Your expertise is a powerful gift that deserves to be shared. In part three of our ten-part series on building a digital foundation to grow your business, we discuss the benefits of leveraging your product or service knowledge and experience as part of your marketing plan.
If you have missed parts one and two of B2B Success in a Digital World, Part one explains what information you should have on your website and Part two communicates the significance of email marketing to stay connected with customers and make sure you remain visible and accessible.
This article will bridge the first two articles by contributing the essential content. In addition to supplying content to website blog and emails, sharing your expertise provides a variety of other benefits as well.
The Benefits of Sharing Your Expertise
Building trust
Engaging your audience is fundamental to digital marketing success. A blog on your website provides the opportunity to connect with potential and existing customers in an informal setting while providing useful content and building brand awareness. A website alone doesn’t always offer enough information, personality, or authority to stand out from the competition and a blog can help you take the spotlight. It also allows you to build trust by answering pertinent questions and offering solutions to problems.
Establishing a Reputation as an Authority
Making your expertise available promotes trust but it also highlights you as an authority. As an industry expert, your insight on topics in your industry can influence your audience’s opinions and decisions. You become a resource for information and insights into your area of specialization.
Ranking on Search
Posting relevant content to your website blog is an incredibly useful tool to increase organic traffic to your website and to your services. Combined with an SEO strategy (that we’ll get into in a future article), your content will give Google and other search engines a reason to crawl your website and index new content.
Where to Promote Your Expertise
There are many ways that you can promote each blog post. This is not meant to be an exhaustive checklist but instead these are just menu of ideas you can try to determine which work best for you.
Email marketing is one of the best ways to start driving traffic to your blog. Ask your customers and subscribers to like, comment and share your content with their connections.
Sharing your expertise on social media by linking a brief and compelling message and corresponding image to your latest post. Your social strategy should be more than just posts from your blog and we’ll dive deeper into this topic in a later article.
Promote your blog as a main menu option and invite visitors to explore your blog in other areas of your website such as your home page, contact us page, and in the footer. Be sure to encourage readers to subscribe to receive emails of new posts.
Widen your sphere of influence by submitting your content as articles to industry publications and or local associations. Partner with clients or vendors to create guest blog posts that link back to your website as the author.
Keep in mind that it will take some time for your blog to get traction. The key is to create useful content and promote it consistently.
How Your Expertise Should Look
What to call your website blog. It can simply be called “Blog”, or simple titles such as library, articles, tools, news and resources or something else that let’s your audience know there’s something there to help or entertain them.
Set up your blog post (news and resources) like a library. Use keywords tags for searching. Organize your content into topics or problems that are important to your audience. Content by date, most recent to oldest, may not necessarily be the best structure for your audience. It depends on the industry and type of information you are offering.
Make your content easy to consume by making your posts scannable. Give readers markers that cause them to pause by highlighting key points color subheadings, bolded words or sentences and bulleted lists. And use plenty of white space.
Use images, videos, illustrations or other visuals related to your content. Studies show that people remember 80% what they see and only 20% what they read. When it comes to web pages, graphic content will help to capture the visitor’s attention, increase their time on your site and improve SEO.
Types of Content (What Else to Talk About)
Beyond sharing your expertise, your blog is an excellent way to showcase how your company helps customers solve problems, introduce new products or services, or give your readers a peek behind the scenes.
Case Studies
Case studies are a fantastic and entertaining way to highlight your success and provide actual examples of how your company delivers results. They help you show your prospective customers how you can help them achieve their goals.
Original Research
Conducting and publishing your own research is effective because it sets you apart with exclusive content that your audience will want to consume, they are more likely to share and link to these as resources and it helps to position you as an industry thought leader. What questions do your potential or existing customers have that can be answered using data.
Company and Industry Insight
Share the latest and greatest news from your company or industry. Introduce a new product or service offering with the benefits and details. Share your thoughts on industry news that may be affecting your customers or target audience. Write about a past or upcoming party, conference, educational experience or fundraising event whether virtual or someday once again in-person.
Interviews
Contact industry leaders to interview them about their thoughts on the future of the industry. Reach out to suppliers and ask them to answer questions about the latest products and technology. Approach some customers or clients to talk about the positive experience they had working with your company. Interview your CEO on leadership, values, business tips, industry trends, or communication. Make your interviews available in the media format, or multiple formats, that are most appealing to your target audience whether video, audio, or written text.
Company Culture
Give readers a peek into your company culture with behind-the-scenes video footage or quick snapshots of people hard at work, being silly or sharing a message. Highlight employees and recognize their anniversaries, accomplishments, achievements, and contributions to your company or the community.
Routinely publishing useful content on your website is an extremely effective way to build trust and showcase your expertise.
Whether industry insight, company news, or case studies, your content provides value to your audience, positions you as a thought leader, and contributes to search engine rankings.
What are your company’s top marketing challenges? Contact us for a free consultation.
