As 2015 continues to march on, B2B companies continue in their search for innovative methods to promote their business through content marketing and connect with potential and current customers. We hear all the time how important content writing is to the process of B2B marketing; advanced technology allows content to continue to be as varied as white papers, e-books, presentations, website news feed, and company blog posts.

Yes, blog posts. What’s that, you say? Your B2B company does not maintain a blog? I suppose you eat your cake without icing, too. How sad.

Icing tops the cake. Whipped or buttercream, fondant or glazed, spread thick and generously on cakes, cupcakes, and cookies-no matter the type, icing makes the dessert personal and catches the eye.

B2B blogs have the potential to be personal, informative, and to bring in new leads if written well. 82% of marketers who blog on a daily basis gained a customer using this platform. That number represents a 25% advantage over marketers who blog on only a monthly basis. Or, in other words, more icing on their cake.

The Content Marketing Institute defines “blogs”, or “web logs”, as a way to offer an easy way to present brief chunks of frequently refreshed Web content…. that can incorporate sophisticated SEO strategies and community-building campaigns. Blogging on a personal level is a way to share family news, favourite hobbies, thoughts on a particular topic, and it provides a format for sharing ideas that may otherwise not reach thousands of readers in a moment. But what about B2B blog writing?

Too often, B2B companies push blogging to the back burner, pencilling it in somewhere between making sales and following up on leads. Staff are untrained in the area of B2B blog writing, which means skills like SEO, social media connections, and keywords are underdeveloped. B2B blog writers do not understand the need for integration into other areas of content marketing, and so the process goes nowhere fast. The company either does not blog at all or ends up with a page that mimics a news feed on the company website.

B2B companies have the ability to use blogging as a way to:

• Increase awareness: With the right SEO and content strategy, your B2B business name has the opportunity to get its name front and centre.
• Develop leads: When you write blog posts with your audience in mind and stay focused on addressing their challenges and solutions, all the while optimizing keywords, you have the opportunity to draw others into your B2B community.
• Maintain communication and share ideas: Share current B2B industry trends, ask questions to increase audience engagement, and gain feedback on ideas. Effective B2B blog writing puts a face to the company, a personal aspect to what can sometimes seem corporate and impersonal.

Forbes recently put together a list of 10 B2B companies with effective and attractive blogs. Take a look at a few of them and see if you are not inspired by what these blogs have to offer an audience:

1. Contently: With blog posts organized by category and a nice clean design, this site is fun to navigate and attractive to readers.
2. Unbounce: Implementing content like infographics and podcasts helps to make this site visually appealing for B2B businesses.
3. Zuora: The personalized pictures appearing behind the blog titles are fun to browse through on this site, which offers helpful advice on technology and commerce.
4. Baremetrics: By incorporating real life scenarios such as financial mistakes and approaches that did not work well, this blog keeps it real and honest. Adding that personal aspect draws readers in and keeps the audience coming back.

If your business has not embraced B2B blog writing, start now. Keep a running list of ideas for fresh content, shape those ideas into solutions for your customers, keep information short and concise, and stick with keywords. Hire in-house, if need be, but train the writer well.

Please do not try to enjoy your cake without icing. You are missing out on the sweet addition to an already scrumptious product.