What is a blog?

A blog is some kind of journal that’s available on the internet. It might be a personal blog which tells the opinion of an individual, but the most interesting weblogs are the ones which are set up around a certain topic. Most of the time, these themed blogs gather lots of people with the same interest, so nice discussions will occur.

For most companies, blogging is also a interesting opportunity. What do you think of the following situations:

• You start blogging about all the aspects of your industry. People involved in your business comment and very insightful discussions arise. Because you look like the most open company in business, your HRM department doesn’t find difficulties finding new staff because everyone wants to work at your place.
• You have loads of small stakeholders. These people don’t want to read your official annual report because it’s way too heavy. How can you interact with these important persons in a light-hearted way? Why don’t you start a blog and write in a casual way about all yo’re doing right now?

Why do you have to blog as a B2B company?

These are just a few possible advantages of blogging about your company or industry. But there a few more reasons why especially B2B companies should think seriously about blogging. B2B companies often live in high-tech markets where knowledge is power. For clients, it’s very difficult to distinguish all the B2B companies that are able to help them. Because of this, and because of the high costs that are typically involved in a purchase, confidence is more important than ever. Within a blog, you can show the clients your knowledge, build interesting cases, explain about the innovative things you are right now etc.

Markets are conversations

In 1999, four guys wrote a book which they named The Cluetrain Manifesto. They wrote about how the internet changed the way in which people interact with businesses. Within 95 thesis

, they described their vision about commerce on the internet, which was embraced by hundreds of thousands of marketers. One of the thesis consists of only three words but it’s an extract for everything that can be said about commerce:

Markets are conversations

The new stuff is placed in another thesis:

The internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.

Why you have to consider blogging?

The truth behind this thesis has many consequences. It may be that your stakeholders are talking to each other somewhere on a forum. Or it may be that one of your prospects is searching for your name and finds some negative comments on a blog. Communication between large crowds became easier through the internet. A lot of people are talking about your company and, unless you pay close attention, you’re not invited. Your reputation is at stake and you’re not even aware of it. Why don’t you start a conversation about your company at your own site?

There’s another, more positively tuned reason to start blogging. If it’s true that markets are conversations (and yeah, it’s true), you could start that conversation yourselves. Ask your clients what they’re missing within your products. Give answers to frequently asked questions. Show you really are interested in your clients and are doing everything to help them well.

So, why do you have to start a blog?

Let’s summarize all the above and name reasons why your company should start blogging:

• Make yourself known as a knowledge partner.
• Listen to complaints and ideas of your clients.
• Show yourself as the perfect employer.
• Test new ideas and ask for feedback.
• Strengthen your positions in search engines.

Determining your targets

It’s too easy to walk after every hype. Blogging takes real time and therefore, you must define measurable goals. Without these goals, you don’t know whether all the investments are wasted, because there is no way to decide if the project was successful afterwards. The number of goals that can be set are infinite, so let’s name a few.

Brand engagement

Blogging is a great way to extend your brand. Nobody knew SEOMoz if it wasn’t for their blog. And even customer initiatives like The Apple Blog strengthens your brand. Within an engagement blog, you can show your new products or ask feedback about all kind of products and services. Find out what your most loyal customers really want. And above all, give them reasons to come back as in interesting news stories, scoops, previews etc.

Informing your stakeholders

Another goal of your blog might be to inform your stakeholders. These guys typically don’t attend the stakeholders meetings, while they do have interest in how you are doing. By blogging about your successes, results, innovations but also your mistakes, you’re building ways to get in touch with your loyal and less loyal stakeholders. Of course all this information can also be read by your competitors, so think twice before you post inside information.

HRM goals

Sometimes corporate blogs are used to tell people how things are going within the company. Tell about what you are doing, ask your employees to describe a typical day, tell about how cool your company is, and you will find loads of job interested people upon your blog. Your HR manager will really love this one!

KPI’s

Of course you have to measure the results of all your efforts. Define some KPIs to measure the success. Typical KPIs are the number of comments, the average time on site, the average number of pages per visit, etc. Besides those ones, you can also measure KPIs based on the goals you defined. Find out how many stakeholders are visiting your site, for example. This article is not about defining KPIs, but keep in mind that without KPIs, you cannot claim any kind of success.

The do’s of corporate blogging

In this section, we take a look at the most important do’s of corporate blogging. Let’s name them first:

• Investing time
• Spreading the word
• Tracking results

It’s an old law to first calculate the cost of a project before starting. Maintaining a blog is very time consuming. You don’t have to blog every day, but it’s advisable to blog at least two times a week. Write a few first blogs to find out how much time is involved. Thereby, decide who’s going to write the blogs on your corporate blog and block the needed time in your agenda. And please keep your blog up to date!

