5 Reasons B2B Blogs Should Answer FAQs

Once upon a time, having a blog made you the exception. Now, it’s the status quo. Back in the day, bloggers were just digital personalities shouting opinions from their WordPress podiums to anyone on the internet who cared enough to listen. But today, blogging is not just for the DIY crafters and political bashers. Businesses small and large, local and global, B2B and B2C have all caught on to the trend—and for good reason.

As the customer buying cycle has evolved through phases of internet, mobile and social in the past couple decades, businesses have had to become smarter about being present throughout the course of that buying cycle. As consumers continue to consult more sources prior to purchasing and the buying process lengthens, businesses blogs will become increasingly more important in nurturing prospects into customers. This is especially true for B2B marketing where there are often multiple decision makers and influencers researching solutions to their problems.

One of the most effective ways for B2B businesses to approach blogging is to plan their content production in terms of frequently asked questions (FAQs). You’ve probably read FAQs before and found them helpful when making purchasing decisions, but you may not have realized the residual benefits they can provide for a company.

Here are five solid reasons to be using your company’s blog as an FAQ:

1) It’s helpful to your readers

First and foremost, your blog should be helpful to your audience. It should provide some educational value, knowledge, or entertainment with an industry-related focus to draw in readers at the top of the funnel. By answering FAQs, you are helping people find answers to the problems they go online to solve.

2) It saves time for your company

The more questions you can answer on your blog, the less you will have to answer in person and thus, the more time and resources you will save. When prospects call or email with questions, it’s often the same questions that turn up on a regular basis. Direct them to specific blog posts that will answer the question at hand, and make sure they know that other answers can be found on the blog too! Blogging is an effective way to answer FAQs for both prospective customers and current customers.

3) It adds credibility to your brand through thought leadership

Building thought leadership is essential to developing a brand in the digital space. When visitors show up to your blog and see their business-related questions answered for free before their very eyes, you instantly gain credibility and become a source of answers for all other related questions. This is great for the long-term perception of your brand.

4) It’s great for SEO

Consumers are increasingly turning to long tail keyword search phrases as they seek more direct answers to more specific problems—and Google is becoming better all the time at interpreting users’ exact intentions. If you know what questions your target visitors are searching for and you can answer them preemptively in your blog, this is a great opportunity to drive traffic to your site and improve search rankings by optimizing your content with a targeted keyword strategy.

5) It’s an excellent medium for interaction

Your blog will serve as an additional touch point for consumers during the buyer cycle—and this presents an opportunity to interact with them. Blogs become a two-way conversation as soon as comments, shares, and social media channels get involved. This is your best chance to be a constant presence for consumers during the decision making process by providing customized service through personalized interactions.

Now more than ever consumers are going online to find solutions to their problems. If your brand is not there to answer questions their and provide insights, another brand will be. It gets down to the basics of inbound marketing: you need to have the right content in the right place at the right time to draw visitors to your website. Help them instead of selling to them.

All of this can be done by treating your blog like an FAQ section on your website. If you want to learn more about blogging best practices, check out our free Enterprise Blog Post Optimization Guide. Don’t miss the opportunity to be top-of-mind when consumers have questions that need to be answered!

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