High-Tech Communicator

How to Improve Content ROI

Today’s marketers are producing more content than ever. But creating content requires sizable investments in time, effort, and money. How do you know that your content investment will pay off in terms of interest to your potential customers?   

Smart marketers test their ideas before rolling out full-blown projects.

The following are steps marketers can take to ensure that buyers are interested in the topics before they invest sizable sums in producing and rolling out content.

Come Up with Engaging Ideas

The first step is to come up with the ideas that are most likely to generate interest.

Start with hot trends in your market. The more you can tie your content into these trends, the more interest it’s likely to generate. For example, technology companies are more likely to garner attention for their content if provides a unique take on well-established issues such mobile or cloud computing.

Also talk to employees who deal day-in and day-out with customers. Consider creating a content-advisory board with members from marketing, sales, and product development. Ask them to identify questions they hear that haven’t been adequately answered by existing content. See which topics come up over and over to find patterns and themes that arise about the topic.

Test Your Ideas

Once you’ve come up with a list of likely topics around which you can develop content, determine whether you should produce it by testing out the topic. You have a number of options:

• Blog about the topic. One client recently came up with about a dozen areas for they were considering rolling out thought-leadership content in based on market trends. Previously they might have internally come up with topics, determined their internal priorities, and then created white papers in the order of priority. Today, they use blog posts to send out trial balloons and measure interest before creating in-depth content.
• Take advantage of curated posts. An even more cost effective way to gauge interest is to take curated posts, add original commentary, and put them out on your blog and over social media. This method serves two purposes. First, you avoid even the low cost of writing the post. Second the fact that the topic comes from a third-party source adds social credibility to the topic since not only your organization but also a third-party expert are discussing the topic.
• Tweet about the topic. Similarly, you can tweet about the blog post or simply tweet about the topic to gauge the interest you get before making a larger investment.
• Create surveys and polls. Create a survey and see how many of your blog readers or social-media followers take it and what level of interest they express. Alternatively, ask your sales force to informally poll customers and prospects about their interest.  

By following these methods, you can vet your content quickly and easily before creating a full blown eBook, white paper, article, or other more in-depth piece.

How does your organization test your content?

6 Ways to Ensure that Your Customers Will Trust Your Content

“Content, content everywhere, but not a drop to drink.” Today’s B2B content marketing scene can be summed up by this riff on the old saying.

What I mean is that there’s a surprising gap between B2B marketers and their customers when it comes to content. Modern marketers know that that today’s buyers want to do their homework by doing online research on their problems and possible solutions before contacting a vendor. That’s why 93% of B2B companies are turning to content marketing, according to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2014 Content Marketing Survey.  

Yet according to IDG Research, 82% of IT decision makers find it at least somewhat challenging to locate the information they need to make an informed purchase decision. And nearly four out of ten (39%) find it very or extremely challenging to find the content they need.

Why the disconnect?

The IDG Research found that the most frequently cited complaints were: Too much marketing hype and empty buzzwords (64%) and a lack of truly independent, unbiased information (63%). This means that the problem isn’t the amount of content available. It’s that IT buyers feel they can’t find trusted content.

So how do you ensure that customers perceive your content as being trustworthy?

Solve Customers Problems by Providing Trusted Information

The following are tips based on research from actual customers as to how to make sure your content is perceived as trustworthy.

1. Eliminate Hype. As noted above, the most frequently cited complaint among customers who find it challenging to find the trusted content they need is “too much marketing hype and empty buzzwords.” So create content that’s clear and straightforward.
2. Make it unbiased. Customers perceive a lack of truly independent, unbiased information (63%). Yet marketers are loathe to say anything that could possibly be perceived as at all negative about their product. That’s understandable. They’re afraid that any small negative statement will prevent someone from buying your product. However, it’s also true that most products are best for certain purposes—you can’t be everything to everybody. You’ll earn more trust from the customers for whom your product is a great fit, if you’re honest about who the product is suited to—and who it’s not suited to. Besides, if you say so yourself, you maintain control over the conversation. If you don’t, you’ll have to rely on the charity of third parties.
3. Present alternative perspectives. Leaving out or not addressing different perspectives is another factor that makes consumers skeptical about content from marketers. Think like a journalist and try to present both sides to the story.
4. Include objective research—and cite your sources. Customers are more likely to trust your content when your arguments are backed up by research. Marketers generally know this and do include facts and figures in their content. However, one of my pet peeves about vendor-sponsored content is that marketers often neglect to include the full citation or a link to the actual source. Customers feel the same way. According to research from Kentico Software, 57% of customers say educational information from a company is more credible when it contains verification from named sources.
5. Beware of product pitches. Much of content marketing is meant to be educational and help make people aware of the problem and the unique solution you provide. But it’s very tempting for B2B marketers to want to dive straight into a product pitch after a short bit of education. Bad move. According to the Kentico report, trust is very fragile. Even adding a product pitch to the end of an otherwise objective blog post or newsletter brings down the credibility level significantly. Only 45% of consumers say they trust such content.
6. Proclaim your identity. Another peeve of customers is that erodes trust is when vendors try to hide their identity. 15% of customers surveyed in the Kentico research said that presenting information in a way that hides the face that it comes from a company makes them skeptical.

