Although there is some overlap in best practices for various blog types, it’s important to keep in mind the differences between business-to-business (B2B) blogs and other formats.
One of the key distinctions is the importance of incoming web traffic. For some blogging sites, such as a media outlet, each impression (or view of a particular page contained on a website) matters. For a B2B site, that’s not necessarily true. In his article “4 Business Blogging Best Practices,” Kipp Bodnar of HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog writes:
While one person may generate 100 impressions in a week for a media site, for a business blog, that same person is only going to account for one lead regardless of how often they view your content.
In regards to your content, you will need to do something that may feel a little antitheticalm, according to a post by EmailDatabase.marketing. In most cases, you don’t want to blog solely about your company and its products or services. In order to create compelling content that draws in new business and keeps your current customers reading, you will want to also blog about your industry in general. Bodnar writes:
[…Y]ou should be writing about industry best practices and answering common customer questions about higher level product issues. This content will not only help increase search traffic but also drive better quality prospects to your business’ website.
Finally, an important guideline for any type of company blog is to establish a clear connection between your blog and your regular website. In addition to clear layout and navigation menus that make it easy for customers to find their way to your company website from any given blog entry, you also want your blog to be part of the same domain for search engine purposes. You should use a subdomain such as http://blog.sixestate.com or a subdirectory such as http://www.sixestate.com/blog where the blogging software is installed on your own server, also known as “self-hosted.” Free sites such as WordPress.com or Blogger.com are good places to get started and find your way, but you will need to go a step further for optimum search-engine benefits.
Source: “4 Business Blogging Best Practices,” HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog, 05/12/10
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