Welcome To The Water And Wastewater Blogosphere

Dear water and wastewater manufacturers, welcome to the blogosphere.  Welcome to the new world built on a foundation of impactful communication between buyers and you, the suppliers.  According to CMI’s 2017 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends research, 28% of B2B marketers, now say their brand publishing plan has matured to a point where they can now begin to point to the benefits and return. One of the surprising home run hitters in many of these plans are blogs.  In fact, in that same survey, 52% of B2B companies expect that blogging will be their most critical tactic for achieving success in the upcoming year.

But before you go running to your laptop and start pounding out a blog, let’s pull the reigns somewhat and look at some specifics outlined in Orbit Media’s third annual blogging trends survey, specifically around time spent creating posts, promotion efforts, and performance measurement.

Blogging is now front and center

According to that same blogging trends survey mentioned above, the average blog post now takes over three hours to write (a 26% increase, year-over-year) and the number of bloggers who spend more than six hours on a post doubled in a year. It takes time because it needs to be done right.

Your buyer, and hopefully your reader, expects three things when reading your blog; it has to be accurate, meaningful and entertaining.  It’s up to you to make sure that the blog posts you publish check ALL three boxes.  Prioritize your topics, box out these three aspects and get to work.

Fewer bloggers are going it alone

The majority of bloggers get a second set of eyes on their posts and approximately one-in-four works with an editor or legitimate, market-smart publisher to help write and maintain optimal quality and production standards.  Your content should be professional and well-edited.  Without a professional approach, you will struggle to be meaningful.  

Don’t be afraid to outsource the production.  In the water and wastewater market there are a few industry leaders that write and promote blogs as a service for manufacturers that don’t have the time or the manpower.  It’s a concept known as “shadow blogging” and it’s a rising trend in the water and wastewater market.

Promotion is not just for products anymore

All (almost) bloggers promote their blog posts on social media. Orbit’s survey also found a 60% increase in the number of bloggers promoting their content via email and a three-fold increase in the number using paid promotion to boost blog traffic over the last two years.

What that tells us is that promotion is no longer just for products.  Promotion of meaningful content has also become a necessary step in the process.  Visibility breeds credibility which drives impact.  Find the most influential and accessed voices and vehicles in the industry and use them. If the content is good, they benefit too.