When it comes to content marketing, the best way to reach customers is to put on your journalist cap—and providing solid, useful, objective information.

Is Your Favorite Content Type Dead?

A Google search on “Are white papers dead?” brings up a long list of articles and blog posts. The same is true for the printed book. A recent blog post stated that eBooks are overrated for B2B content marketers. Email is in a “fatal” decline said Facebook co-founder, Dustin Moskovitz in a Wired article. Oh, and by the way, did you know that the blog is a goner as well?

What’s going on here? As someone who develops B2B Marketing content, all of this talk of the death of many of my favorite content types might seem rather alarming.  

Clearly, all of these tactics are hardly on their last legs. The Eccolo Media 2014 B2B Technology Content Survey Report found that 49 percent of B2B buyers consume white papers; 29 percent read blog articles; 24 percent peruse eBooks. A whole raft of statistics show that email is far from moribund. What’s happening is that more content channels are available. Each one gets less use. And that it’s more important than ever to choose the right tactic for the job.

A Decline in Usage

While reports of the death of these tactics are highly overrated, these proclamations wouldn’t gain traction if they didn’t contain a grain of truth. The use of all these media is declining. For example, according to the Eccolo Media survey, even though white papers remain the most consumed media type, their usage has been falling year over year: from 62 percent on 2011 to 55 percent in 2012 to 49 percent in 2013. Case study utilization has fallen from 50 percent in 2011 to 45 percent in 2012 to 36 percent in 2013.

The question is what do these numbers mean? Rather than look at what’s going on with each tactic, you need to look at content marketing as a whole. The number of B2B marketers using content has gone up—from 91 percent in 2013 to 94 percent in 2014—and 73 percent of marketers are using more content than they were a year ago, according to the Content Marketing Institute.

What’s going on is that the content produced is being spread out over more tactics. Years ago, before the term “content marketing” was even in vogue, the primary content-marketing tactics were white papers, brochures, case studies, press releases, customer publications, and placed articles. Today, a plethora of types of content are now available that never existed before, such as social media, blogs, web slideshows, micro sites, mobile apps, and much more.  

Another factor that goes into the “death” predictions is the fact that tactics get overused. If everyone is using a particular tactic in a given year, it loses its novelty and thus loses its effectiveness—at least in the short term.   

The Solution

The solution is take a contrarian approach—and to carefully match the medium to the message. 

Contrarian approach—When a medium is overused, it can lose its effectiveness. That doesn’t mean that it’s a bad medium. It just means that for the moment, people are temporarily tired of it. And then ultimately, marketers back off on using that tactic. One approach to choosing content is to take a contrarian approach. If everyone is using eBooks this season, look to produce a less hyped medium, like print publications.   

In the post “6 Ways to Make B2B Content Marketing That’s Better than the eBook,” Jay Acunzo suggested that instead of creating eBooks, it’s better to create content assets that help people do things easier and faster. He recommended looking at all the steps in a particular process and giving the readers ways to help do it better, whether that’s providing a bunch of free clip art to make it easier for people to create their own blog posts, or create workbooks, project and reporting templates, and apps. 

While these are great ideas, all manner of specialty publications have long included versions of the tactic of giving readers tips and tricks and how-tos for doing things better, easier, and faster.   

