We used top business drivers to define the initial strategy, offered ideas for generating topic ideas and demonstrated how to translate those ideas into action.
There are, of course, countless strategies that could effectively anchor your B2B blog plan.
Let’s explore several alternatives, and see how these might shape your approach:
Theme-based. Focus on one over-arching theme for the entire three-month period. Let’s say you decide to highlight hot trends in the industry or new products and services. Keep the product/service ratio in place and simply shift all blog topics to emphasize what’s hot/new.
Customer-based. Focus solely on customer issues and frequently asked questions. Devote each blog article to a new issue and let customer concerns drive the content and product/service mix.
SEO-based. Focus on topics that connect directly to the most popular search terms customers and prospects use to find you online. To do this, you must have a good feel for the keywords and phrases they use. With that data in hand, simply design a content-rich series related to those terms.
Solution-based. Focus on common problems customers experience and provide one or several solutions to the problem. This approach offers the advantage that every post will have a similar basic structure, so you can concentrate on the content.
Success Story-based. Focus on highlighting a series of success stories related to your products and services. Describe how you've helped real customers solve real problems and improve business results. This approach could be relatively easy to implement, if you have a collection of success stories in your marketing portfolio.Expand your options by adopting a mix-and-match approach.
For example, combine any one of the alternatives above with your defined product and service priorities. Or, focus on revenue drivers in Phase 1, then use one of the alternatives to anchor Phase 2, another for Phase 3, and so on. You could also combine two alternatives, such as customer-centered issues and a unifying theme, and use that combination to generate a host of ideas for blog posts.
Any of these strategies will help you map an effective B2B blog plan and ensure you have more than enough business-related topics to take action and keep your blog dynamic and relevant for years to come.
Don't be afraid to experiment and branch into new territory. At the same time, don't lose sight of your central objective, which is to use your B2B blog to market, promote and grow your business.
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