Many B2B company owners and leaders ask us to share one “social media” activity that they can use to encourage traffic to their websites and more interest from their target market. Our answer is usually the same; write interesting and helpful articles, place them on your website and share the articles with your social networks and opted-in email lists. Although not necessarily easy, this one activity can bring interested and engaged visitors to your website on a regular basis as well as help you focus on your target market.
Article writing can be a marketing gift that keeps on giving for the following reasons:
1. Article writing forces you to listen and find out what information might appeal to your target market. In order to plan out a series of articles, you might, for instance, ask your salespeople and customer service staff about the common questions and concerns they hear from prospects and customers. Sharing thoughtful content and listening to what your target market finds interesting and useful is at the heart of good social media. If people like what you post, they’ll be more likely to remember you when they need your products and services. And if you’re always thinking about what THEY like, well, so much the better.
2. If you place your articles on your website, people can access them at any time, even months (or years) after they were published. And if you give your articles interesting titles and add relevant, meaningful keywords to the content, your articles may be found when your prospects do a Google search on the topic. We have many articles on our own website that are listed on the first page of Google for certain phrases and keywords. The same can be said for our clients who take the time to write and publish articles (or have the articles written for them). Even small businesses can, and do, build significant traffic to their websites using this tactic.
Adding a WordPress blog (an excellent place to post your articles) with a subscription option to your existing website is not usually a huge undertaking; most web developers can do this for a fairly small fee.
3. Article writing allows you to showcase your expertise and the core values of your company. You may get a few visitors to your “About Us” page every now and then, but those pages on most websites are usually pretty dry and static. Adding periodic articles to your site, however, allows you to become the “go-to” expert for your target market. Occasionally, you can also use the opportunity to talk about what’s happening in your company, such as your involvement with a non-profit organization or a successful project. It’s surprising how many people will subscribe to your articles if you provide them with relevant and meaningful information. And the beauty of it is, if you build into your website the tools to allow readers to share your articles with THEIR networks, many people will.
If you have a B2B company and you’ve been struggling with what to share in social media, start writing or get someone to write for you. You’ll start to see results after just a few articles, and you’ll keep on reaping the benefits.