After you have written some posting, visitors have to read them. One way to get noticed is to comment on other blogs, leaving your URL behind. Also ping a few blogs in your topical environment and ask them if they want to link to your flagship content. However, keep in mind that it’s needs some investment before you are linkworthy enough. Invest in writing your postings, by leaving comments behind and by doing a bit of social networking.

After you placed a blog, you need to know how popular your posting are. Of course, you can find out how many people are reading them, but you also want to know how many other websites are linking to them (through technorati.com) and how many people are interested in blogs which have yet to appear (through feedburner).

The don’ts of corporate blogging

Of course there are also a few things you shouldn’t do:

• Being dishonest
• Only promoting your stuff

Both points come together in the way communications go on the internet. If you tell a lie, it only takes time before the truth has been revealed. If you are only promoting your stuff without telling other interesting things, people don’t think you are trustworthy and they won’t come back.

Web 2.0 and social media mean that for teachers a declining part of their job involves telling. An increasing part is listening to the class and facilitating them in having conversations.

What Gerry is describing isn’t Web 2.0 - it’s just postmodernism. In The Netherlands this is pretty easy to see. Postmodernism is the cultural movement we’re right in now. Just a few decades ago, we lived in the modern age. There where some fixed values on which almost everyone agreed. In The Netherlands we were all a part of pillarisation which was mostly made up by our religious backgrounds. You was born as a catholic, all your friends and schoolmates were catholic, the bakery you visited was owned by a catholic, you voted for a catholic party and (at last) you died as a catholic.The civilization was very closed. People didn’t question the truth established by the leaders of your own ‘vertical’.

Some years ago, all of this suddenly changed. I don’t know the reasons for this change, but people ‘lost’ their background. Catholic parents gave birth to agnostic children and people stepped out of their vertical segregation. Based on the internet, people found opinions which weren’t spread among their environment. The thruth that once was determined by the head of the vertical was now determined by plain reason. And Gerry is right: teachers have far more difficulties telling the truth because everyone haves it own truth. The thruth isn’t written in the big books anymore, but it’s made up in your own, personal head.

Conversation is the new way to find out what you have to know. Blogs, forums and other online communication forms therefore play a very important role: they aren’t used to spread the truth, but they are used to build up truth. Truth isn’t spread anymore in a hierarchical way. It’s spread through a network with less ‘big bosses’. The anonimity of the internet also goves possibilities for noobies to become an expert within minutes.

Because of all this, I totally agree with Gerry’s last line:

The managers are not the only clever people in the room anymore. The room is much bigger and it is speckled with cleverness. To manage in the Web 2.0 world is to converse, to listen, to be honest and upfront, to collaborate, to moderate, and constantly watch out for the trends and patterns that always emerge wgen many minds mingle and mix in the network.

Making money

At an early age, I was busy making plans to become rich very fast. I didn’t succeed. But I did keep thinking about money. At my birthday parties, I knew the price of the gifts I received. My parents didn’t like it, but I think somewhere in those days I decided to become an entrepeneur.

Doing HTML and PHP

I started building websites at the age of 15 or something like that. I registered a few .com-domains (they were free those days) and I learned some HTML based on books and tutorials. The Dutch website phpfreakz.nl offered me interesting PHP articles and together with some friends, we made our first PHP ‘applications’. I can remember that I found out that is was possible to show news items only within a certain time period - awesome!

Gaining confidence

The think I liked about building websites, was that it was to do this all alone and anonymous. Before the age of 16, I was pretty shy. In that time, I visited a youth group interdenominatial youth group. At a certain moment I was asked to join the leadership team. I didn’t know what to expect, but I really liked the confidence the other leaders put in me. During my leadership, I gained more confidence and found out that I really liked standing in front of a crowd (up to 60 people).

Thinking in a analytical way

At the age of 18, I went to university. The study I chose is called Econometrics or Operations Research. It’s a combination of maths, statistics and programming. Within the student fellowship I attended, I gained even more self-confidence because of all the groups I attended. Besides that, the study learned me to think in a statistical and systematic way. Later on, these skills was necessary to organize in a good way. I was capable of breaking problems down into small parts and to keep track of everything what’s going on.

All the pieces fit together

During those years, I continued working on websites and made multiple content management systems. After doing this for a few years, my old interest in making money evolved into the website building. Wasn’t it possible to make more money with the same number of websites I had to make? Yeah, it was. I started to dive into the internet marketing aspect of building websites, instead of only looking at the technical issues.

Together with two friends, I started a Dutch blog about online marketing and web development called Netters.nl. Somewhere in the beginning of 2007, Joost invited me to apply for a job as SEO consultant within Onetomarket, based on the things I wrote on my blog.