Utility approach—A second approach is to continue to use whatever tactic you like; but to think long and hard about what’s the right tactic for the job at hand before you use it. Don’t for example use video for the sake of video. After all, video is expensive and difficult to produce. Use video when you need to show someone how to do something complex or when you want to make an emotional appeal.

So, if you’re concerned about choosing a content tactic, start by putting approaches that are not overused on your list. Consider putting a new spin on an old approach. And then before you make a decision, carefully match the advantages and disadvantages of the approach to your marketing goals.  

In my next few blog posts, I’ll be looking at different types of content and when it’s best to use each one.

 

 

 

 

Writing Blog Posts: 7 Tips for Improving Your Style

One of my clients recently made a major push to beef up the content on their blog. Like any large technology company, this one had no lack of subject matter experts to provide terrific perspectives. And the company did a great job of getting these experts on-board to help create great content.

Still, most of these SMEs are not professional writers.  Some did better than others. But all required editing. After editing dozens of these posts, I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. The following are some observations about what makes for a well-written post that you can apply to your own posts.

1. Know your audience. This particular company posted content on different blogs that targeted different audiences. It’s important to keep these audiences in mind at all times and write accordingly. For example, blog posts meant to reach executive audiences should talk about high-level business trends while technical audiences expect more details. 
2. Pick a narrow topic with an interesting slant. For example, a post written in honor of Halloween talked about how new managers should be aware of the risk posed by “ghosts” of management past—practices and attitudes that exist in the corporate culture due to the actions or previous managers—that can hinder future success.  Another talked about how the lost city of Atlantis developed the first disaster recovery plan, and how avoiding such an obvious failure is critical to ensuring a smooth progression of innovation.
3. Get personal. Successful posts often incorporate the writer’s personal stories. These stories not only boost the writer’s credibility as an expert, they also draw people in because, well, who doesn’t love a good story? 
4. Write like you talk. Blog writing shouldn’t be stiff and formal. It needs to sound like it comes from a real person. So make sure you write your posts like you talk. And if you’re repurposing a white paper or other existing content as a blog post, be doubly sure that you carefully adjust the tone to sound conversational. 
5. Follow a clear outline. Because posts are shorter than other types of documents, writers sometimes think it’s okay to start in one place and wander to another without explaining upfront where they’re going. But a blog isn’t a cow path. Even though posts are short, they still need a clear beginning, middle and end to keep users from getting lost. If you want to be safe, use that tried-and-true standard for presentations, “Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them” structure.
6. Make sure your content directly supports your mission. Different bloggers have different views on the purpose of a blog. Some see it as a way to create awareness. Companies in this camp might want to create content on topics of interest to the target audience regardless of relevance to their own offerings simply to get their company name in front of the target audience. Others stick to the intersection of audience interests and what you provide. I prefer the latter approach because this allows you to not only get your name out there but also position yourself as an expert and a thought leader. Whatever your goal, know what it is and make sure your content addresses that objective.
7. Pick a catchy title. Your title is the primary way you woo an audience for your post. It needs to capture the interest of both search engines and the human audience. Make sure your titles include both your keywords and are interesting to a human reader.  At the same time, make sure the title doesn’t oversell the content. To maintain credibility, the title should accurately portray what the blog post is about.

A large organization with lots of SMEs has a prime opportunity to produce loads of useful content on an ongoing basis. The key is for content program managers to help SMEs come up with interesting topics within their areas of expertise, and then provide guidance and editing assistance to shape nuggets of content into polished posts that interest and engage your target audience.

10 Tips for Making Your Writing More Conversational

A cool breeze is blowing when it comes to marketing writing for technology companies.

Technology companies have long been rightfully known for their impenetrable writing style. It’s a style characterized by ponderous and passive sentences. A lot of dry discussions about technology speeds and feeds. Considerable vendor chest beating.

But with the spread of content marketing, more and more marketers are realizing that this writing style needs to change. The wonders of the technology aren’t going to make the product sell itself. Style counts. If companies want to entice people to read their writing, they better make sure it’s written in a lively and engaging style.

This is all for the good. If customers are going to have to read material for work, why not have it be a pleasant experience rather than a chore.

What are the elements of this new style that you can incorporate into your own marketing pieces? Here are a few.

