Whether yours is a new IT startup or a well-established company with a regular client base, communication is key to your success. Regardless of whom your audience may be, you want to deliver content that speaks directly to their needs and positions you as the authority in all matters related to your business.
Today, I would like to offer some advice on how to develop and present a technical blog and look at the process from several different perspectives: consumer topics, B2B marketing, and other individual IT pros. There are different things to consider when writing content for each of these audiences. It is, therefore, very important to understand those differences if you want your content creation efforts to net you positive returns.
Developing Your Blog
There are a few universals upon which every good marketing blog is built. You can look at this as our “general” section. These principles apply regardless of you your blog is designed to reach.
For starters, you want to be doubly certain that your blog looks professional and is easy to access and read on any device. This is where a little outside help may be of value. I always recommend running audits on your website for responsive design and SEO, and I further recommend doing this at least quarterly.
If you are using a major blogging platform like Blogger or WordPress, some of these issues are taken care of for you. If your website runs on WordPress, you have access to most key features of its blogging engine already. A professional eye will still be able to spot areas of improvement, and I strongly suggest at least getting a one-time assessment to see how much work you actually need to do on your own to maintain a truly responsive and high-ranking blog.
If you are just branching into blogging on an established site, I also recommend reviewing your hosting plan to be sure that the extra traffic generated by your blog won’t slow down page loads or usurp your bandwidth. Taking care to check the sizes of multimedia files, like images and videos, will also help in this arena.
When deciding how to format your blog, remember that bricks of text don’t appeal to anyone. Present the information in bite-size chunks, and isolate paragraphs with important keywords, phrases, or topics of information to ensure that readers can spot them with just a skim.
Keep in mind that most readers who visit technical blogs are doing so to find specific bits of information, so make it easy enough to spot your key points. Also encourage clicking through to other posts and even other blogs to solidify your message and guide the reader through the process of engaging with it.
Clear calls to action to “tap to learn more” or just hyperlinking specific terms for emphasis are easy and effective ways to steer readers in the direction you want them to take. Do not, however, use hyperlinks on researched keywords, or you risk sending readers away from your site to access competing blogs.
Different Blog Audiences
Now let’s look at the content itself and make sure it is optimized for your distinct audience. The first one I would like to tackle is blogging to consumers, mostly because it is the easiest one to mess up.
Technical thinkers think in tech-speak, which almost never translates well to a nontechnical audience. Be sure that if you are trying to reach a consumer market, you are speaking the language of that market. Limit technical phrasing and explanations to things that are common and relatable. Focus more on the “what” than the “how.”
Explain why a customer might need a specific service and avoid long-winded technical explanations of the process. You can always provide expanded information in a long-form tech article and link to it from your blog post for those who desire a bit more meat to the message.
IT blog writing for a B2B audience is very much like blogging for consumers, except that the focus shifts to solutions that matter to businesses: reducing cost, long-term benefits, user experience, and so on. It is less emotion and more practicality.
Try to shy away from heavy emotional language and keep the conversation centered on why a company should hire you to see after whatever process(es) you manage. This message should be strongly communicated throughout each post, and you should provide as much source material and external links that corroborate your position as possible.
B2B blogging has everything to do with credibility, so demonstrate that you have the right skills, knowledge, and access to trustworthy information. This will help you build trust and demonstrate your commitment to quality.
If your blog is directed more toward peers in the IT community, keep the tone of your posts conversational. Don’t assert having more knowledge or experience than necessary; just provide good, credible information and encourage discussion. This type of blogging should be predominantly conversational in nature and should be used to encourage engagement on the topic at hand.
You can utilize social media for this purpose or simply include a call to action at the end to provide comments or feedback. The goal of this kind of blog is to offer and gain insights on your areas of expertise and network with peers, so steer clear of overt marketing language. Just be yourself, be professional, and start some good conversations.
Final Takeaway
IT blogging can be tricky business. It is not always easy to find the right balance of ideas and presentation for a specific audience.
If you are hesitant to branch into this area of marketing and networking because you don’t feel like you have the know-how to get it right the first time, let me offer this bit of advice: enlist the aid of a professional writer or copywriting agency that specializes in technical writing services. In most cases, working with a copywriter will be an easy, cost-effective solution for developing and maintaining a successful IT blog.
