Jeffrey Cohen of OurHashtag

I really enjoyed hearing Jeffrey Cohen, the Social Media Manager of Howard, Merrell and Partners, contributing editor of SocialMediaB2B.com, and a partner in OurHashtag at WordCamp Raleigh 2010.

A blog is a way to talk to the people you want to do business with. Cohen told audience members to think like your customers. Think about what types of questions they are asking. Make a list of the top 20 questions your customers have asked and blog about these.

Jeffrey Cohen’s 16 Best Practices of B2B Corporate Blogging:

1. Establish a strategy. It’s about marketing. You should know who your customers
are. You should understand what they want. You should know what you want to
tell them. You need to measure the results.
2. User Buyer Personas. Refining your target audience. The better you can know who your target customers are the better you can speak to them.
3. Use Keywords.  Use topics of interest instead of Categories. (see BreakingPoint.com example, check out the blog nav)
4. Develop a Content Strategy. How are you going to create content? All text? Video? Audio interviews? Info graphics?
5. Create an Editorial Calendar. Think like a trade publication. You want to be the best trade publication that you can be. You want to be the Go To source. (once a week
list the highlights from your twitter stream as a blog post or Facebook or what
other people have written)
6. Find a Voice. Your writing style. Add some personality to your company. Humanize.
A little less formal. People buy from People. They don’t buy from companies.
7. Create compelling content.
8. Follow other blogs. Use Google Reader. A round up of the industry. Put a list of your industry’s blogs in a folder in Google Reader. Talk about what is being posted.
9. Post on a regular schedule. The most important thing. You need to make a regular time in your schedule to work on and write the blog. The spider will keep coming
back on a more regular basis if it sees your blog has been updated with fresh
content each week. Keep in mind the time and day you are blogging. One of the
best examples of publishing on a regular basis is Seth Godin’s Blog. 5 days a week
he posts a blog post.
10. Include Calls to Action. Everything should have a call to action or you shouldn’t be doing it. What is the action you want the reader to take? Example: HubSpot Blog. Great at calls to action. Every post has a call to action. They have calls to action in
the right hand margin. Great resource.
11. Show author photos. You need to humanize what you are doing.
12. Link from Home Page. Have a link from your web site to your blog.
13. Engage with Readers. You are blogging for the long term.
14. Spread Your Content. Social Media.
15. Leave Comments. On other blogs that you follow leave relevant comments. (Blog spam comments. End blog posts with a question to get people to leave comments)
16. Measure Success.

Great suggestions from Jeffrey Cohen at WordCamp Raleigh 2010. You can access Jeffrey Cohen’s entire presentation on SlideShare.

Learn more about blogging and WordPress from the sessions I attended at WordCamp Raleigh:
 Tracy Needham – “It’s Easy to Create Killer Content for Your Blog”

Wayne Sutton – “Using WordPress to Build Your Brand”