We’ve been preaching the virtues of a corporate blog for B2Bs for over 3 years now …as recently as early last month, pointing out the beneficial effect of a blog on your primary website’s search engine results page rankings.
Those of you who saw the light, got on board early and now have a company blog running may have noticed some of the effects described by Sean Donahue, posting on the SherpaBlog. Though not formal Sherpa research, Sean of course speaks frequently with many B2B marketers, and recently was surprised to hear from those with established blogs that their blogs were now outpacing their company homepages for such key metrics as:
- Total visits
- Time spent on site
- Number of pages viewed
Sean’s post goes into some detail on the experiences of email service provider Delivra, whose Marketing Director – Carissa Newton – shared these statistics…
- They’re now seeing 4 times more blog traffic than website traffic.
- Visitors are staying 3-4 times longer to read blog content, plus website links included in those blogposts.
In fact, Delivra has jumped more than 20 pages in Google search results for key phrases such as “email marketing” since starting its concerted blogging and social media effort. And since last October, the team has seen a 70% increase in inbound leads.
Carissa outlined three secrets to the success of Delivra’s blog:
#1. Recruit multiple bloggers
Rather than rely on one overloaded individual, Delivra uses a team of 9 or10 people in the company (plus outside guest bloggers …including customers), each of whom is committed to doing a post on some regular interval. Aside from assuring a sufficient flow of posts, this approach also increases the blog’s breadth and depth of expertise, making it attractive to a larger audience.
#2. Enforce regular posting
By now, we all know that spotty, catch-as-catch-can posting is the kiss of death for a corporate blog. Carissa avoided this trap by getting Delivra’s CEO on board, who mandated that the blog be posted five times a week …and has also led by example by contributing a post himself each Monday!
#3. Share metrics and reward success
Carissa also uses carrots to supplement the stick. Early on, she ran contests to recognize the blogger whose post was shared the most, and used gift-card rewards for the most successful posts. Now, it’s enough to share the metrics resulting from the team’s efforts, showing the rest of the company how important their contributions are.
We’ll close this with a couple of nuggets from the 20+ comments to Sean’s post…
Our customer – HealthCorp Solutions – has maintained a Tuesday/Thursday schedule for several months now, and has been able to track organic traffic spikes from search engines on a predictable time delay. – EnClave Social Media
Our agency, TopRank Marketing, was virtually unknown until we started blogging. Now we get new project inquiries, speaking engagements, press mentions, job inquiries and even advertising requests just about every day. – Lee Odden
September 2nd, 2010
Posted by: Bill Gadless
When B2B marketers decide to take the plunge into social media – and hopefully after first establishing their company’s blog – they usually begin with the Big 3 of LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, since those three do typically account for most of the action for B2Bs.
But life doesn’t end there, Megan Leap reminds us in a recent post on MarketingProfs’ Daily Fix. In particular, she points out three social networks that are frequently overlooked …but shouldn’t be:
SlideShare is a great way to disseminate the benefits of your solution in presentation format. You can embed them in a blogpost or article, or upload them as is. You can use some of the presentations you have on hand, or create new ones that you think will best fit the network’s conventions.
StumbleUpon – We’ve pointed this one out in past posts as perhaps the best social network you’re not using. While you can Stumble (vote) your own content in, it’s best if your readers do that for you; so be sure to have StumbleUpon buttons on your blogposts and other content you think Stumble-worthy. Megan reports that she’s “had the most success (literally thousands of visits a week!) on StumbleUpon with comprehensive, top-10 lists.”
YouTube – We all know the importance of video in B2B marketing, for product demos and pseudo-lifelike presentations. But if you simply upload these to YouTube, you’ll be underutilizing this social medium. Better to create videos that help personalize the company while reinforcing its thought leadership… such as interviews with key execs on timely industry topics, or with the development team on how your development/release cycle works to benefit customers. YouTube users actually expect user-generated content, so your videos don’t have to be expensive, big-budget productions …in fact, it’s usually better if they aren’t.
So yes, Virginia… there is life after the Big 3; give these three a try for starters, and see if they don’t benefit your B2B.
