This blog post is part of “The Ultimate Guide to Lead Generation” blog series.
I wrote my first blog for a startup company that made manufacturing equipment for the medical device industry. It was a special kind of laser–called ultrafast–that was the first product of its kind and could make specific medical devices (coronary stents) faster, cheaper, and with higher quality than legacy solutions.
HubSpot convinced me that blogging was the best way to build awareness of the company and to generate qualified leads. I didn’t know much about blogging and, being a marketer, I started promoting the company and its products on our blog. Nothing much happened. I did some research about what makes blogs successful and realized that promotional content was not appropriate for a blog. The purpose of a blog is to engage people as they search for solutions to their problems and answers to their questions.
So I worked with our chief technology officer to develop a list of topics that would be relevant and useful to laser experts and manufacturing experts. We started publishing 2-3 blogs a week on topics like “What is Ultrafast Laser Technology,” and “How Ultrafast Lasers Work,” and “How New Technology Makes Better Stents Faster.” We offered white papers around similar topics. Within a few months, our web traffic tripled and our content offers were being downloaded. We had three thousand new contacts.
Our blog was even mentioned by a trade publication for “really getting the word out” about ultrafast laser technology.
What happened? Well, I’ve since replicated this with several other companies and here are the secrets to creating the best blog in your industry.
- Don’t mention your company or product. We never mentioned the company name. I mean, if they are on our blog, they know our name. The minute you start talking about yourself, you stop helping and start promoting, and you lose trust.
- Promote the category. Most companies, especially startups, are creating a new category of solution for a business or personal problem. Ultrafast laser was a new category of lasers for manufacturers, not the product or company name. That’s what people in our target market wanted to learn about. Promoting the category and what these new products deliver helped us become thought leaders in a fledgling industry.
- Keep it simple. I’ve found that blogs, even when they are in a serious industry with complex technology, can’t be too simple. If you can simplify complex technology, you win confidence and respect because most people know that it’s not easy. I’m no expert on manufacturing technology, but I interviewed experts and summarized what I learned in a language I could understand and other people could understand. Taking these complex topics–some would say boring–and writing about them more like a journalist discovering something fascinating than like an academic explaining something complicated injects life into the copy and makes people come back for more.
- Remember what your audience wants. People are online looking for education and information. Especially in science-y industries like medical device manufacturing, laser technology, and life sciences industries–they are motivated to keep up to date on new developments in their industries. Write about genuinely important trends and developments in your marketplace.
- Use an internal subject matter expert. Because the person writing the blog is not usually the expert, it is important to have a subject matter expert advise and review the blog calendar and the content. You don’t want to get something wrong. And an internal expert can be invaluable in helping understand what are the hot topics in the industry.
Some of the articles we’ve written have been picked up by trade magazines, shared on other online forms, and even used as course material in graduate courses on manufacturing technology.
If you follow these guidelines will you have the best blog in your industry? Well, “best” is a subjective term unless you’re measuring by clicks and search engine rankings. If you’re writing about the topics people care about in your business, and creating helpful, educational articles about these topics, you content will be read, appreciated, and shared.
This blog post is part of “The Ultimate Guide to Lead Generation” blog series.
