Building a blog in the tech industry is not futile. In fact, having a blog sets your business apart, and makes you more visible in the Internet realm. But your blog should be effective, and not just something put together for SEO purposes. To increase your traffic, your blog should have content that your customers and potential customers want to read and utilize. This is especially pertinent if you’re in the B2B market, trying to attract the attention of businesses. Business owners are more likely to have a higher level of knowledge than the average consumer, so your blog will need to meet their needs. Bottom line: avoid rehashed, generalized content.
So, you know what your potential customer base doesn’t want. But how do you determine what your audience does want? First, you need to understand the types of technology blogging that exist. They come in two distinct forms: news articles and tutorial articles. There are often gray areas between the two, but for the most part, tech blogs will utilize one of these two key concepts in each of their posts.
News articles give readers information about new developments in the technology world. This could be new software updates, hardware announcements, or company news. These articles are meant to be objective ways to educate the reader on a specific recent event pertaining to technology.
Tutorial articles are different from news articles, because rather than teach the reader about an event, tutorials educate the reader on a certain skill. The tutorials can be step-by-step guides for software applications like Photoshop or Outlook, but they can also include more opinionated pieces, like a guide on how to choose a tablet for your business. The tutorial article’s main purpose is to teach the reader how to do something.
When blogging for the tech industry, it’s important that you understand some key information about your customers when determining what to blog about. A company that targets more educated end users, such as business owners, engineers, and software developers, might want to focus more on news-related articles (specifically, on news that affects common business application,s like Salesforce or Microsoft). This type of consumer is often already very knowledgeable about various aspects of technology, and is less likely to read a blog focused on tutorials.
On the other hand, if your business is targeted towards the average consumer, such as low-level employees, “tips and tricks” type articles do quite well. These consumers might not be as knowledgeable about certain software applications or hardware selections, and will be able to learn new things from tutorial-based technology blogging.
Once you know your audience well enough, you will be able to integrate a mix of both types of articles into your blog. Lower end users might be interested in news articles about the next iPhone release, for example. The trick is keeping everything relevant to your target markets’ interests and making sure it is written for the appropriate knowledge level of the reader.
Remember not only to cater to your customer’s interests, but to integrate your business’ services into the blog as well. A managed-service company might write tutorials on utilizing Microsoft Outlook, but also encourage consumers to call them if the consumer needs help setting up his email.
BlogMutt helps small businesses populate their blogs with a variety of relevant topics. Contact us today for more information on how blogging for technology will benefit your business.
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