B2B Myth of the Week: My Company Needs 3 Blog Posts a Week
by Emily Swet
The Myth: My Company Needs 3 Blog Posts a Week to Achieve Our Goals
The Truth: Your Blog Sweet Spot Is All About Quality, Not Quantity
You’ve decided it’s time to ramp up your content marketing strategy. Your first thought? We need blog posts, lots of them, stat! Right?
Well… yes and no. Your blog is the workhorse of your content marketing program. You need strong, informative content that entices and engages your audience. What you don’t need is a bunch of filler that leaves them unsatisfied, misled, or annoyed. How you find your magic blog post number is directly related to both. Just as it’s unwise to let your blog collect tumbleweeds, it’s also a poor strategy to flood your followers with dozens of useless posts.
So How Do You Find Your Sweet Spot? Start By Asking Yourself These 4 Questions:
- What are your resources? You’ll need a writer that understands how to write for SEO while still comfortably speaking to your company’s buyer personas. Most of all, you’ll need time: a well-researched, edited blog can take upwards of four hours to write. How much or how little budget dedicated to content is your first indicator of how frequently you can successfully post.
- What are your goals? Brand awareness. Brand loyalty. Customer engagement. You’ve got to know what goal you’re posting for and how to leverage it. But the core goal of every content program must be to resonate with your audience – which brings us to the next question.
- What does your audience want? If you’re in a fast-moving industry, short and sweet updates might work best – in which case, you’ll likely be able to post more often. If your pace is slower, lengthier info pieces posted less frequently may be more worthwhile. But more importantly, what kind of content does your audience crave? What are their pain points? A blog post that addresses these things is a thousand times more effective than a post filled with fluff.
- What is your competition doing? You don’t have to beat how often your competitors are posting. Instead, look at what they’re posting and see how you can differentiate your brand. How are you different? How are you better? Use competitive analysis to capitalize on your strengths.
If the value of your content is consistently high, publishing more often will likely bring more traffic. More posts mean more content to keep your readers happy and more indexed pages in search engines. However, if you find your resources are too limited to dedicate to several quality posts, once a week is sufficient to keep your audience tuned in to your brand. Content marketing is meant to entertain, educate, and provoke questions. It’s next-level marketing that readers actually want – but only if it’s done well.
Continue Reading4 Types of Engaging B2B Content
by MGB2B
Rising above the noise can be a difficult task. According to Google Search Statistics, Google processes over 3.5 billion searches a day. So what’s the best way for your company stand out from the crowd? As with most things, content is about quality, not quantity. It’s worth your while to develop engaging content that allows the customer to interact with your brand. One way to enhance the quality of your content is by sharing interactive posts that will engage your audience and drive leads.
Here Are 4 Examples of Engaging B2B Content to Consider Using:
- Infographics: Infographics have been popular for a while now and can be particularly useful for B2B brands. Data can often be dry and boring, but infographics allow you to display it in an interesting and engaging way. Keep the design simple and eye-catching. If a buyer feels overwhelmed with information, they may lose interest, so present data in a way that is easy to read and comprehend. Make it stand out by adding an interactive element that requires readers to scroll or click to retrieve information (like this example from iLevel). Think of your infographic as a story. Stories are more memorable and keep your audience interested and wanting more.
- Calculators: Interactive calculators are a great way to increase engagement because they show potential buyers the benefits your company can provide. Buyers can get personalized cost estimates in an easy, non-stressful way. Calculators can also ignite a conversation between the company and buyer, pushing leads further into the sales funnel. By using a calculator, customers are assured of the value that your service can provide to them.
- Quizzes: Personality quizzes. Product evaluations. Knowledge tests. The options for interactive quizzes are endless. People love quizzes because they give unique results based on personal answers. The best thing about quizzes is that they can generate leads by requiring a name and email before releasing the result. Quizzes are a two-way road. They allow you to subtly share information about your products and services. Most importantly, if you ask the right questions, the answers can give your brand insight into your audience. Which is helpful when developing personas. And last but not least, quizzes can encourage people to share their results, which will result in more people taking the quiz and more leads captured.
- Surveys/Polls: Surveys and polls are great tools because they make clients feel like their opinions matter, and they enable you to gain important insights. Survey questions can be made up of closed or open-ended questions that allow you to find out even more about your audience than quizzes. Keep your surveys and polls short and sweet. That way people will take the time to fill it out and give the most accurate answers possible. It can also help to offer an incentive, like a gift card, which usually increases participation.
Sharing engaging content is one of the best ways to build your brand image and get more leads into your sales funnel. If you take the time to produce quality interactive content, you will engage your audience. And generate leads instead of yawns.
Continue ReadingB2B Myth of the Week: All Mobile-Friendly Sites Are Created Equal
by MGB2B
The Myth: All Mobile-Friendly Sites Are Created Equal
The Truth: Unless Your Site’s Responsive, It’s Not Really Mobile-Friendly
Gone are the days of browsing the Internet on a desktop alone. Today’s B2B buyers are constantly on the move. Meetings. Traveling. Multitasking. You name it. Today’s websites need to adapt to cater to these on-the-go decision makers. How? By being responsive. Responsive web design focus on maintaining readability across all devices. Viewing is compatible despite window or screen size. This seemingly small factor is of utmost importance for all businesses, especially B2B brands. Here’s why:
- Buyers Are Using Mobile More Than Ever. According to Hubspot, 49% of B2B researchers who use mobile for research are doing so while at work. Therefore, mobile devices are crucial to buying decisions. B2B users expect their experience on mobile to be just as seamless as on a desktop. But just because a website can be accessed on a mobile device doesn’t mean the experience is seamless. If your website isn’t responsive, the page most likely does not fit on a mobile screen. This means your audience has to zoom in and out, scroll left and right, and finagle their screen before they can get the information they want. In contrast, responsive sites ensure your information is accessible across all platforms – smartphone, tablets, laptops, and desktops. A responsive web design ensures your website leaves buyers with a great experience. Remember, the more your buyer has to hunt and peck, the more likely they’ll leave (and go to your competitor).
- Having a Responsive Website Lowers Maintenance Time and Cost. When the shift from desktop to mobile first took off, many companies developed a separate mobile website. If your company is still using this method, you have two sites to update and manage. Needless to say, maintaining two websites is much less efficient than one responsive site. It doubles your workload when changes are made, and it’s not cost-effective in the long term.
- Google Prioritizes Mobile-Friendly Sites. Google constantly evolves its algorithm to ensure the best search results. In 2015, Google changed its algorithm to prioritize mobile-friendly sites. This means that websites that are not compatible with mobile tech get displayed much lower in search results. In addition, Google recently rolled out a mobile-first index – which means it sees your mobile site as your primary website. These updates alone should be encouragement enough to add responsive web design to your marketing to-do list.
The digital world is moving pretty fast, and it doesn’t look like it’s slowing down anytime soon. As the shift from desktop to mobile grows more significant, it’s imperative you create a seamless user experience for your buyer. Reducing the time spent on site maintenance and upping your search rankings doesn’t hurt either. Don’t lose potential leads – incorporate responsive web design into your marketing plan. Have questions about where to begin? Drop us a line.
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