August 31st, 2010
Posted by: Bill Gadless
Just around 3 years ago, the major search engines began to incorporate
material other than straight-text Web pages in their results listings,
in pursuit of a nirvana they dubbed “universal search.” Today, you’ll
see anything from video, images, and maps to news, podcasts, books,
products and user reviews popping up in search results.
Previously, we’ve urged our B2B readers to supplement their textual
content with video and images …although we came at it mainly from the
perspective of what will best engage and educate your human visitors.
The old adage says a picture is worth a thousand words …and it’s
definitely more interesting; many moving pictures (as in video), even more so.
But with the advent of universal search, there’s now another equally
compelling reason to deploy such richer media: they can help you
greatly increase the chances of your page(s) being found by prospects
via the search engines. Posting on ClickZ, Crispin Sheridan (Senior
Director of Search Marketing for SAP) points out two reasons why…
Multiple Rankings.
Currently, any one domain is able to rank for only two URLs on any
given search query. But universal search optimization grants you the
potential to greatly expand on that limit. By using the social media
platforms now included in universal search, companies can show up
multiple times in a given search …thereby becoming more visible in
the results pages, thus improving brand recognition and online
visibility. Think of it as increasing your “shelf space” …or owning
more properties on Park Place.
Cross-Linking.
Once you’ve placed content on third-party sites, you can focus on
cross-linking that content back to your main branded site. Adding
links on those third-party sites which point to relevant pages on your
main domain can provide you with…
- additional sources of referred traffic
- inbound links from trusted or reputable domains, which of course the engines will notice in due course and reward you with higher pagerank
It’s really another one of those cases of, what’s not to love?
You may be thinking, “probably this is one of those gimmicks mainly
designed for B2Cs” …but au contraire: it’s equally available to –
and effective for – B2Bs as well. Now, there’s no question that our
SMB B2B clients usually have the hardest time getting plain text
content together for their websites; so things like video, podcasts,
images, etc., may feel a bit out of reach. But in fact, these days
those once-exotic content types no longer require rocket science to
deploy. And if you are an SMB B2B who happens to have your text
content pretty well together …well, this next logical step makes a
really great way to steal a march on your competitors!
August 26th, 2010
Posted by: Matt Roche
We’re sometimes asked by clients considering a plunge into social media whether those media can be integrated into their existing online marketing vehicles …usually search, display ads and email.
Here’s a nice post on iMedia Connection from Bill Flitter, who not only answers with a resounding “Yes!”, but cites several ways to do it… (more…)
August 24th, 2010
Posted by: Bill Gadless
Those B2Bs holding out on social media in the belief that it’s too cumbersome and time-consuming may soon be running out of excuses. The social networks themselves are becoming ever more business-friendly, and a plethora of tools is springing up to streamline the usage and management of social-media programs. We’ve posted several samplings of such tools, the most recent just a few weeks back.
So it was good to come across a review of 14-odd such tools that Adam Holden-Bache posted on Social Media B2B. We thought we’d just pull out and list here the subset of Adam’s list that are available free (at least for now)… (more…)
August 19th, 2010
Posted by: Bill Gadless
Most of us marketers feel like we’re pretty much on top of things …most of the time. So this survey result (of 231 B2B marketers …significantly large) may seem astounding:
- 44% said that if asked by their C-suite, they would have no idea of the impact on profit of a 10% increase in their budget
- only 32% said such an increase would improve profits by at least 10%
This result and more come from (more…)
August 17th, 2010
Posted by: Bill Gadless
Sadly, there are a number of shady practitioners out there who will attempt to take your good money by promising virtually impossible-to-achieve results from search engine optimization (SEO). Worse, they would lead you to believe that their magical methods will succeed with virtually no effort on your part, as a B2B client firm.
Folks, I’ve been at this for roughly a decade now, in both B2C and B2B environments and on both client and agency sides …which I think qualifies me to tell you “it ain’t necessarily so”; and in fact, it necessarily ain’t so. The fact is that while SEO can surely bring substantial benefit to your B2B’s online marketing program, its capabilities are not unlimited; and the process will require significant effort on your part (although some of that may be outsource-able).
Based on that extensive experience, then, here are my top 10 SEO “harsh realities”: (more…)
August 12th, 2010
Posted by: Matt Roche
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