This eBook is written for anyone writing a blog to promote their business. It assumes you – as the author - have a pretty good understanding already of who your clients, customers and prospects are, and have already selected a blog software or service (or are already using one). This eBook includes an overview of…. Planning Your Blog * Identifying goals for your blog * Creating an editorial calendar * Setting up an editorial review board Creating and Publishing Your Blog * Writing blog posts * Adding images to your blog Optimizing Your Blog’s Impact * Using categories and tags for search engine optimization (SEO) * Best practices for linking to your blog on social media

1. How to Write a Business Blog
A Guide to Successful B2B Blogging
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2. What’s Covered in this eBook
This eBook is written for anyone writing a blog to promote
their business. It assumes you – as the author - have an
pretty good understanding already of who your clients,
customers and prospects are, and have already selected a
blog software or service (or are already using one).
This eBook includes an overview of….
Planning Your Blog



Identifying goals for your blog
Creating an editorial calendar
Setting up an editorial review board
Creating and Publishing Your Blog

Writing blog posts

Adding images to your blog
Optimizing Your Blog’s Impact

Using categories and tags for search engine
optimization (SEO)

Best practices for linking to your blog on social media
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3. Planning Your Blog
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4. Identify your goals
There are many reasons you may want to create a blog
– to improve your website’s Search Engine Optimization
(SEO), to enhance your social media sites, to promote
your business’ products and services – but all of these
reasons reflect YOUR goals.
What’s most critical, however is what your blog can do
for your your target audience. Before you start, you must
decide what your readers will get out of reading your
blog. What benefit will the blog offer?
If you haven’t identified your readers and their needs,
you won’t attract readers.
Your target audience… is usually your customers and
prospects, but may include other business readers in
your industry. If you have more than one audience,
and their needs vary enough that you have created
separate marketing and sales tools for each audience,
then you will need to consider that when creating your
blog. Often just alternating blog topics so that you
relate to each audience will ensure that you cover all
customers and prospects. Sometimes, having a
different author for each audience makes the process
of talking to different audiences easier, but it is not
necessary if the blog author understands each
audience segment and their needs.
Reader needs… think about what your customers and
prospects need to help them succeed in their careers.
They may want to read your blog so they can:
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
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Keep up on industry trends
Make informed buying
decisions
Make their jobs easier –
and avoid mistakes
Learn about best practices

5. Create an editorial calendar
Once
you’ve identified your audience and their
information needs, make a list of what you want to
communicate as a company. Are you sharing
information about:
a

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
Products & services?
New rollouts?
Upcoming events?
Create a matrix in a spreadsheet. The columns will be
the information needs of your audience and the rows will
be your communications needs.
Develop topics based on the intersection of these
needs. This is the starting point for your editorial
calendar.
1. Decide the frequency with which you want to
write your blogs. Starting with one per week will
help you establish a following.
2. Organize topics to vary the subject matter or
the approach to the subject.
3. Recruit people within your organization to
write the blogs. Knowledge and writing skills
are needed, but a writer and a content expert
can also successfully collaborate to write a blog
together.
A spreadsheet-based Editorial Calendar
The matrix of reader needs and communication needs
If you want to blog posts that coincide with a product
rollout or major event, then make sure that you time
those particular posts for maximum impact.
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6. Set up an editorial review board
Misspellings,
bad grammar, and incorrect information
will undermine the credibility of your blog, but even the
most careful writer can make mistakes. To support your
blog writer and increase the professionalism of your blog
site, you should set up an internal editorial review board
(even if it’s one person).
Make sure that those selected to review blogs can
commit to a quick turnaround and understand their
role. After the first several weeks of work, a follow-up
meeting should be called to review practices and make
any adjustments to the time needed to respond and to
adjust any other processes.
The role of this group should not be to pick apart the
writer’s style, but rather to look for
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misspelled words,
grammar mistakes, and
to double check facts.
The blog content should be shared via
a Word document at least a day or two
prior to being posted, with a deadline for comments and
corrections.
Use the “Track Changes” feature in Word to make it
easier for the blog writer to see corrections and
comments. In newer versions of Word there is a “Lock
Tracking” function to ensure that all who review the
document are in the Track Changes mode.
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Next: Creating and Publishing Your Blog

7. Creating and Publishing Your Blog
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8. Writing blog posts
Blogging
uses a very specific form of writing with its
own STRUCTURE, TONE, and LANGUAGE. It is meant to be
ENGAGING and to get the reader to respond by
commenting. It should have a personality and should
quickly pull the reader in.

