It’s official. I no longer need to explain to B2B
marketers why a blog is an absolute must have. If you’re a B2B marketer then chances are good you can already recite the many reasons why a blog makes sense: SEO, content marketing, fuel for social media, tajikistan cell phone database etc. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Hubspot and the Content Marketing Institute, I can eliminate “blog evangelist” from my job requirements.So all is good in the land of B2B blogging, right? Far from it. Beyond the typical questions I get (e.g., what to write about and how often to post) a larger question is emerging:
How do we generate more traffic for our company blog?
In the past week alone I heard from three senior marketers about how their teams are consistently kicking out quality posts but blog visitors are few and far between.
What makes the question of blog traffic so insidious is that smart B2B marketers are asking it — those who have done the basics: hired writers, gotten organizational support, built editorial calendars, started penning posts with the reader in mind (okay, this one remains a struggle) and placing relevant call-to-actions in each post.
Why is this question such a big deal? Because
no visitors means no readers, which means no one clicking those call-to-action links. Say goodbye to the promise of lead flow. Pretty quickly the result will be that (already limited) blog resources are siphoned off to support trade shows or the next marketing initiative that comes along.
What’s the answer to generating more blog visits?
Writing more posts seems to be the new clarion call (with the disclaimer that it still needs to be quality content) since you can only break through the tsunami of content your prospects are drowning in by pouring on more of your own, right? While there’s some truth to this, not all companies have the budget to hire dedicated content creation teams like the folks at Salesforce, Marketo and Hubspot.
What’s a content marketer to do? Here are 11 ways that companies of any size can use to drive much more traffic to their blog.