You’ve decided you need an English B2B blog and you’ve already decided on your target audience and your content strategy. Now it’s on to the next stage. How do you find readers for your English B2B Blog? Here are some things to consider.
Sharing your B2B Blog
How are you going to share your B2B blog? There’s no point in writing an excellent blog, with all that fascinating and helpful content, and then no one reading it.
As with so many marketing topics, you want to start with your target audience. Where are you likely to find them?
Your blog software might offer readers an option to sign up to receive updates when you post a new blog. Or you might rely on marketing automation software such as Mailchimp, Hubspot. If you use a CRM system, such as Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics 365, then look for one that will work with that system. That gives you the advantage of being able to monitor and track leads from your blog.
Perhaps you don’t want to email out every blog post, but prefer to add them to a regular newsletter. Or you allow readers to subscribe to both the blog and to a newsletter. One great advantage of a newsletter is that you can deliver content to specific target audiences.
You can set up a German list and an English one. Depending on the industry, you may want to send an English newsletter to German clients but you obviously can’t send German newsletters to your international clients or prospects who don’t speak German.
Don’t forget that some customers may be in regions that don’t celebrate the German public holidays, such as Easter and Christmas. An ‚end of year‘ newsletter may be better received than a ‚Merry Christmas‘ one.
Sharing your B2B blog via Social Media
Do you already have a Social Media presence, or will your new content marketing strategy include building or boosting one? Social Media is a great way to find readers for your B2B blog in English.
You are getting bored of me saying it by now, but TARGET AUDIENCE! Think about your target audience and the Social Media channels they are likely to use.
The most useful sites are likely to be LinkedIn and Xing. While Xing is generally only useful for the DACH market, there are good reasons to be present on both Xing and LinkedIn.
Pinterest and Instagram are very visual mediums and particularly popular in the fashion and creative industries, though generally more for B2B than B2C.
Twitter is an excellent networking tool that can be used to connect to possible customers and to others in your industry. If you attend a lot of international trade fairs then it is an absolute must.
Are there other social media channels that are popular in your target countries that perhaps aren’t even relevant in the US or the UK market?
Don’t feel you have to be on every channel. It’s better to do one or two channels well than do six channels badly.
Ensure that your team can respond promptly to any questions or comments from potential or current customers. Someone needs to be checking the incoming comments several times a day. If you have a lot of engagement (which is the goal!), then you should have someone monitoring constantly.
There is a vast range of tools to help you schedule, monitor and respond on Social Media, such as Hootsuite or Buffer. If you can, look for one that will slot into your current CRM or Marketing software.
Before you start posting online, you should have a Crisis Social Media plan in place, to think about how to respond should a post go viral for the wrong reasons.
How often should you post your blog?
If you announce a posting schedule, then you’ll want to try and stick to it. Can you do this, even during stressful times and the holiday season? Consider starting with a monthly blog post, then increasing frequency once you have a better idea of how much time you’ll spend on content creation.
You don’t have to post daily or even weekly, but you should aim to post at least twice a month. If you have busier times of the year in marketing, such as around trade fairs and events, then think about scheduling the content creation in quieter months.
Always try to work at least two weeks in advance, i.e. write the posts that you will share in December in November. That gives you enough time to find images and create the corresponding Social Media posts.
If you are targeting markets in various timezones, make sure you take that into account when scheduling your communication. Are you publishing content that will go out to subscribers in the middle of the night? Early morning delivery might work in your favour if your prospects and customers like to read the blog in the morning, during their breakfast or their commute.
Don’t be afraid to experiment
When you are trying to find readers for your B2B blog in English, don’t worry about making mistakes. You can research all you like but only trying out different strategies will help you find out what works best for your company. AB testing is your friend here. Try different versions and compare which worked best.
Weekly or twice-monthly posts? Which length of blog post, and which medium works best for your target audience? Are infographics popular or videos? Do your readers want to find out more technical details about your product, or do they want to hear how the product will benefit their company?
When is the best time to publish your content? Are your subscribers more likely to click on a Monday or a Wednesday?
There is no right way or wrong way to do this (despite all the good advice you’ll read on blogs such as mine!). There’s just the way that works best for your company and your target audience. Always keep your ideal customer in mind. Ensure that the information you share answers the questions they have before they even think to ask them. Work at providing unique content that makes you stand out amongst your competitors.
Give your potential customers a good reason to pick up the phone and call YOU.
Need some help with translation or copywriting on your English B2B blog? Give me a quick call or send me an email. I can’t wait to work with you.
Featured Image by Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
