More Qualified Leads
Not only does consistent blogging drive more traffic to your website, but it can also help to generate more qualified leads. Creating B2B content about topics that are relevant to the types of businesses you’re looking to work with helps you to ensure that the potential leads you’re attracting to your site are right for the products or services that you have to offer.
4. Increase Your Close Rate
Your blog is a valuable asset during the sales process, helping you to close more deals. During the sales cycle, you can direct potential customers to blog posts that are relevant to their needs and that can provide answers to their questions. Again, this can help to establish you as a trustworthy, credible source.
Even if leads don’t convert immediately, you can still leverage your blog to your advantage by providing a “subscribe now” button at the bottom of your posts. Subscribing shows that these businesses are interested in what you have to offer. Those interested in your content are more likely to convert later.
5. Get Your SEO Going
SEO is an essential component of any B2B marketing strategy. One way to boost your search engine optimization is through the use of keywords. As mentioned above, search engine bots crawl your website. They look for a variety of factors such as quality links, page speed, mobile-friendliness, user experience, and optimized content.
Optimizing content involves incorporating relevant keywords not just into your landing pages but your blog content as well. Do some research into what terms potential leads are searching for and weave those keywords organically into your content. Just be careful to avoid keyword stuffing, which can actually harm your ranking.
6. Provide an Educational Resource
Every blog post gives you a unique opportunity to educate leads and current customers about the products or services that you provide as well as relevant topics. At the same time, enabling comments on your blog posts allows you to learn what questions and concerns that your leads and customers have. This allows you to use your blog as an educational resource for your readers.
7. Develop Relationships
Unlike outbound marketing strategies, blogging is an inbound tactic that allows you to build relationships with your leads and existing customers. Again, you can use your comments section to your advantage. Responding to comments provides your leads and customers with answers. You can direct the individual to relevant products or services or other blog posts that hold the answers they seek.
8. Blog Posts Help to Create MORE Content
The great thing about blog content is that it provides you with an avenue to create even more content. As time goes on, once relevant blog posts may not get you the rankings they once did. Updating old posts keeps your content fresh, which can also help your SEO.
This isn’t the only way blogging helps you to generate more comments. You can use the comments section to get ideas for future posts. You can also repurpose content into other formats such as website copy, white papers, infographics, video content, and more. The more relevant and helpful information you have, the more people are likely to visit your site, repost your content, or link back to you. This can greatly aid in your marketing efforts and attract even more qualified leads to your site.
With so much already on your plate, blogging probably seems like one of the least important. As you can see, though, a consistent blog helps to establish your new company as an authority for businesses in need of your products or services, generates more qualified leads, and enables you to close more deals. Be sure to devote some time to building your blog library and post content regularly. As the leads start coming in, you’ll be glad you did.