1. Interesting lead paragraphs. The title and first paragraph are the most important when it comes to engaging your reader. Yours should immediately draw the reader in. Think customer anecdotes, interesting lists of facts, or a new twist on an old story.  
2. Short sentences. Many white papers in particular use sentences of two to three lines long. It’s easy to get lost in these sentences. Keep yours short. For promotional copy, try five to 10 words. For a white paper, think no longer than 20 words.
3. Active voice. John bit the apple. The apple was bitten by John. Even with a simple sentence, the reader can follow the one using active verbs more easily.
4. Strong verbs. Verbs are the workhorses of good writing. It’s always better to use a descriptive verb rather than a verb and an adverb; for example, stride versus walk forcefully.
5. Focus on people not institutions. When you write a case study, focus on the person using the product rather than the company. What was the person thinking? Feeling?
6. Use first and second person where possible. Any type of promotional copy or marketing collateral will benefit from using first and second person. Emails. Articles. Datasheets.  Using second person will make the piece sound like it’s talking to you. That said, most companies prefer white papers to remain somewhat more formal and will continue to use third person.
7. Vary sentence length. On occasion you may need to use longer sentences. Don’t worry about it. Varied sentence lengths are better than monotonous sentences. Use short. Long. In between.
8. Sentence fragments. Marketing writing in consumer markets has always contained sentence fragments. Used strategically, sentence fragments can make your writing less formal and more conversational.
9. Break grammar rules where it makes sense. Know your grammar, but dare to be ungrammatical. Start sentences with a conjunction and end them with a preposition. Not always. But where it makes sense.
10. Think rhythm. How do you know when to break the rules? It’s all about the rhythm of the writing. The best writing has a musical quality that draws the reader in.

Better writing is a trend that all marketers can get behind. And all readers will appreciate. There are many other tips for good writing. For more, go to the masters: Strunk and White's “Elements of Style,” and William Zinsser’s “On Writing Well.”

What are your favorite elements of style?

Where to Look for B2B Content Ideas

Producing enough B2B content is one of the biggest problems content marketers face today. In my last post, I talked about how to make the most of your existing content through reuse and repurposing.  But there are times when you still need to create new content. In this post, I’ll talk about ways to come up with content ideas.

• Mine your buyer-persona research. When done correctly, buyer-persona research is a goldmine of ideas for content topics. It will tell you the key business concerns your customers face. You can turn a discussion of these concerns and the solution into an eBook, white paper, article, or thought-leadership piece for use early in the buying process. Buyer-persona research can also tell you what the buying process is for your particular product, what information buyers need, and their concerns at each phase. You can then create content to address each of these issues. You’ll also learn about misconceptions buyers may have about your product area or product in particular. You’ll certainly want to create content to counteract those beliefs.
• Create an editorial calendar. Publications always have an editorial calendar. This is basically a listing of all the topics their readers and advertisers care about. Publications use the calendar to make sure they systematically cover all their bases. When the time comes to develop a particular issue, the publication will decide on the particular angle they'll pursue on that topic. This angle might have to do with emerging trends or new products or new outlooks. Marketers should have an editorial calendar that aligns with the areas in which their company creates value. If you’re a technology marketer, your calendar should reflect every area in which you offer solutions. Like a publication, you can look for news, trends, or other value you can add to the topic.
• Internal training and sales videos. The videos used to train the customer-service team on your product details may only need a quick edit to become a useful video blog post. Find out what materials the sales team can’t live without and turn them into an educational article.
• Comments on your blog posts. If you post a blog entry on a social-media discussion forum and request feedback, you may get some good ideas from the comments that you can incorporate into a refreshed version of your post.   
• Tips from Professional Services or Customer Support. Both of these groups have their fingers on the pulse of common customer concerns. Common questions and answers make great newsletter articles or blog posts.
• FAQs to the sales force. Regularly poll your sales reps for common questions. These often make great eBook, article, blog-post, or white-paper topics.
• Industry and world news. Keep up with news and trends in your industry and in the world at large. Think of ways your product or service might address these trends, or how these trends might support the need for your product. If you offer a cloud solution, a research statistic on increasing adoption can help alleviate buyer concerns about adopting your technology.
• Customers. Customer-success stories are always a great source of content.
• Read, read, read. I’ve been writing blog posts and columns in magazines for many years. My favorite way to get ideas is to read widely. I look at everything from newspapers to books to discussions on LinkedIn to other blogs. I find that looking at other people’s ideas is the best way to spur new ideas of my own.

What are your favorite ways to find ideas for B2B content?

Make the Most of B2B Content: Reuse and Repurpose

Most business decision makers today research solutions to their business challenges online. To reach these decision makers, vendors must produce high-quality content on a consistent basis and post it online where it can be found. Yet many marketers struggle to produce enough eBooks, blog posts, articles, social media posts and video to meet customers’ demands.

One answer is to reuse and repurpose existing content. Reuse means taking advantage of the same piece of content by promoting it in many different ways for consumption by as many audiences as possible. Repurposing means taking the content from a particular piece and rewriting it for different purposes.

The following are examples of ways to reuse and repurpose the same piece of content — in this case, an eBook or white paper.

Reuse

• Send a press release. For an eBook or white paper that talks about your original research or your company’s thought leadership, send out a press release with a link to the document over a service such as BusinessWire and post the press release on your web site.
• Website. Post the paper in the resource section on your web site and in sections on your site that pertain to the topic of the paper.
• Research libraries. Post your white paper or eBook on a research library such as TechTarget. Buyers go to these libraries when they’re researching a particular topic and want to find as many vendor resources as possible all in one place. Chances are, your competitor’s papers are already on these libraries so you should be too.
• email-marketing campaigns. B2B marketers often use white papers or eBooks as the offer for their lead-generation or lead-nurturing email campaigns. Beginning-of-the-funnel educational and thought-leadership white papers make great offers for lead-generation campaigns. If you’re doing a lead nurturing campaign for a product with a long buying cycle, create a multi-stage email campaign that takes the buyer through several stages of the buying process, from determining the business need through mapping out feature requirements to evaluating vendors. In this type of campaign, you can use an informational or thought-leadership content as offers for emails that target the early part of the buying cycle as well as buyer’s guides for feature evaluation for emails designed for later stages.
• Social Media. Promote your content using social media. For example, start a discussion on one of your LinkedIn groups on the topic and provide a link to the paper. Alternatively, find existing discussions on the topic and describe the main point of your paper as a comment with a link to the paper. You can also tweet about your paper or describe it on Facebook and provide a link.
• Handouts. Where appropriate, use the eBook as a handout on sales calls or at trade shows.

Repurpose

• Blog posts. Take the content in your eBook or white paper and make it into a series of blog posts. For example, you could take a white paper or eBook entitled the 10 Steps to Litigation Readiness and do a different post about each step. If the topic proves popular, revisit it from time to time, refreshing it with updates you glean either from your own experience or from reader comments.
• Articles. Propose the topic of the white paper as an article to a special interest eZine or magazine.
• Newsletter articles. Use an abridged version of the paper in your company newsletter.
• Target a new market. Revise an existing white paper to address a different role or vertical market. For example, I once did a series of white papers on how document processing automation supports the procure-to-pay accounting process. I wrote a similar paper that emphasized the appropriate messages for the IT department. In another example, I recently took content from an eBook about using workforce management for the U.S. logistics industry and targeted it to the Canadian market by revising the business challenge section of the document to reflect Canadian market conditions.
• Live webinars. Create a live webinar about using the content of your paper. Alternatively, create an eBook or white paper from a webinar.
• On-demand webinars. Record the live webinar and use it on-demand. Post it on your website and use it as an offer for your email lead-generation and/or lead-nurturing campaigns.
• SlideShare. Take the PowerPoint from the Webinar and post it on SlideShare.
• Videos. Create a short video on the topic of your white paper and post it on YouTube.
• Podcasts. Create a short podcast on the topic.
• Tweet quotations. Take a powerful quotation from your paper and tweet it.
• Social media. Create tweets, Facebook posts, LinkedIn updates by summarizing your information in a unique way on each platform.
• Infographics. Take an infographic that you’ve created for your paper and pin it to Pintrest. You can also post a link to this on Twitter and Facebook.

With a little planning, you get much more bang for the buck for each piece of content you create.

How have you repurposed content?

 

Increase Your White Paper ROI

There’s no doubt about it, white papers take considerable time, effort, and money to produce. Luckily, you can get a significant return on that investment if you know how to make the most of your white papers by repurposing them.  

Here are a few ways you can use the white papers themselves or repurpose the content in them:

• Email campaigns—Many B2B companies use white papers as a valuable “offer” for email marketing campaigns. These campaigns might be designed to either generate awareness or nurture leads that are not quite ready to make a purchase. Many B2B buyers are interested in downloading these white-paper offers because they provide valuable information.
• Webinars—Organizations often either base their webinar on the content in their white paper and/or they will provide a white paper as a “Thank You,” providing attendees with a takeaway after the webinar is over.
• Newsletters—Companies often use email newsletters as a way to keep in touch with existing customers to generate add-on sales or to nurture new leads. White papers can be the source of content for newsletter articles. For example, you can condense all or part of the white paper to create a newsletter article and then provide a link to the original.
• Trade journal articles—You can also shorten thought-leadership white papers into articles that can be published in a trade magazine. While the number of these magazines (and often the space in them) is smaller than it has been in years past, trade magazines still exist and continue to provide third-party validation and credibility for your ideas.
• Sales leave-behind—White papers that contain thought leadership or educational content make good leave-behinds for the sales force.
• Website—Because potential customers see white papers as providing valuable information, they’re often willing to register for them on your website, providing you with valuable contact information. (When using this technique, however, it’s advisable to use as short a registration form as possible to avoid annoying people.) 
• Aggregation networks—Many content-aggregation networks, such as the Tech Target Network, provide white papers on specific topics from a large number of vendors. Many potential customers go to these sites during the research stage of their purchase process to gain more information about solutions to their problems. If you want to be found, it would behoove you to go where people actively look for information.
• Blog posts—Use findings from your white paper as the basis for one or more blog posts and then provide links to them.

While white papers can be a substantial investment of time, effort and money, they also pay big dividends in terms of the myriad ways their information can be used and reused.

How do you repurpose your white papers?

Boost Your ROB (Return on Blogging)

Measuring the ROI from blogging is notoriously difficult. Particularly when you’re first starting out, the results can be strictly anecdotal. Nonetheless, blogging can be an extremely valuable marketing tool.

Here are a few first-hand observations on how to get a blog to work and the true value of blogging in building your business:   

· Simply posting to a blog doesn’t do anything. No one is going to miraculously find your blog, even if you use keywords and post it to the various blog-aggregation services. I get some, but very few, hits from these sources.

· Publicizing your blog works. I could definitely do more, but here are a few ways I publicize my blog. I :

o     Post my blog on my LinkedIn profile. Everyone who’s a contact gets LinkedIn updates that include blog updates. Thus, my contacts are reminded of my existence every time I update my blog.  

o      Post my blog as a discussion in my LinkedIn Groups. To avoid angering people on the discussion boards, I’m careful to post only content that will be useful to my readers—I never post blatant pitches about my services.

o     Send links to recent blog posts to my in-house mailing list.

o     Automatically create a Tweet for each new post. 

· Getting someone else to publicize your blog works even better. In several cases, other bloggers found my blog and posted links to it on their site—those third party postings work far better than my own publicity, especially if the blog in question has a bigger readership than mine. For example, when MarketingProfs posted an excerpt of one of my posts along with a link to my site, traffic skyrocketed. Not only that, a number of people tweeted about the post, which further added to my hits.

· Blogs work best at reconnecting with previous customers. People in high tech move around frequently. I may work on several successful projects with someone, and then they’ll stop calling. Inevitably, I find out that my contact has moved on. By publicizing my blog in places where these people are likely to be, I’ve found that they remember me and many of them contact me when they have a new project in my area of expertise. They don’t mention the blog per se, but it’s difficult to believe that it’s mere coincidence that quite a few old contacts reconnected when I started my blog.

· Blogs help turn cold calls into warm calls.  When I am most active on my blog, other sales efforts are far more effective. While no one mentions the blog explicitly, I close much more business more quickly and easily when the blog is active—and conversely, new business is more difficult to close when the blog is not updated regularly (shame on me).

· Inquiries increase. On occasion, new customers that I haven’t approached at all have approached me. I’ve heard that many people do get new business this way, but that seems to be a longer term benefits, say, after six months of blogging, or even longer.

Based on these experiences, the evidence is strong that blogs are effective marketing tools. But blogs only work if you publicize them, and they work best if someone else publicizes them for you. And people only do that if they like your content.   

What business-building experiences have you had with blogs?