Our last post on business blogging looked at seeding and distribution and how to get people to your blog.
However, the end goal of a business blog (or any customer facing content asset) must be to stimulate demand and generate enquiries.
In this final post of this business blogging series we look at how companies can use blogs to drive demand generation. For more information you can see our demand generation definition.
There needs to be a compelling call to action to take a visitor's fledgling interest in your business to the next level.
It is commonly accepted that it takes time to build traffic to a blog, and even longer for people to interact with it. So, assuming it is almost impossible to encourage blog visitors to engage with a corporate blog, how can you keep them there and get them to take an action?
Here are six tried and tested ways businesses can generate demand through their blogs:
After you've read this blog post, it's no accident that a list of other, hopefully relevant, blog posts will be offered to you based on the content of this one.
Offering visitors another post on the same page gives them a reason to stay and click around other content. Related post plugins like this can also help with SEO.
Email remains critical to business marketing communications - securing an opted-in email address is a primary goal for most businesses in the process of building a new business pipeline.
Dig a bit deeper and you can build targeted email lists based on specific site content.
The content could be 'state of the industry' reports, building regulations updates, technology recommends or any other form of regular content.
Targeting content at niche groups builds trust and moves a minority towards transacting.
Every discipline and business sector has its common points of pain.
Applying a bit of creativity is all that’s required to showcase your solutions to these widely recognised problems by providing impartial white papers, ‘how to’ guides, webinars, slidesets and other digital material.
US software company, Hubspot, is a master at taking blog posts further. It sends blog content viral by offering a portfolio of free guides and downloads via forms designed to easily populate its contact database.
As you build a reputation for great content, consider putting some of it behind an exclusive VIP membership wall.
Whether you elect to treat this content as free, freemium or premium is your call. Keep in mind that this content is specifically designed to target a niche adopter group with the potential to become brand advocates and ambassadors.
This VIP group will need to provide more personal information in exchange for access to specific content; this exchange deepens their commitment to and relationship with the brand.
Seth Godin's Domino Project (2011) was an interesting exercise in building powerful viral book launches, starting with a small opted-in community accessing products at an entry level price.
Show that your blog isn't just one way traffic by asking for feedback.
Use analytics to establish which topics people liked the most; end blog posts with questions and requests and run polls.and surveys, publishing the findings.
Create discussions and challenge blog visitors to get involved, seed comments on new blog posts so visitors aren't put off by being first.
Write provocative articles that demand discussion.
Offer industry standard sharing functionality for Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google+ and the major bookmarking sites.
Use recognised comment functionality like Disqus to ensure people can quickly and easily comment on posts and that recognises them when they return. And respond promptly to comments.
See your blog as a community; a place for likeminded people to come and find useful information and discuss it. It's hard but not impossible.
What other demand generation techniques have you used on your blog or seen used online?
How has it worked for you?
By Rene Power
René Power, has been the Smart Insights Expert commentator on B2B marketing for over four years. He consults, talks and trains on the deployment of the full marketing mix within trade B2B sectors including packaging, food, science, construction, engineering and professional services. He specializes in integrating digital with traditional and demystifying digital marketing, social media and content marketing for trade B2B companies. A Chartered Marketer, René authors the The Marketing Assassin blog, shares updates on Twitter @renepower and you can connect via Linkedin. Rene also authored the recently updated Smart Insights Expert members guide: 7 Steps to Brilliant B2B Digital Marketing guide.
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