How many B2BLead readers are bloggers? Do you have a corporate or company sponsored blog? If so, do you have set goals for the blog?

Chapter 4 is all about blogging. David (I feel like we are virtual friends now, so I’m referring to him by his first name) talks about the history of blogs and outlines a few different ways to use them. In this chapter David tells a story of Alacra, a company that creates online technology and services for financial institutions. The CEO of Alacra said and I absolutely echo the thought, “We didn’t know what would happen, but we wanted to try it.”

This week The B2B Lead turns a year old. In fact, we’re having a birthday party to celebrate. We’ll be sure to share the pictures later this week. Anyway, back to the book…

When we were putting together our ideas for what the B2BLead would be we knew we wanted a place where we could interact with customers and prospects about their day to day jobs as Marketers. This was not going to be a place for ReachForce promotion (although I do try and slip it in every once in awhile). Our goal was to serve up bite size tips and tricks that could be used in our real jobs.

Still not sure how this was going to increase ReachForce awareness or drive more leads, we jumped in with both feet. And much to my surprise, The B2B Lead has taken off. Here’s a few exciting things that have happened to us since launching the blog –

• We have connected with key industry influencers that we’d been trying to reach for over a year.
• We are able to engage with and leverage our partners via joint thought leadership
• One of our tips was picked up for MarketingProfs newsletter (we didn’t pay for this)
• A post about us was ranked #1 on Sphinn
• Provided us an opportunity to be seen as thought leaders in our industry
• As bloggers, we’re building out a Twitter following
• The B2B Lead was added to Guy Kawasaki’s Marketing Alltop list
• Through this book club, David Meerman Scott now knows who we are

In addition to the external PR, we felt like we’re putting great content out on The B2B Lead and we wanted to be able to leverage it in different ways. We’ve now also developed programs around repurposing the stuff out there. Here’s a few examples of what we’re doing.

• We use The B2B Lead content for our lead generation programs.
• We use blog content in our newsletter.
• The blog is now also integrated with other programs, both lead generation and PR.
• We now get net new leads every week from the blog.

Since we tend to share Tips on The B2B Lead, here are a few tips that have contributed to our success.

• Don’t use your blog as another version of your website or a sales pitch.
• Don’t just post boring press releases.
• Humanize your authors, provide some color around them, their experience, what they are going to contribute, etc.
• Good content will take you a long way.
• We try to post at least 3 times a week (usually more like 5 or 6). We don’t want people to forget about us.
• Linking is REALLY important.
• Set goals for the blog and stick to them.
• Don’t be everything to everyone. Know your audience and speak to their needs. It is better to have the right readers rather then just a lot of readers.

If you’ve got a blog, how are you using it? Any big successes you’d like to share?