And now this is who I am - an SEO consultant with:

• an experience in (mostly server side) programming
• commercial ideas for more sites than I can visit
• statistical knowledge to analyze all your data

1. Executive summary
2. Characteristics of B2B websites
3. Determining the quality of a B2B website (and results)
4. Tips and tricks
5. Conclustion

Executive summary

Indenty found out that a common mistake for building a B2B website is that it’s based on B2C marketing ideas:

There are big differences between B2B and B2C markets, which have consequences for how to set up a website. B2B marketing is targeted towards solving very specific problems of customers instead of identifying and using chances within (larger) customer segments within B2C marketing. In a B2B environment, maintaining a relationship with your client is more important. The way a B2B sale is made is more rational and it takes longer then in a B2C environment.

In this research, 200 B2B websites have been investigated in three areas:

1. The presentation of the website in search engines
2. The first impression of the website
3. The efficiency of the website for the B2B market

It turns out that the presentation of the website within search engines was good. This isn’t very strange because the websites were selected based on their high rankings on competitive keywords. The first impression of the websites was also good. On average, the website had a score of 75% on the formulated criteria. However, texts which are easy to scan and on-site search functions were missing on most sites.

The biggest disappointment was the incapability of most websites for the B2B websites. On average, the websites under research only meet 33% of the criteria involved. Most websites didn’t offer references, testimonials and the presentation of the unique selling points of the company.

It seems the importance of an effective B2B website is underestimated by the websites we researched. Most companies are still relying on their offline marketing. The most important conclusions of this research are therefore:
1) The effectiveness of the websites within the B2B market is too low;
2) The websites don’t use the possibilities to attain confidence among their visitors;
3) The websites didn’t offer enough informative and instructive content.

Characteristics of B2B websites

B2B marketing is aiming for a long term relationship with customers. This has two goals. First of all, a subcontractor can only help the client if he is participating early on in the process. Thereby, in the B2B market building a good client relation will lead to loyal clients who will make orders time after time.

There are some differences between B2B and B2C marketing which have consequences for the marketing process. In a B2B market, the target group is smaller and more specific. Clients often take more time before making the often very expensive buying decision. This longer buying cycle is because there are multiple stages involved in the process. Because of the rationality of the process, obtaining and verifying information is very important. And this is where search engines come in.

Being found through search engines is just one thing. Being found with a website that’s not suitable for B2B marketing will not get you any leads or sales.

A B2B website has to cope with different kind of buyers, who each are looking for other information. The different visitors will all be in a different phase of the buying process. For each of these visitors, the website has to offer interesting and convincing information. This has consequences for the structure of the website, as well as the strategy for using keywords. The list of keywords will soon become very long.

The most important part of B2B marketing is building a relationship with your clients. A B2B sale rarely takes place only once, because the purchase runs through a path of returning sales. It’s therefore very important to gain confidence from your visitors. A good way to achieve this result, is to offer excellent information with which the expertise of your company becomes clear. The number of returning visitors and the time they spent on your site are important KPIs.

Methods for showing interesting information are the use of news items or newsletters, case studies, whitepapers, technical papers and technical information or specifications. Using references, testimonials and cases about servicing your clients can also increase the confidence of your visitors.

Determining the quality of a B2B website (and results)

Indenty choose 200 Dutch websites from 5 specific branches: IT, machine industry, the construction sector, business services and general and technical services. These websites have been found based in their high rankings on some important keywords. Because these websites ranked very well, it wasn’t that interesting to review their search engine friendliness, but Indenty did, which the research more complete. Besides investigating the search engine friendliness, Indenty looked at two other things as well: the first impression of the websites and the suitability of the website as a B2B marketing instrument. They did so based on the following criteria (among others):

First impression

• Is the page relevant for the keyword used?
• Is the website up to date?
• Are the texts to the point?
• Are there images and are they relevant and of high quality?
• What’s the quality of the texts? Is the text easy to scan?
• Is the navigation equal on each page?
• Is there an on-site search engine?

Suitability for the B2B market

• Is there information about the company and their client handling?
• Is there informative and instructive content?
• Does the company differentiate itself within the market?
• Is there a not too aggressive conversion moment?
• Does the website contain references?
• Are there links to informative content on other websites?
• Are the contact details available within one click?
• Does the website contain news items or references to newsletters?
• Does the website contain whitepapers or technical papers?
• Does the website contain product information and specifications?
• Does the website contain certificates and references to memberships of branch associations?

On average, the websites under research met 75% of the criteria about the first impression of the site. However, just 37% of the B2B suitability criteria was met. In the research of Indenty, 75% of the criteria had to be met before the website was considered ‘good’ in a certain area. The scores over the branches didn’t differ that much. The machine industry however scored a bit lower.

First impression

The biggest disappointment among the websites was the website of a software developer. After every sentence, the visitor had to click on “next” to read the next sentence. The entire contained no more than just four sentences and a page with contact details.

A remarkable conclusion was that one third of the websites didn’t give a clear overview of the products and services that the companies offers. Therefore, the visitor doesn’t know if their problem can be solved by this specific company. A consequence might be that the visitor leaves the site unjust and starts a search for other companies.

In the table below, the number of websites that met a certain condition are given:

Suitability for the B2B market

Of all the websites under research, only 2 (out of 100) met at least 18 conditions out of 24. Almost all websites are ineffective for the B2B market, because they offer too less possibilities for building up a relationship with a potential client. Again, the machine industry is doing worst among the other branches. In the table below, we explain which information is lacking:

The availability of instructive content is very important:

It can help building up and maintaining relationships with current and prospective clients. Only 20% of the investigated websites offered this type of content. This concludes to a missed chance for stickiness and returning customers, because instructive and new content gives a reason to return to or dive deeper into the website.

The whitepaper speaks of a caterer which offers creative recipes on their website. Through the recipes, they show their creativity and the variety of their assortment. Another example is a legal company who tells something about the changes about a certain law and concludes the news article with:

We can imagine you have questions about the consequences of this new law to your company. We would love to discuss this with you. Please contact us by phone or email.

In this way, the company tries to get in touch with their prospects without being too aggressive.

Tips and tricks

B2B SEO can be really challenging. People are searching based on their problems and not with the potential solutions in mind. It’s very important to ask a few questions to your prospects as in:

1. How would you describe your problem?
2. How would you describe the solution you have in mind?
3. Name 10 words that describe your problem.

Document all this information and combine it with the log files of your internal search engine. Together, they give loads of information about how your customers may search for your products.

Conclusion

To be honest, I was quite impressed by the work of Michel Bieze and Peter Schinkel, the two guys that made up this research. In a technical way, they are my competitors because we work at different companies. On a more personal level, I agree to most of their viewpoints and I really want to thank them for letting me translate parts of their whitepaper.

I you have any question remaining, please ask. I didn’t translate the complete whitepaper so I might have missed some information you are looking for.

That’s really a dramatic conclusion. Apparantly, most B2B online marketeers don’t share my opinion on some issues in the article I wrote about B2B marketing strategy. Some marketeers don’t keep in mind that there are multiple persons involved in a B2B sales process and that all those people require different information. Others forget to track soft conversions or have difficulties determining the right KPIs for their website.

Building a good B2B website is hard work.

Another challenge for B2B SEO is finding the correct keywords. B2B content SEO is much more difficult then content SEO for the Business to Consumer market. People are searching for their problems, not for the solutions they offer. But how do formulate their problems? And before that, which problems do they actually have? In this article I suggested to interview your clients and prospects, to learn their vocubulary. B2B content SEO can be difficult, but it’s really fun!

Creativity, logic and the investigation of your clients are very important.

B2B link building was the topic of the third article. Most business to business companies sell very complicated products or services. Therefore, the greatest bait of a B2B link building campaign is the expert knowledge you have to share.Yeah, you really have to. Remember you can be the guru in your area any time you like.

B2B link building is easier and more difficult than B2C link building. Easier because you have good content; more difficult because your linkerati group is relative small.

1. Discover
2. Identify
3. Communicate

Discovering who’s visiting your website

You probably don’t want to place all your nice information behind an email subscription form. It isn’t good for your rankings and people won’t like it either. However, there are other options to find out people are interested in your products. It’s all about the navigation paths your visitors go through:

• Did someone start visiting your funnel and did the same person also visit some case studies or other conversion beacons? Then you definitely want to get in contact with him.
• Or is someone visiting the same page day after day without a referrer? Then it might be that a few persons of the same company are visiting your website to find out if your products are going to help them.

Identifying your visitors

After you discovered a few persons which seem to have at least a mild interest in your products or services, you have to find out who they are. Of course, it might be that the visitor filled in a contact form or an email subscription form which gives you their email address. However, chances are small that this is the case. The most valuable information you have is the IP address of that person.

I know of at least on company that aggregates IP addresses owned by companies. This information isn’t always correct, but it’s a starter for sure. There are a multiple of IP/address databases for sale. I don’t know exactly how these databases were collected but that’s not that interesting for this post.

Communicating with your visitors

Imagine this. You were just looking for some new machinery and a day later someone is calling from the manufacturer whose website you visited. You could say that with action, we are using the B2B momentum. However, this may seem too aggressive. Prospects might have the idea that they are being followed (which they are, in fact).

Another option is to send them a brochure. This isn’t that aggressive: for your visitors it will look like a coincidence. It’s even better to send them a brochure based on the products they showed interest in. Printing on demand is the best solution to offer very specific brochures that are client focused and are using the momentum of your visitors.

What do you think about this kind of B2B lead generation? Does anyone has experience with this method? Please respond in the comments.