As you build out the editorial calendar for your B2B blogging and content marketing strategy, it’s important to understand who your target audience is and what they want to read. It’s also critical to understand what they don’t want to read. It’s a waste of time to create content that your prospects and clients aren’t interested in or, worse yet, really dislike reading.
Get 10 great ideas for your next blog.
Now, we don’t think that companies purposely put out content that their audience hates, we believe it’s just a misunderstanding of needs/wants. While the content needs of audiences vary from industry to industry, there are several B2B blog types that are universally disliked and should be avoided at all costs. These are the types of blog posts your company should avoid creating:
Advertorials
Have you ever started reading an article or a blog post that has a promising topic and introduction only to realize mid-way through that it’s selling you something? It’s monumentally frustrating and often will leave a bad taste in your mouth. This is how advertorials often make readers feel.
The goal of blogging as part of a B2B content marketing strategy is to provide value. Notice that we didn’t say “sell products or services.” Creating an article that is subtly, or not so subtly, selling something doesn’t provide value. Stay away from creating advertorials that have a salesy angle and only discuss your firm’s products or services.
Learn how a blog fits into your B2B web design strategy.
Keyword Stuffed Articles
Ugh. Just ugh. Whether you are skilled at search engine optimization (SEO) or not, you’ve likely come across a blog post that is just stuffed to the max with a keyword or keywords. It’s so obvious since every other sentence has that keyword. It makes it tough to concentrate on the central theme of the post.
SEO is not an end in itself. It’s a means to an end, to get your B2B blog in front of the right audience. However, it shouldn’t turn them off as soon as they get to your blog. Avoid creating blog posts that are jam-packed with keywords. Instead, focus on two or three keywords and let them naturally appear in the blog post. Successful content marketing is one that the target audience doesn’t even know is content marketing.
Out of ideas? Here are 3 surprising spots for blog topic inspiration.
Pointless Puff Pieces
Blah, blah, blah. You’ve likely been to a party, wedding, or social gathering where you got stuck next to the person who just talks about themselves and all the great things they have done. What a bore. Don’t let your B2B blogging efforts fall into that boring, puff piece place.
The best way to avoid creating drab puff pieces is to step back and ask what the audience gets out of the blog post.
- Is there an actionable takeaway?
- Do they know have the skill or knowledge to do something?
- Did you give them tips to save them time or money?
If the answer is no, then it’s likely a puff piece that talks all about your company and doesn’t provide your prospects and clients with anything of value.
Find out what blog topics your prospects want to see.
Features of Products/Services
Your B2B web design should have a section that focuses on the features of your products or services. This should not be the blog section of your website. While it is important to share new innovations in your products or services, never focus on the features alone. Features are worthless. The only time features have any value is when they are discussed in conjunction with the benefits to the end user.
Get tips to create articles your audience can’t resist.
Stay away from writing blog posts that focus solely on the features of your products or services. Yes, it may have taken your engineering team months to roll out a new feature for your software application, but your prospects and clients don’t care about that. What they care about it how it helps them. Instead, draft a blog that briefly discusses the new feature but instead focuses on the benefits to the end user and includes a use case, preferably with great results.
Takeaway
The takeaway here is that you want to ensure that any B2B blogging your content marketing team does provides value for the end user, whether it’s something that saves them time, shows them how to do something, or helps them save money. Always focus on what’s in it for the end user.
