If you’re a small business with an even smaller marketing resource, the thought of planning and implementing a content marketing plan might seem overwhelming.

You know you should be writing blogs, but you don’t know where to start. 

This short blog will guide you through the process of writing blogs for your business website and introduce you to the B2B Blogging for Beginners Template that will save you time when it comes to that dreaded blank page.

The key steps in writing effective blogs for a B2B website are:

• Know your audience
• Find the right topic
• Plan your blog
• Share your content 

Grab a pen and paper, or download this handy guide, and let’s get started! 

1. Know your audience 

Who is your audience?

This easy, precursory step is small but mighty, and you have likely already done it.

Look at your buyer personas, so you have a picture of who you’re writing the content for at the front of your mind before you even begin to think about putting the proverbial pen to paper. 

There’s a matrix at the beginning of the B2B Blogging for Beginners Template for you to fill in, so you can easily refer to this information when you move on to the next step.

2. Find the right topic

Now you know your audience, think about what it is they really want to know. What problems do they have? How does your business solve them?

A good place to start when thinking about blog titles is by mulling over the commonly asked questions your sales teams get about the products or services you provide. 

Is everyone always asking what the benefits are of choosing one machine over another?

Do people always want to know how much a certain product or service is? (If this is the case, I recommend you watch this video and consider whether you should display your prices on your website).

Make a list of these, and plumb a few of the options into your search engine. See if there are any other articles covering the topic, and have a look at the suggested searches for even more ideas. 

To take this one step further, you can use a keyword planner tool like SEMRush or Ahrefs. For more information on keyword research, read our blog: ‘How to Do Keyword Research and Optimise Your Blogs’.

3. Plan your blog 

Now you have a title, you can start to think about how you would answer the question. The basic structure of a good blog should look like this:

• Introduction
• Main points
• Conclusion and Calls to action

Beginning, middle, and end - it really is as simple as that! Let’s look in a bit more detail.

Introduction

When I write a blog, I like to come back to the introduction at the end, but keep in mind you will want to include one. Make sure your introduction clearly sets out what the blog is about, and give the reader the answer to the question if you can, before explaining it in further detail throughout the rest of your blog. 

Main points 

Use subheadings to set out your main points. This is good for two reasons:

• If you use subheadings in your blogs, it makes the reading experience easier and clearer for your audience to follow. 
• Subheadings are also useful for SEO purposes. If you include keywords in your subheadings, it can help to improve the ranking of your blog on search engines. 

In our B2B Blogging for Beginners Template, you have space for three subheadings and a space to expand on them. You can always include more, but for the average blogs we recommend between a length of between 300-500 words. 

Conclusion 

Your conclusion should summarise your blog in a few short sentences, and this is also a great place to include any calls to actions you would like the reader to take.

Perhaps the blog links nicely with a product, and you can link the reader to that product page on your website so they can see more information.

Or maybe, if it’s a blog about pricing, for example, you might assume the readers have a higher intent to consider a purchase, and they could be ready to speak to a salesperson. In this case, you can link to the contact page for your sales team.

If you have been using the B2B Blogging For Beginners Template to keep track of these steps, you now have a complete skeleton draft of your blog. 

Copy this information into a word processor so you can fill it out, and get it checked over by another colleague for spelling and grammar before publishing it on your website. 

4. Share your content 

You wouldn't write a book and not tell anyone! When the blog is published online, you need to incorporate it into your social media strategy. 

Firstly, create 3-5 Linkedin posts to share the blog, and schedule them to be posted from your company page and the profiles of the key people in your business. You could even incorporate it into a lead-generating paid campaign on social media! 

Another simple way to use your new content is to share the links to the blog with the sales team, so they can use it when communicating with clients. 

Our B2B Blogging for Beginners Template provides you with a checklist so you know when your blog has been distributed, either online or with clients through the sales team. 

Let’s review the key steps to getting started with writing blogs for your business website:

1. Know your audience
2. Find the right topic
3. Plan your blog
4. Share your content 

Download the B2B Blogging for Beginners Template here. 

Happy blogging!