A Guide to Writing Industrial Blogs: What Manufacturing Content Marketers Need to Know

Industrial blogs are an integral part of manufacturing content marketing. Industrial blogging is an essential digital marketing tool for manufacturers looking to establish themselves as thought leaders and engage with engineers and technical professionals. For manufacturers, creating industrial blogs is a challenge. Why? Because writing effective industrial blogs requires a unique set of skills and strategies.

Whether new to manufacturing content marketing or looking to improve your efforts, this guide will provide the insights and best practices you need to know when writing industrial blogs.

Challenges and the Importance of Industrial Blogging

As a content marketer in a manufacturing company, there are probably a few challenges that you face when creating industrial blogs:

• Technical complexity: Manufacturing processes and products can be highly technical and complex, making it crucial to translate this information into easily understandable content without oversimplifying it, i.e., not dumbing it down.
• Industry jargon: Manufacturing industries often use specialized terminology that may be unfamiliar to your in-house writers. Balancing the use of technical terms to maintain credibility while ensuring clarity for an audience that may include less experienced engineers is a challenge.
• Limited target audience: Industrial blogs generally cater to a small audience of technical professionals and decision-makers within niche industries. Reaching the right audience with relevant content is not easy.
• Engaging content: Unlike other industries, regularly creating engaging blogs that effectively communicate the value of industrial products or services without sounding “salesy” can be a hurdle.

Given these challenges, you probably ask yourself, “Is it worth the time and effort?”

Here are three statistics on B2B blogging that should convince you.

1. Websites with active blogs have 434% more indexed pages and 97% more inbound links than those without. (BKA Content)
2. Companies with blogs produce an average of 67% more leads monthly than companies that don’t blog. (DemandMetric)
3. Companies that blog get 55% more website visitors than businesses that don’t. (HubSpot)

Industrial blogs are essential in a content marketing strategy for several reasons:

• Thought leadership: Blogs provide a way to establish the company as a thought leader. By offering valuable insights, expert opinions, and relevant information, the blog can enhance the company’s reputation and position it as an authority within the industry or niche. You create meaningful differentiations by highlighting and showcasing your in-house expertise.
• Education and awareness: Industrial blogs enable the company to educate potential customers about its products, services, and manufacturing processes. They help build awareness of the company’s capabilities and expertise while offering industry knowledge and informative content. This is an invaluable benefit because younger engineers look to their suppliers to fill their knowledge gap as senior engineers retire and in-house resources become scarce.
• Lead generation: Blogs can be a powerful tool for lead generation. By following a solutions-oriented format, manufacturing companies can attract potential customers seeking specific solutions or information related to their work-related problems. These engaged readers can then be nurtured and converted into valuable leads that turn into sales opportunities.
• SEO benefits: Regularly publishing high-quality blog content helps in search engine optimization (SEO). By targeting relevant keywords, expanding the website’s indexed pages, and increasing the overall authority of the industrial company’s website, blogs contribute to higher search engine rankings and improved organic traffic.

It is not difficult to see how industrial blogs play a vital role in the content marketing strategy for manufacturing companies. Despite the challenges, creating compelling and informative blog content is essential for success with increasing global competition.

Crafting Engaging and Informative Industrial Blogs for Engineers and Technical Professionals

Your manufacturing website is probably already full of content about product features, specifications, and other technical information. These are great and necessary to show that your products meet specifications, particularly useful for Design Engineers who “design in” your industrial components.

However, it is very product-centric content, which doesn’t help in convincing anyone to choose your company over the competition when they have similar, if not the same, product specs. Industrial blogs are the bridge between products and solutions.

62% of manufacturing content marketers are challenged when it comes to creating content that appeals to different stages of the buyer’s journey. (Source).

So, how do you create more content that addresses your audience’s challenges (a.k.a. looking for solutions)?

Start by choosing the right and relevant topics for your audience. This requires research and talking to your sales team to get a good understanding of the questions they get asked by potential customers. Industrial blogs should be more about your audience’s needs and less about you. This is where a good understanding of search intent comes into play. Your blogs should answer their search queries.

Here’s the tricky part, you have to strike a balance between helping and selling. Focus on providing insights, sharing best practices, and offering practical solutions to the audience’s challenges. This will elevate your manufacturing company as a knowledgeable and valuable partner instead of just another supplier. In turn, it will help generate better-quality leads and grow sales. This is how you can prove marketing ROI to higher-ups when it comes to budgets.

Planning and Using an SEO Strategy for Maximum Impact

Organic SEO for manufacturers and industrial companies is more than stuffing keywords in your blog posts. Planning and implementing a solid SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy is essential to maximize the impact of your industrial blogs. By optimizing your blog posts for search engines, you can increase their visibility and reach the right audience of engineers and technical professionals. Don’t go overboard with optimization. Write for your human readers and let the search engines follow.

While discovery optimization (SEO) is related to conversion optimization (CRO), they are not the same. It is not enough to attract visitors to your blog, your content must persuade them to take some action. Passive reading of blog posts won’t help you move the needle.

Don’t rely 100% on organic SEO for your audience to discover your industrial blogs. Promote them through various channels to maximize their reach and impact. One of the most effective channels for promotion is social media, such as LinkedIn and YouTube. Also, consider guest posts and publishing articles in well-known industry portals.

Analyzing and Measuring the Success of Your Industrial Blog

After sharing and promoting your industrial blogs, assessing their impact is a must. Analyzing key metrics shows what works and what needs tweaking, enabling data-driven adjustments to your industrial blogging strategy.

It is more complex than gathering data from Google Analytics on Users, Page Views, Avg. Engagement Time, etc. Those are good top-of-the-funnel stats but won’t help you show marketing’s contributions to revenue. The problem becomes even more difficult because of the long sales cycles and the many stakeholders involved in buying decisions.

The top challenge manufacturing marketers face with measuring content performance is difficulty integrating/correlating data across multiple platforms (48%).

Are you tired of investing your valuable time and resources into creating industrial blogs that fail to deliver results? Look no further. At Tiecas, we have the experience and expertise necessary to ensure the success of your industrial blogs. Let’s Talk.