Blog
February is upon us, and the days are getting longer. If you're hungering for ways to fill your time productively, read on for our 
favorite posts from around the blogosphere.
The Essential Guide to Meta Descriptions that Will Get You Found Online by @bradshorr via @Junta42
If you think meta descriptions are nerdy details left to your Web administrators, think again, B2B marketers. Here's why you need to craft them with care -- and some tips on how to do it.
Sharing Your Way to B2B Social Media Lead Generation by @jeffreylcohen via @MarketingProfs
Here's how you can boost the value of your blog and social media engagement. Plus, Jeffrey unveils a new sharing rule.
Why B2B Marketers Must Address Status Quo by @ardath421
The dangers of assuming your prospects are further along in the buying cycle than they truly are -- and ways to prompt movement.
6 Essential SEO Strategies for Bloggers by @DeniseWakeman
Some basic tips that will get you started on the right path to good SEO.
The Art of Pulling the Trigger: Upselling Done Right by @DannyIny
Think you know what an "upsell" is. Are you sure? This post provides a great overview and a few examples that may spark ideas of your own. Don't leave money on the table.
7 Tips for a Successful PPC Landing Page by @HJSewell
You don't just want the click, you want the conversion. Here are some tips to make sure your landing page is pulling its weight.
10 Content Marketing Goals Worth Pursuing by @soniasimone via @copyblogger
This is powerful stuff - do you know what to do with it? 10 ways content marketing can make a huge impact on your business.
We get a decent amount of Guest Post requests here at Savvy. Early on we thought this was great! The more guest posters the less work for us! Well the joke is on us because managing guest post submissions has become at times more laborious than simply writing the posts! We did all the things the experts suggested. We created Guest Post Guidelines, we created an internal process by which to review and respond to the requests and finally we established an editorial calendar that allowed for one guest post per week on a predictable schedule. We have featured now over 50 Guest Post and many of our submission have been fabulous. The ones that weren’t didn’t ever make it to the blog! How did those who got published differentiate themselves?
Suggestions to would be guest posters
- Read a minimum of 10 posts on the blog you are asking to guest post on. Make sure you fit the tone and topicality of that blog. If not move on. Don’t try to fit a square peg in a round hole!
- Once you are sure you have a topic that will fit in submit the idea to the blog first. You never know one of the regular contributors might be writing about the same subject next week. Before you write a whole article clear it or better yet submit three ideas and let them choose what fits their editorial calendar best.
- If you are proposing to write a series, be prepared to submit all installments before the first one runs.
- Do not ask us to run a thinly veiled advertorial. If there are links in the article they shouldn’t all be to your products and services. You will be given an opportunity in your bio to link to your own products / services but the meet of the article should be spam free!
- Speaking of links if you happen to find a relevant article on our site or on a site from our blog roll when you were doing your background reading it is a good idea to link to it.
- Get it proofread before you submit. Ask your best friend or even your spouse to proofread it. We believe just because it is on the web doesn’t mean grammar and spelling guidelines are optional.
- Do not recycle literally! We are willing to accept a topic you have written elsewhere about but not an entire cut and paste article you have written elsewhere. This is in our guest post guidelines and if you try to pull a fast one over on us it will end up getting your blacklisted.
What happens to guest blogs once they are received?
I can’t say what happens everywhere but I can tell you what happens at both Savvy and DemandCon where I am the Content Director.
- Once a potential guest poster has been identified they are assigned a point of contact within the editorial staff and they work with that person through submission.
- Blind submissions are all reviewed by the same person for consistency.
- A minimum of two people read every guest post and give feedback. We strive for 3 readers and all 6 of us have an opportunity to weigh in but at a minimum 2.
- Based on the feedback and notes the guest poster is often asked to add an example, statistic, supporting factoid to a particular assertion. These suggestions are designed to make your piece and our blog better. If you aren’t willing to accept basic criticism you probably have no business writing for others.
The curtain is up!
Once a guest post is up the work is not done! Here are a few things that happen after the fact.
- We post guest submissions on Monday’s and then we tweet about them on our Savvy_B2B Twitter account as well as our individual Twitter accounts as we can. I am always amazed and how little promotion is often done by the guest poster. If you got published somewhere else tweet about it!!!!
- Watch the comments. It is always great when the author take the time to respond to comments that come in on their own post. The blog editor will keep an eye out but only you can really answer the question the commenter has!
- We allow guest posters to repurpose the post on their own blog as long as they mention in the intro of footer that it originally appeared on Savvy B2B and a link. This is a great way to gain cross promotion but again very few guest posters seem to take advantage of this.
- We run “best of” summary topics over the summer break. Best of Guest Posts gives us a chance to showcase the guest posts that got the most traffic or comments. You want to be in that club!
Think you might want to guest post for Savvy? You can reach us at info@savvyb2bmarketing.com or on Twitter @Savvy_B2B. I promise we won't bite!
Our Savvy friend Mark Schaefer recently reported on his blog, {grow}, about a study done by the Center for Marketing Research that seems to indicate blogging is on the decline with America's fastest growing companies. In today's Savvy Speaks, we give our two cents on how we think blogging is stacking up against other B2B marketing tactics and where it's headed in 2012 and beyond.