Make the introduction brief and easy to
follow, but promise some benefit to the reader
if they read the entire post.
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Tell a story – this is a “conversation” with the
reader. You don’t want to talk down or go on
for too long. Try to draw in even the most
casually interested reader.
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Speak to the reader:
•
Show you understand the reader’s
situation
•
Answer the questions your reader would
probably ask
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Ask a positive question to psychologically
pull the reader into the story.
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What is the call to action?
•
To view a related post?
•
To click through to a product page?
•
To post a comment?
STRUCTURE
Headline
Intro
BLOG
Call to
Action
Ask a
Question
Story
Ask a
question
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Write headlines that grab the
attention:
•
Appeal to people’s curiosity
•
Appeal to their self-interest
•
Make it newsworthy
readers
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9. Writing blog posts
WRITING DO’S & DON’TS
SET THE RIGHT TONE
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Show some personality. Let your voice come
through:
“I’m so excited
about this new
product..”
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Show your professionalism:
•
Balance the more informal style of your blog
with language and a command of the subject
matter that signals your professionalism.
Be open and honest:
•
Mention your flaws or past mistakes
•
Make believable promises
•
Undersell – NEVER oversell! (This is a
cardinal rule in blogging. Don’t violate it.)
Be positive:
•
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NEGATIVE: “If you’re tired of a shrinking sales
pipeline and don’t want to face your boss…”
POSITIVE: “If you want to increase your pipeline
and be the overachiever at your company…”
DO:
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Use “I” and “You” to
connect to the reader.

Use
common
contractions for a
conversational tone.

Use short sentences
for impact.
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Write from your own
personal perspective.
DON’T:
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Use a passive voice. It doesn’t drive action.
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•
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PASSIVE: “So-and-so has written a great post
about software trends.”
ACTIVE: “Check out this great post about
software trends”
Be too formal.
Use “we” more than you have to, even though
you may talk about your company. The
“Corporate We” comes across about as well as
the “Royal We” – it’s a big turnoff.
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10. Writing blog posts
ENGAGEMENT
Writing a blog is your opportunity to engage directly with your target audience. Before you write each blog post ask
yourself these questions:
What do
readers want to
get out of this
post?
What do I want to
get out of this
post for my
company?
What problem, need or
interest is driving
readers to read this
post?
What points am I
trying to make in
this post?
Can I back up my
points?
What is my call to
action?
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Why would a reader go
to this post rather than
go elsewhere for
information?

11. Adding images to your blog post
An image helps draw the reader into your blog post
and also enhances the story you are telling.
There are also online photo and image sites that sell
tens of thousands of images at reasonable prices.
Some have plans where you can pre-pay for a set
amount of images and download them as needed.
It can be a picture of a person, a place, an object or an
icon. Even a screen shot of on online product or
service adds interest to your post.
FINDING IMAGES
Screen shots can be captured with a “snipping tool”
that comes on PCs and Macs.
For free photos, use the search term “royalty free
photo” in a Google or Bing image search. If you want
to narrow your search, add another qualifier to the
search term to indicate the subject of the icon you are
looking for.
Free icons can be found by searching for “royalty free
icons” in a Google or Bing image search.
UPLOADING IMAGES
Blog software programs typically include an image
editor that lets you upload an image and select where
you align it in your post. Most will let you resize an
image once you have uploaded it, but it is easier to
adjust it close to the size you want before uploading.
IMAGES AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Make sure that when you place a link to your blog on
sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn ad Google+ that the
image that you placed in your blog appears. Having
an image next to your link increases the likelihood
that your followers will click through to your blog post.
Next: Optimizing Your Blog’s Impact
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12. Optimizing Your Blog’s Impact
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13. Using categories and tags for search engine optimization (SEO)
Blog
software typically allows you to pre-set
“Categories” to organize your blogs and “Tags” or
“Keywords” to optimize accurate indexing of your blogs
on search engines.
CATEGORIES serve a dual purpose: They allow you to
organize all of your posts by subject matter and are
also given priority by search engines. You should select
several categories that correspond to the main topics
you will be writing about. As your blog grows in size,
you can allow readers to look for past blogs by
category if the topic interests them.
Categories should be seen as your high-level grouping
of content. Don’t set up too many categories. Over
time, you should build to having a dozen or more posts
per category.
When you create your matrix of topics and
editorial calendar, you should have the raw
information you need to determine the best
categories to set up in your blog software.
TAGS (also called KEYWORDS)
are added individually to each
post you create. They should
reflect words or phrases that
you have used in your post,
and should be chosen based
on the likelihood that an individual from your target
audience would be using that word as a search term.
Google has a free Keyword tool that you can use to find
popular search terms. Make a list of those most relevant
to your business and keep them on hand when writing
and tagging posts. You need to open a Google AdWords
account to get access to it, however.
Other free keyword tools include:
Trellian
Wordtracker
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14. Best practices for linking to your blog on social media
Optimizing Character Limits in Social Media
For best results, follow these rules when linking to your
blog from Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter:
1. Update your Status:
a. Keep your update short so people don’t have
to click “more” to read it.
b. Put blog link in the update box, but remove
when the link content appears so you don’t
use up your character count.
2. Edit the Headline and Description (optional)
3. Send out a Tweet
Site
Status
Length
Headline
Length
Description
Length
Facebook
400
120
225
LinkedIn
275
60
200
Google+
265
Twitter
140
For a copy of the
One Size DOES NOT Fit All
infographic, click here.
Length is character count, including spaces
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15. Contact and Connect with Enervision
For more help with your blog, website or social media,
give us a call!
Sales@enervisionmedia.com
www.enervisionmedia.com
1-877-330-3077
Visit our blog: The User Experience Monitor
Connect to us on LinkedIn
Follow Us on Twitter
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