RSS Chat BubbleIn a world with over 156 million blogs1, it’s easy for your brand’s blog to get lost in the crowd. The good news is, following these best practices will give your blog the boost it needs to be head and shoulders above the crowd.
  1. Make sure your blog is readable.

    Above anything else, your blog needs to be readable. This means breaking it into smaller, more digestible parts. There are several ways to do this: make lists, use bullet points, make a pro/con comparison of the top widgets on the market, etc.

    Also, avoid jargon. Even if your blog is meant for a certain niche community, make sure you avoid jargon that beginners wouldn’t know. You never know who will be reading your blog and you don’t want to exclude visitors by using jargon that they may not understand.

    Keep a consistent voice. Though you might have various contributors on your blog, you should have one person who reviews the posts to make sure that they are all in a consistent brand voice (i.e. your contributors shouldn’t contradict your brand’s core values in their posts).
  2. Make it shareable.

    The whole point of blogging is to get your information out to as many users as possible, if it weren’t, you wouldn’t be posting it online. Make sure that your posts are optimized to be easily shared on all social platforms. You never know which platform your visitor will prefer.

    One way to optimize your blog posts is to think of your titles like tweets. Would someone want to click on your title if it were a tweet? Make sure your titles are descriptive but also intriguing. This is not an easy task, so don’t be afraid to write your title after you’ve finished your post and to write several versions.

  3. Make posts informative.

    Even if your blog posts four times a day, seven days a week, if the content is useless, you’ll not only be wasting your time, you’ll be wasting your site visitor’s time as well. Users who feel that you’ve wasted their time are unlikely to return. This is why it’s important to post quality over quantity (See #5 for quantity best practices).

    Your business knows more the industry than your customers (or at least you should or else you may want to reconsider why you’re in business). Use this knowledge to create informative posts. Write about what you know, it’s the easiest way to start. After you’ve written all you know, research the market to answer questions you may have and write about what you found. There’s a good chance your customers will have the same questions.

    You can also create informative content by answering FAQs, giving your authoritative opinion on new developments in the market (i.e. why you think the newest red widget is really worth the money), or commenting on current industry trends. There are many ways to create informative content that will not waste your time or your site visitor’s time.

  4. Make your content enjoyable.

    This definitely goes hand-and-hand with #1 and #2. If your content is going to be readable and shareable, it should also be enjoyable. That doesn’t mean it has to be joke after joke (though humor is a great way to get your content shared), but it should have a casual tone that shows your personality (or your brand’s personality).

    If people wanted stark, personality-lacking content, they would read a research report. Blogs should create a casual atmosphere that encourage engagement and conversation. Brands that put too much thought and structure into each post will find that they are putting more effort into the post than needed.

  5. Quantity vs. and Quality.

    It’s a Google world and we’re just living in it.     Changes in SEO reward fresh content; however, it is important to remember that search rewards fresh AND engaging content. This means you need to be posting quality content and posting it often.

    Posting so often can be challenging so it’s a good idea to keep an organized content calendar that maps out what type of content you’ll be creating and how often you’ll be creating it. Remember, you don’t have to create everything from scratch - repurpose what you already have (think reports that can be broken down into blog posts).

 Blogging is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your site, if done correctly. Follow these best practices for your B2B blog to be sure you’re getting the most out of your blogging efforts.

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References:
 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog