11 Essential Elements of a Successful Corporate B2B Blog

If there is one company that understands the key elements on how to ‘Blog’ in a B2B market then you can’t go past the Hubspot blog.

Hubspot was founded by Brian Halligan and Darmesh Shah  who met at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2004 and incorporated HubSpot in June 2006. It was backed by venture capitalists including Sequoia Capital, Google Ventures and Salesforce.com. The company provides a range of monthly subscription (from entry level to premium) services to small and medium business that helps customers use, measure and monitor internet marketing techniques and tactics such as social media, blogging and search engine optimization (SEO).

What Makes the Hubspot Blog a Success?

The premise of the company was built on the idea that permission or inbound marketing was more powerful than interruption or outbound marketing such as cold calling and telemarketing. I was fortunate to have discovered Hubspot’s blog in 2008 and was impressed with the amount of content that they made available for free.  I have been a fan ever since and continue to visit often.

So what makes the Hubspot blog a shining example of what a corporate blog should do and be?

One of the features that the blog demonstrates is ‘social media synergy’… which is the practice of using optimized and integrated social media channels and multimedia that make a brand ubiquitous. This produces results that are far greater than the sum of the individual parts. It is about using every major social channel such as Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and rich media to provide content where the audience is hanging out and making yourself attractive for Google.

Hubspot knows how to educate, inform and produce content that amazes and  inspires companies to be the best they can. They understand the essence of a blog which is to give till it hurts.

11 Elements of a Successful Corporate B2B Blog

1. Multiple Rich Media

Hubspot doesn’t just use text in its blogs but produces and publishes videos, cartoons, Infographics, Slideshare and other rich media that keep the audience educated, engaged and sometimes even entertained.

2. Posting Often and Regularly

They used to blog once a day but now it is not unusual to see several blog posts every 24 hours.

3. Multiple Social Media Channels

Facebook, Twitter, Blog are all in their social media arsenal. Just because they are a B2B company, they do not just take the blog and LinkedIn approach. Facebook is an important channel for B2B and publishing and participating on the appropriate social media platforms makes it easy for their content to spread as their fans share, embed and comment on the social web.

4. Solves Problems

Hubspot know that business needs help to solve it’s problems and the tips and ‘How To’s go a long way to displaying that Hubspot knows how to assist small business in making them successful.

5. Don’t Sell

There is nothing worse than a hard sell as it turns potential customers away never to return. The content is about educating and providing answers to everyday business problems. It is no wonder that they now have thousands of customer and have raised tens of millions of dollars in venture funding.

6. Focused

They know their target markets and their messages and their content is all about addressing in words, videos and images the needs of their audience. As a corporate blogger you need to keep in mind it is not about you, it is about your audience.

7. Have a Call to Action

The blog includes calls to action that include ‘Download Now!’  and ‘Subscribe by Email’. The content is free and the service is great but it is still about business. This captures email and information that is used for marketing.

8. Entertaining

Cartoons and fun staff videos emerge from time to time to make sure that their audience realises that they are not a faceless corporate and heartless entity but a living and breathing human infused company that has not forgotten what it is like to be real and authentic.

9.The Power of Email is Not Forgotten

Corporate email is still the lifeblood of corporate communication so subscribing by email is still essential and included in their tactics.

10. Continues to Evolve

Facebook wasn’t in their toolkit 2 years ago but today with over 25,000 fans they don’t underestimate the power of being involved and publishing to the 650 million user social network.

11. Topical

As news breaks in their industry they are often publishing content that lets their customers know within hours that they have their finger on the pulse.

Check the Hubspot blog out because they understand what a corporate B2B blog is about.

More reading

• 10 Compelling Reasons Why Your Business Should Blog
• The 17 Most Important Questions I have been Asked about Social Media
• 3 Big Reasons Why Social Media Marketing is Essential for Your Business
• Are You Failing At Blogging? 3 Successful Blogs You Can Learn From