As part of my day to day activities at Find New Customers, I research the websites of lots and lots of companies. I find typically a Resource Page with eBooks, white papers, webinars, etc. Nice stuff. Sometimes (not very often) they have a decent sign-up form. But there’s a problem.

I’ve never heard of the firm. They’re invisible.

I’ve come to the inescapable conclusion is that the reason they are invisible is their business had no heartbeat. A heartbeat happens continually as long as you are alive. By the same token – marketing in business to business needs a heartbeat too. That’s your blog. Blogs are regularly updated, like a heartbeat.

Buyers are looking for companies with a heartbeat – regular publishers of content. They need to be constantly reminded that your business is alive.  Unfortunately, so does Google and Bing. When they ping a website, they look at how recently it was updated. So that heartbeat is important in search rankings too.

The Problem with Websites

They are static. They rarely, if ever change. I hear people say “Our website is outdated. We need a new one.”

I think that’s a wrong position. Instead, they need to think about publishing daily and weekly – good content that answers buyers questions.

A good, robust blog is updated several times a week – at least. It contains your keywords and links back to your website. It demonstrates to the world that your business is alive and alerts the search engines to your presence.

Seed Nurturing

Jon Miller, VP of Marketing at Marketo talks about the importance of seed nurturing – plant “seeds” all over the internet to make it easy for people to find and engage. Jon is right – a blog let’s you share content, such as eBooks, webinars, thought leadership and more. By continually publishing, your business has a regular heartbeat that prospective buyers see. Your business is alive.

The Importance of Syndication

Another way to show your heartbeat is to syndicate your blog. Our blog publishes to Evan Carmichael, CustomerThink, B2Community, LinkedIn, Facebook and many other sites. By syndicating your content, you are planting seeds for your business all over the internet – seed which, if they germinate, lead right back to your business. Where can you syndicate your blog?

Blog as a Sharing Vehicle

Let’s say you regularly publish content. Webinars, e-books, white papers, videos, etc. How do your share the word about your content? Let’s look at how a blog can help you promote a white paper.

Let’s say you have a brand new white paper, such as “The CMOs Guide to the Crazy New World of Marketing” (the actual title of my next white paper for Silverpop). Do you simply post and pray?

Let’s say instead you sit down with the author and record a video interview with him on the ideas behind the white paper. Then you post those video clips to YouTube and Vimeo.  Next, you can write a series of blog articles about that interview and attach the videos. Those blog posts will be shared with your syndication network too. Bingo! You and your content are all over the internet. Your business is alive and everyone sees you’re alive.

Our Personal Story

While we’d love to update our website, we spend quite a bit of money to update our blog, Fearless Competitor for the New Year. We felt that since our blog is updated frequently (almost 365 times a year), having a professional-looking blog would be the very best way to grow Find New Customers.

Are you ready to show the world that your business is alive?

P.S. In addition to being the President of Find New Customers, Jeff Ogden is a professional blogger who writes for companies such as Silverpop and Aprimo. He is also a professional writer and speaker.

Author:

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is the founder and president of Find New Customers. He also hosts a weekly marketing show, Mad Marketing TV, in which he interviews top marketing experts each week. He was recently named as one of the Top 50 experts in Sales Lead Management for 2011. He’s also a professional writer and keynote speaker. To contact Jeff, please visit him at http://www.findnewcustomers.com or call (516) 495-9350 (office/mobile)

Sources:

• Find New Customers
• Fearless Competitor
• Why Blogging is Important to Your Business