A high-quality B2B technology blog that offers your audience value (‘How-to’ guides, thought leadership, feature updates, etc.) can help you stand out in a highly competitive market.
Along with being high-quality, your content also needs to be consistent. This is especially true in an industry where there are a lot of organisations that are providing similar solutions or selling similar services. One of the best ways of differentiating your organisation from the competition is through inbound marketing excellence. So, whether you are an ISV with your own product or a consultancy specialising in Microsoft solutions, improvements across your inbound marketing and your B2B technology blog will set you apart.
Putting your organisation in the window with an awesome B2B technology blog
Writing blogs about business problems and how they are solved by specific technology and solutions is useful because it allows you to showcase your organisation’s knowledge of your industry and customers. This type of B2B technology blog also showcases you as an expert in your field.
Be laser-focused
In putting together our annual Top 50 report on the best inbound marketing that Microsoft Partners have to offer, we read a wide variety of blog content. From thought leadership to practical guides on updating your systems, we’ve seen the good and the great; what works and what to avoid. With that in mind, we’ve compiled a list of the most important steps we think you should take when drafting a quality, value-driven, tech-focused blog post.
To download our latest report and see which Microsoft Partners produce the best inbound marketing, click here.
Summary: Here’s how to write a B2B technology blog post
- Understand your audience
- Build a structure around problems and solutions
- Research your topic
- Adjust the tone for the medium
- Search Engine Optimisation
- Find the right angle
- Include a call to action
Seven steps to write a great B2B technology blog post
Here’s how to write a B2B technology blog post in seven simple steps.
1. Understand your audience
Writing of any kind is always concerned with its audience. The importance of this is even greater when your subject matter is technology-specific. So, it’s important to ask:
- Who is this blog aimed at? Is this a high-level post that is targeted at decision-makers like the CEO, CFO or CIO? Or will it be targeting a more technical audience, like developers, in which case you can afford to be more esoteric with your language and delve deeper into technical explanations.
- What do you think they hope to get from reading your blog? Are they looking to find a solution to a known issue or bug in a Microsoft solution? Or are they hoping to discover a better solution to a business problem?
Answering these questions will help define how you draft your post.
2. Build structure around problems and solutions
When you are setting out to write a blog about a piece of technology, it is important you remember that age-old writing advice: show don’t tell. A good way of structuring a blog post, no matter how technical the subject matter, is to think of it from a business problem to business solution perspective. This helps you avoid the pitfall of laboriously telling us the features of the tech by instead showing us how it’s useful in a business context.
You might structure your post roughly along the lines of:
- Introduction
- Business problem – perhaps your employees are finding it difficult collaborating
- Show how the technology solves the problem – Office 365 and SharePoint are designed to enhance and speed up collaboration by providing tools for flexible working
- Call to action – find out more about the technology…and how your business adds value
3. Research your topic
If you don’t know what you are writing about it shows. If you don’t have practical experience using the product or aspect of technology you are describing, read as much as possible around the subject, or talk to someone who does.
4. Adjust the tone for the medium
Tone of voice is your brand’s personality expressed in words. So, the tone you use for your blog should reflect the type of language you use in other areas of your marketing and communications. However, your blog is a medium where you can add in a little more personality, than say a press release or a longer piece of content like a whitepaper, which calls for a more formal tone.
So, why not make the most of the opportunity? Encourage your teams to write posts in their own voice. Add a human dimension to corporate communications. But remember to stay on topic and keep your focus in the right direction, i.e. there’s not much point producing content that isn’t related to what you do as an organisation – no matter how ‘fun’ the post is.
5. Search Engine Optimisation
It’s more important than ever that your content is optimised correctly. What’s the point of producing great content if you’re not giving yourself the best chance of it being seen? Appearing on the first page of a Google search is one of the most important ways of being seen. That means finding and using keywords in your blog posts. We recommend coming up with keywords for posts at the same time you come up with blog ideas.
6. Find the right angle
Blog writing is mainly about producing content that is relevant to the product/service you are promoting. It’s important that your posts are not just being produced for the sake of it; there should be a good reason for your latest blog entry. If you’re suffering from writer’s block, you may just need a jumpstart. Here are some boosters to help – just make sure your product or service finds its way in:
- Tell a story about your topic
- Start with a definition
- Write a how-to guide
- Write a beginner’s guide
- Predict the future
- Compare and contrast
- Write a list
7. Include a Call to Action (CTA)
We are all familiar with the final line of a post asking us to ‘find out more’, but you may not have noticed the other smaller calls to action dotted around the post. These include links to other areas of your website or other posts you have written. Include a balanced blend of these smaller calls to action as well as the final one to increase your chances of turning a curious reader into a potential customer.