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Heather |
Don't stop believing (or blogging) I am very bullish on B2B blogging. I believe it is a critical way to provide prospects with a conversational introduction to your company when they are in research mode. Hubspot's research on the state of inbound marketing has shown that "Blogs remain the most important social media channel". 85% rated their blog as Useful (or higher) in business importance. 46% had acquired a customer through a blog generated lead. I believe the real reason blogging is on the decline is that blogging isn't easy! My post on the Top Ten Rules for Blogging has never been more relevant. There are some steps you can take to make your blog more effective and less painful to implement. Techniques like this very post where we "crowdsource" answers to hot topics requires us not to write a full elaborate post but rather just a paragraph or two. I would argue the information is even more relevant and valuable than a single post by only one of us because you can easily see multiple opinions and approaches. Hang in there. Blogging isn't dying. In fact we are just getting starting to really see from companies the kind of conversational tone and transprancy that actually produces thought leadership. |
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Wendy |
Blog writers are going to be the new black
I think that blogs are going to become more and more important as we all turn to the internet for our news. As a matter of natural selection, however, only those that stay on target and that constantly add value to the reader will survive. The other ones that, for lack of a better word, simply “pose” at being a blog will fall away.
This means that smart companies are going to have to hire blog writers. A well written post can get your company noticed much more than an expensive campaign sometimes can. Like the tech writers of yore, it's the blog writers who are going to understand how to write for the net, inject voice, and how to place the words on the page so that the reader can scan for the information she needs.
A good blog writer will be worth her weight in gold to any company.
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Stephanie |
A Must-Have As Ardath Albee said in a Focus roundtable last week, a blog is non-negotiable. In a world where B2B marketers are relying on prospective buyers to find them online -- and where fresh content ranks high -- a blog is critical to building and maintaining visiblity. Just as with every other bit of content, marketers need to produce blogs that resonate with their prospects and customers. Going forward, I envision more B2B blogs being structured for easy navigation by role and stage in the buying process. |
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Jamie |
Not dead, but evolving Blogging is far from dead. Although it may seem old hat to those of us who've been at it for a while, there is still massive untapped potential in the audiences who have yet to engage with the medium. However, I see blogging evolving at a pretty fast pace. Blogs now have to compete against a wide array of other social media. To be viable and stand out from the crowd, the B2B blog of today and tomorrow is going to have to step it up a notch or two. The same old-same old isn't going to cut it. Companies need to get focused on their strategy, understand the needs of their readers, set realistic goals, and get creative with their content. I think we'll also see more hybrids - combining blogs with other formats like micro-blogging, email, etc. Things will evolve, but as long as there's a hunger for information, blogs will be stickin' around. |
Does your company blog? What are your goals for the blog? Do you think you'll continue blogging through 2012 and beyond?
The folks at Marketing Sherpa and Hubspot have put together a very meaty 54-page eBook on Marketing Wisdom for 2012 - Real Life Stories of Success and Lessons Learned.
If you are tired of all the 2012 trends-to-watch lists that give you soundbites and not enough detail, then this is the eBook for you. These are not flashy trends but actual practical case studies with analysis that you can apply to your business.
Check it out!
In this week's guest post, Bob Scheier illustrates the value of buyer personas. Read on for inspiration!
Like most folks new to content marketing (the use of content to nurture and drive prospects towards a sale) I was eager to dive right in. I wanted to play with the marketing automation software and start blasting out content.
The one thing I didn’t want to do was what every expert recommended: Develop personas (fictional representatives) for each of my target audiences. I thought I knew my prospect base (PR professionals, product managers and chief marketing officers) well enough to come up with content that would fascinate them. Did I really need to invent a fictional name for Mr. Chief Marketing Officer? Did it matter if the PR professional I was writing for was in her late 20s or late 40s, and preferred skiing to shopping in her spare time?
But wanting to get it right, I obediently sat down and started creating my three fictional target customers. And boy, did I get an education.
Learning Curve
The first thing I learned was how little I knew about my customers, at least as it applied to content marketing. I was used to talking to them about specific projects, such as who was the target audience for a white paper, or what corporate messaging they wanted to highlight in a specific bylined article.
What I didn’t understand as well was, for example, how the rise of social media and marketing automation affected a marketing manager’s day to day job. Was it kind of important? Very important? Irrelevant? How did budget pressures, skepticism over its value, or sheer overload from other work affect its adoption?
For my PR audience, I knew the rise of social media, the decline of the trade press and a tough economy put pressure on them to deliver more measurable results. But was content marketing (or marketing at all) a service PR firms were comfortable providing? What obstacles were they encountering, and what skills did they have in-house and what did they need from outsiders?
Research Tools
Fortunately, a few days trolling Twitter and LinkedIn let me eavesdrop on conversations within each group, and even gave me a feel (courtesy of those Twitter profiles that combine business and personal interests) whether each group mountain bikes in their spare time or watches Masterpiece Classic. This time-off information gave me important clues into their age (a proxy for where they are in their careers), their affinity for risk and their tech savviness. That gave me useful clues about what images and analogies to use in my content (“Imagine you’re out of control on a black diamond trail. That’s the way you’ll feel two weeks into your content marketing campaign if you haven’t prioritized your goals…”)
On a more substantive level, a LinkedIn conversation taught me, for example, how overwhelmed chief marketing officers are with multiple responsibilities, and their needs to weigh social media into other marketing/advertising channels such as direct mail. That told me I needed to create some content around such integration to help me reach CMO types. And interviewing a PR friend gave me some quick insights on building content marketing in traditional PR practices.
Talk to People, Not Groups
Finally, thinking of a specific (even if fictional) person with a name, face and personality kept me away from just repeating general observations and trends to making specific recommendations in a way that would hold their interest. I suspect that’s because it’s easier to care more about the reaction of a real person than a vague group, and makes us work harder for their approval.
Summing up, creating personas forced me to:
More precisely define who is, and isn’t my target audience, and why.
Learn enough about their needs to provide them useful information, and
Skip the platitudes and tell each of them new and useful things they haven’t heard before.
All of which helps assure the rest of the hard work I’m doing (creating content, lead flows and scoring rules, and analyzing the results) won’t go to waste.
About the author: Robert L. Scheier is a veteran IT journalist and independent marketing writer. You can follow him on Twitter: @BobScheier.
