Blogging platforms like WordPress and Blogger have made publishing content on the web easier than ever. Once you have developed a clear understanding of your business’ keywords and optimized your website for search engines, the next step in your B-to-B Internet marketing strategy should be to attract more visitors. Blogging and creating content like ebooks and webinars are powerful ways to help more of the right people find your business online.

How to Think About Business Blogging
When thinking about blogging, take off your hat as a marketing manager and instead try to think like a magazine publisher. The goal of your business blog should be to publish articles that are not promotional but instead share industry expertise, much in the way a column or an article in an industry magazine would.

Think about what you are writing and the words you are using. Don’t use industry jargon that only you and your employees would understand. Think of the words your customers would use to describe your business and use those keywords in your blog posts.

Getting Set Up With Blogging
While writing content that is interesting to your prospective customers is important, you first need a way to publish that content online. The most important thing you can do when you first start blogging is to make sure your blog is a section of your business website. Without a blog, a website is kind of like a brochure that doesn’t change often. A blog makes your website more dynamic by injecting new content every time you publish a blog post. Search engines reward higher rankings to websites that consistently add fresh content, and these higher rankings translate into new visitors and leads for your business.

Key Components of a Great Blog Post
A well-constructed blog post should include several key components:

• Attention-Grabbing Title. Because your blog article’s title is the first thing people will see, it’s important to make sure it clearly and concisely indicates what the article is about, includes a keyword (because the header tag is the most important for SEO) and is attention grabbing.

• Well Written and Formatted Text. The body of your article should be well written and formatted in a way that makes it easy to read. Consider using header tags and bulleted lists to break up the content into sections.

• Images/Videos. Relevant multimedia content can make a blog article more memorable and fun to read. It also helps to break up text to make it more pleasing to the eye.

• Links. Include in-text links to relevant content. These can also point to a landing page to help you generate more leads for your content.

Deciding What to Blog About
Most business blogs start with a purpose. What are you trying to educate your industry and potential customers about? This education is not about your product, but instead about common industry issues and the problems your potential customers face and that your product or service helps to solve. A great way to start blogging is to think about the 10 most common questions you get asked by prospective new customers. Take each one of those questions and write a short article explaining an answer. Do this once a week for 10 weeks and you have the strong foundation for a successful blog.

Converting Blog Visitors into Sales Leads
Every blog post you publish should include a relevant call to action (CTA) at the bottom to help boost lead generation. The CTA should link directly to a landing page that provides downloadable access to a more in-depth learning experience such as an ebook or webinar upon the completion of a lead generation form. We’ll discuss CTAs and landing pages in next week’s blog post.