When done right, blogging for business can be your most valuable lead generation machine. The hard part is making sure your blog actually generates leads!

Here are five pitfalls to avoid in your B2B blogging strategy:

1. No value to your readers

As a B2B marketer, you blog for business. This separates you from the squillions of teenagers out there who blog for no reason in particular. So you need to have something meaningful to say. Something that your prospects will want to read.

Remember that most of your readers will find your blog through search engines rather than through your website. So avoid talking about your product's latest feature, or your company's latest achievements. Instead, focus on your buyers. What problems do they face in their everyday? How can you help them solve these problems?

This kind of content is interesting to your prospects. It will resonate with them and gain their trust.

2. No one can find it

Hitting 'publish' is not enough. You need to make sure that your blog is easily found. This is why blogging, SEO and social media go hand-in-hand. Make sure that your content can be found through:

• Corporate accounts, eg. posting through your company's LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook pages
• Online discussions, eg. on LinkedIn groups and industry forums
• Guest blogging for other reputable blogs or publishers, eg. CIO for the IT sector

It's hard to build a blog following, which is why maximising your distribution channels will make sure that you're doing the most you possibly can to increase visibility.

3. No one can share it

It amazes (read: appalls) me how many blogs out there still don't have social sharing buttons on each post.

It's a no-brainer. Why would you not want to up your chances of readers sharing your content with their networks? Sharing is a great way to increase targeted traffic to your site, and it is what the internet is all about!

4. No one knows you're still alive

If you want to start a blog, you had better commit to it. Momentum is important! Research shows that frequency is directly tied to your blog's ability to generate leads:

It makes sense - why would Google recommend you if you have nothing new to say?

Make sure you're constantly giving people a reason to come back to your business blog, a prime area on your site that is designed to convert them into leads.

5. No conversion path

Which brings us to our final point. Your blog should definitely contain conversion paths so a reader can become a lead. How? By having CTA (calls-to-action) on each blog post, as well as on the right and left hand columns of the web page. If you can get visitors to click on your CTAs, then they're on their way to becoming a lead.

Making sure that your content offers are closely aligned to your blog content is essential in this respect. Otherwise, the offer may not be worth trading their contact details for.

To recap, make sure that your business blog...

• Contains content that's valuable to your readers (because you're educating them about the problems they have)
• Is easily found (on social networks and other online hangouts)
• Is easily shared (through social sharing buttons)
• Is updated frequently (so people know you're still alive)
• Contains links to landing pages (so they can become leads)

To learn more about this subject, please download our complimentary ebook, Business Blogging Best Practices:

What other business blogging fails can you think of? We'd love to hear your thoughts! Share them with us in the comments section below.

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