Build Industrial Websites as Dynamic Blog Sites

For most industrial companies and manufacturers, a Website is the centerpiece of their online presence. By now, most industrial marketers are aware of the power of inbound marketing for lead generation. A blog is considered the cornerstone of an effective inbound marketing strategy.

What if you could combine the best of both these marketing tactics? I’m talking about creating a blog site with dynamic content instead of a static digital marketing asset.

Building or redesigning a company Website as a blog site is increasingly becoming the preferred method for many industrial and manufacturing marketers.

Here, I’m referring to an integrated blog site where yourcompanyname.com is the home page of the blog or is in a subdirectory within your main domain such as yourcompanyname.com/blog and not an external blog like someotherblogname.com.   

Advantages of a blog site

• Creating a fully integrated blog site would mean maintaining and updating just one online marketing asset versus two or more. With a built-in content management system (CMS), it is much easier to add new content and pages
• On-site search engine optimization (SEO) is much easier to do by adding new posts using long tail keywords and deep linking to specific product pages within your company’s site
• The value or authority of your domain increases whenever another site links back to the blog that is part of your main domain
• User experience is significantly improved when they can move seamlessly between your site pages and the blog
• Monitoring, tracking and measuring is a lot easier when you use one set of Web analytics for both the site and the blog
• Organizing content in a searchable format is much easier using blog categories and can be set up to offer related content for more up-selling and cross-selling opportunities

The three most popular open-source blogging platforms are WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. Each one has it own pros and cons, so pick a CMS platform that gives you the most flexibilty.

If you prefer your Home page to look like a Website instead of showing snippets of recent blog posts, set up the Home page as a static page instead of the blog. This can be done easily via the Admin panel.

Sometimes it may be advantageous to set up a blog that is separate from your main website. For example, you may want to dominate a specific niche or keyword phrase that is only a small but profitable part of your main business.

Another reason could be that certain custom-built applications such as eCatalogs and product configurators may not integrate easily into a blog site built on one of the open-source platforms mentioned here.

Does your current industrial Website include a blog? If not, what are some of the challenges you are facing? Share your thoughts here.