How do you create B2B blog posts that are resourceful, engaging, and original?
You could hire a talented freelance writer or a content service provider, but that also means you may have to pay around $100 for a piece of content that may or may not surpass your expectations.
You could also follow the “Skyscraper method” to make B2B content, but to “take what’s out there and blow it out of the water” is a lot easier said than done (and, quite frankly, unoriginal).
Or, like we did here at Ladder, you could stop focusing on how to create B2B blog posts, and instead focus on who you’re creating blog posts for.
We started the Ladder Growth Marketing Blog almost two years ago with the intention of creating a hub of resourceful, engaging, and original content for our new strategists and analysts.
We wrote about our internal audits, our marketing experiments and step-by-step processes, and our go-to growth strategies that have helped us grow our clients’ businesses.
If this material was helpful for our new team members, we thought, then other marketers, small business owners, and potential clients could also benefit from this information.
Today, as a result, we have more than 7000 newsletter subscribers who receive our blog posts each week and about 12,000 visitors to our blog every month.
In the same vein, here are the 5 types of B2B blog posts that work really well for us and could help bolster your own B2B content marketing strategy:
At Ladder, we’re a group of generalists. Our strategists and analysts work across every marketing channel for our clients, testing and learning what works for them. When we find something that works, we double down, but we’re also comfortable admitting when we don’t know much about a topic and reaching out to each other or third-party companies and agencies for tutorials and training.
For instance, we paid the fantastic team at Brainlabs to educate us on the world of Google Shopping. We then took what we learned, applied it to our clients’ accounts, and shared how we did it in this insightful blog post: “Why We Paid Another Agency to Teach Us Google Shopping”.
What You Should Do: If your company hosts similar workshops and learning sessions, share the highlights of those sessions in blog posts, in Slideshare presentations, or, if possible, record the session and share the video on your blog.
How do you think your industry will change in the upcoming year? Do you think new, emerging technology will help or hurt your employees? What makes your company different from your competitors?
If you have a strong opinion that runs counter to the mainstream, sharing them could set your content and company apart. Share your experiences, ideas, wisdom, and insights with other industry experts and thought leaders.
What You Should Do: Join a contributor network with blogs and publications within your niche and regularly share your thoughts and ideas about your industry. Similarly, give your readers a transparent view into what it’s like being a founder or a team member at your company, just like our co-founder and chief operations officer Michael Taylor did in this blog post, “Steve Jobs as a Service Doesn’t Exist. Stop Outsourcing Your Genius”.
During their first week on the job, our new analysts and strategists will schedule time with more senior members of the team to get a base understanding of everything that we do and all of the tools we use–from social media ad platforms to productivity management tools.
This is a tremendous strategy for ramping up learning to a sufficient level of competence, but to move closer to mastery of these concepts, we’ve written accompanying blog posts to supplement our curriculum. For instance, Michael Taylor wrote “How Facebook Ads Really Work: Facebook Advertising Demystified” to give new employees a general understanding of how Facebook (and many other ad platforms) work, based off of his own personal experience and countless conversations with account reps and other marketers.
What You Should Do: If there’s a topic within your industry that most beginners misunderstand, write a blog post that will build a framework for them. This can be in the form of a Beginner’s Guide, a post that answers a specific question, or a detailed explanation of a concept or theory.
One of our most successful B2B blog post formats is process posts, where we describe different processes, like hiring new marketers, conducting marketing analysis, and building out an event tracking setup.
For instance, our “How to Test Drive Your Business Idea Before Quitting Your Job” post boosted Ladder’s blog to prominence. The post explored how entrepreneurs can validate an entire business idea from the ground up before they even think of quitting their jobs.
What You Should Do: Write a series of blog posts that explain a common process your company or team does often. You can share how your company runs an SEO audit, how your company interviews potential candidates, or how your company writes content.
Our tactic listicle blog posts were our second most successful B2B blog post format. These posts focus on a subset of tactics that we consider actionable and highly effective in a specific business context, like conversion-oriented landing page tests for business growth and keyword tactics for Google AdWords campaigns.
What You Should Do: Compile a list of actionable tactics your audience can execute that can help them accomplish a specific goal. For instance, if you’re a business-focused food delivery service, you can share 5 specific ways to encourage employees to eat healthier meals.
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