This blog is part of an extensive series on B2B lead generation and revenue growth (and salary growth - the thing that really matters to you).
The content for the blog you’re going to post comes from your permission asset, or lead magnet. We showed you step-by-step how to create this in the following blogs:
- This blog about unique selling propositions.
- This blog about permission assets (where the content for your blog comes from).
- This blog about thought leadership permission assets.
- This blog about case study permission assets.
- This blog about buying guide permission assets.
If you’re reading this and you just want to post any old blog, go right ahead.
But what you’re reading right now is for a lager B2B lead generation strategy. The blog is a small piece of that.
For the parts that come after you post your blog, scroll to the bottom of this blog.
In this blog, you’ll learn why and how to take the content from your permission asset and post it as a blog.
As with the other blogs you read on our website, we outline how people in different roles in your business can get the creation of your lead magnet done easily. Simple steps based on who you are.
There’s a method for owners, directors, and others managing staff at a high level. We call these people Conductors.
There’s a method for sales professionals and others who might be interested in creating a permission asset to help with their main job role. Making this kind of content isn’t their primary responsibility, so it’s done quickly, off the side of their desk. We call these people Curators.
And there’s a method for the marketing manager or marketing generalist or content writer. We call these people Creators.
Just want it done for you? Click here and we’ll get you the leads.
When you have content for your permission asset done, share it in its entirety on your blog.
Creators, Curators, Conductors - this should be the first thing you all do once the permission asset is complete, the landing page live, and you’re ready to start collecting more leads and more revenue.
It is indeed the easiest thing you can do with your awesome, super engaging, incredibly insightful content.
Creators do it yourselves.
Curators assign to your web developer or agency.
Conductors assign this to your in-house Creator, your agency, or your web developer.
Why would I post this whole permission asset as a blog?
Because you limit the reach and value your content can generate by locking it behind a form on your website. And there’s no reason to do that.
But if it’s available freely on my website, why would anybody give me their info to download it?
Do you scour every corner of a website before you purchase or request a quote?
Chances are nobody who sees your content on the blog is going to download it from the product or category page. The same goes for anybody who downloads the permission asset.
And if someone does, they don’t care. Would you? B2Bs sometimes have a tendency to overanalyze the psychology of the prospect. We all have a tendency to find problems where there aren’t any. This is one of those situations.
Collect leads with your permission asset by putting it behind a form. And give your permission asset away freely. You’ll attract leads and make sales via both. YOU CAN HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO!
Bonus benefit
Putting the permission asset on your website as a blog (or blogs) will work some SEO magic and bring more people to your website.
How do you put your permission asset on your website as a blog? The two trains!
There are two trains of thoughts around how to optimize permission asset content on your blog.
Print this blog here and keep it on your wall to reference any time you want.
Train #1 - Blaine the Train
The first one, the Blaine approach, is to create one single monster blog article. It’s best if your content is around 1,500-3,000 words.
In most cases this is what you’ll do whether you’re a Creator or Curator (and what you’ll ask your staff to do if you’re a Conductor). It’s fast and easy.
You take the entire content of the permission asset and get it on your blog.
That means…
At the very top of the blog article lives a table of contents. Every item in the table of contents hyperlinks to an anchor link further down the page.
*Not sure how to create anchor links? Highlight the text further down the page you want to link to, right click, copy link to text, and you now have your anchor link.
The rest of the blog looks exactly like your permission asset (use the same pictures, headings, font, formatting, all of it) with one significant difference. In every section or two, you insert a call to action in the text or in a button that asks the reader if they want to download the full version of the content.
That call to action links to your awesome landing page. The prospect becomes an awesome lead. And you’ve done some awesome work.
In our experience, about 10% of prospects will abandon the blog, give you their contact information, and continue reading the PDF right where they left off on the blog. So if only 100 people visit your blog in the first 6 months it’s posted, that’s still 10 leads you would have missed before.
What’s the value of 10 leads to your business?
Train #2 - Thomas the Train
The second way, the Thomas approach, is also called the hub-and-spoke model.
It’s a good choice if your content is over 4,000 words and you’re a Creator with experience doing more detailed keyword analysis.
The hub-and-spoke model uses separate blog pages, each focused on a very targeted chapter or segment of your permission asset that on its own has search volume, pointing back to a central summary sort of blog.
We aren’t writing this blog to teach you how to do keyword research, but if you use Ahrefs, Moz, or Semrush, this hub-and-spoke model might be worth your time.
Here’s an example of the hub in the hub-and-spoke model:
- Your permission asset is about certified reference standards.
- It has a dozen different headings (or chapters, if you prefer) throughout.
- In your hub blog post, you expand on the intro section of your permission asset.
- Maybe you add some opinions or some sort of data you didn’t include in the permission asset.
- In your hub blog post, you summarize your permission asset and each section.
- If a section was 500 words, you summarize it in 70 or less.
- Then in each summary section you link out to the “spoke”, the full content of a chosen section of the permission asset posted as its own blog.
Here’s an example of a spoke in the hub-and-spoke model:
- Your permission asset is about new commercial-scale electric collators.
- One of the chapters or heading sections in your permission asset is about 12-station collators vs. 24-station collators.
- You know there’s search volume because you checked in your keyword tool.
- So you take the content from that section of your permission asset and post it as a blog - even if it’s 300 or 400 words.
- And here’s the key part - in this blog, you only link back to the hub blog. This way you’re sending signals to the search engines that your hub blog article is the most significant piece of this web of interconnected content.
Probably the most potent superpower of hub-and-spoke is its ability to dominate a specific competitive keyword with the hub piece of content and smaller, long-tail, high-intent keywords with the spokes.
That’s all you have to do for your blog.
The most important thing is getting the permission asset content on a page on your website. If the specifics of Blaine or Thomas are intimidating, start just by getting the blog posted however you can.
That way, you can move on to some of the other fun stuff.
The other fun stuff you can do next includes: