Why do smart B2B companies outsource their B2B Content Marketing and web development?
Because they want to focus on their core business! Hiring, accounting, marketing and product/service development, don’t leave you much time to breathe, let alone manage your web content.
B2B content marketing is a long game
For B2B Content Marketing to be effective in any kind of reasonable timeline, you should plan for at least one new content piece a week (blog post, animation, video, infographics, survey, etc.), but researching and preparing content about your industry requires several dedicated hours, even if it’s only written material you’re producing and not video.
SEO is a long term game that requires persistence and realistically the time investment required before any kind of results are reached is in the range of hundreds of man-hours (…and we’re not even including the learning curve involved in coming up with half-decent blog posts in the first place…)
Alternatively, you can consider opting to pay for Google Adwords or Microsoft’s pay-per-click ads to grant your business exposure at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs), however, regardless of whatever keywords you’re bidding for, the coveted top spots invariably become more expensive over time due to the auction mechanism at the basis of PPC systems. The conclusion is that over the long run, SEO is the only strategy that can help you gain the first page Google exposure at a sustainable budget, but as mentioned previously the name of game is consistency and dedication.
So what’s actually involved in creating a blog post for SEO purposes?
Determining Keywords and Writing for the Web
The first thing you’ve got to do when blogging for SEO is to determine the most important keywords for your industry. These keywords should end up in the content, title, tags, and meta-description of your blog posts. The industry standard for keyword research is probably Google’s Keyword Tool, which enables you to glean data regarding your industry and keywords. The type of data you can research with it includes for example how often people search for a particular word or phrase, and what level of competition exists for it. You can filter results according to language and location, to discover opportunities specific to your locale.
The Keyword Tool is presently being replaced by Google’s new Keyword Planner, which enables you to list the most popular search terms for your niche and filter results by language and by location. The Keyword Planner is designed to enable online marketeers to more accurately gauge their online marketing budget requirements.
Leverage Images and Video for SEO
Images and videos are compelling web content serving multiple purposes. Beyond their obvious aesthetic value as an enhancement to your posts, you can use them to personalize your brand, whet customers’ appetites, and clarify messaging. It’s important to remember that regardless of your intentions if you want to avoid costly copyright litigation you must avoid using images that you haven’t got a license for. This will require you to either shoot your own (professional) photographs, purchase and use stock photography, or use photos with Creative Commons licenses.
More to Come…
The above pointers are really just a taster of the work involved in merely researching a blog topic properly. In the months to come we’ll occasionally follow up on this post with more on researching, authoring and publishing blog content for those of you who want to give it a shot, but if you’re already sensing that this might be a task you prefer outsourcing to experienced professionals we’re of course happy to meet you and learn about your online marketing and blogging goals. Contact us today to get started with your B2B Content Marketing.
