How to Write a Manufacturing Blog Post

You make stuff. Your stuff helps people. You want more people to know just how helpful your stuff is.

Start by getting them to your website. It’s the 21st century, so there’s no way around it. Blogging is ideal for driving quality traffic to your website.

How to Select a Topic for a Manufacturing Blog Post

Step into your ideal buyer’s shoes. You have to forget how you view your product or service, and instead look at it through their eyes. What are the:

• Problems they run into as it relates to your offering,
• Issues that drive them to research topics even vaguely associated with your offering,
• Common misunderstandings about materials, processes, etc…
• Big industry news topics
• Keywords that a prospect might use when researching a problem you could help with?

These could turn into a-million-and-one things to blog about, if you have the time. (Check out these insights on researching and organizing your blogging efficiently.)

Make it educational. Make it inspirational. Ultimately, write about things your prospects are seeking answers to, not about how great you are. Over time, potential buyers actively searching for your solutions will begin to view you as THE  trusted source.

How to Start Writing a Manufacturing Blog Post

Remember your English class in high school or college? Yeah, we’re going there…

Start with a Title/Topic

To make the biggest impact with your title (from an SEO standpoint), it should read similar to a search query in Google. The keyword you’re focusing on should be in the beginning of your blog post.

Example Keyword: Corrosion Resistant Metals
Topic: Preventing corrosion on metal parts
Example titles could be:

• Selecting a Corrosion Resistant Metal
• 5 Best Corrosion Resistant Metals
• Corrosion Resistant Metals: 5 Finishes that Turn Corrosive Metals Into Diamonds

Outline the Major Sections

Once you have a good direction for your topic, you need to break it down into bite size chunks. What are the subsections for this topic?

These subsections will form the outline of your manufacturing blog post. Remember, you need an introduction and a conclusion!

Research Any Unknowns

With any blog post topic, there’s bound to be some information you don’t have already. As a manufacturer, you probably have engineers and production folks at your disposal that can give you insights.

When all else fails, Google is your friend. Do some searches for sources. Remember to give them credit with a link back to their information!

How to Format a Manufacturing Blog Post

No reader, at least not one who’s pressed for time, wants to encounter a wall of text. It just looks and feels like it’ll be long and difficult to read.

Write short, easy-to-digest sentences and paragraphs.

Use Headings

Separate major sections of the blog post with headings (extra credit: Use H2 and H3 headers)

Use Lists

Use bullet points to express a series of points:

• Quick ideas
• Hard-hitting insights
• Easy to scan

See what I did there?

Write Concisely, but Don’t Skimp...

Express your thoughts in 500 words or so (something that takes only a few minutes to read). If you’re writing about an in-depth topic, you can write a substantially longer post. Think 2,000-3,000 words.

Use Visuals

The web is a visual medium. Make sure you use at least one photo in the blog post. If you’re referencing information that would make a great visual, find a photo or snap one with your smartphone.

How to Promote a Manufacturing Blog Post

In the longer term, we want Google to find and highly rank our awesome new blog post. Unfortunately, that’s not typically an overnight process. It can takes weeks or months for that to happen.

In the meantime, you should be promoting your blog post through:

• Social channels
• Share once weekly on at least LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter
• Have your staff share your company’s post
• Do this for a few weeks, then take a break from this topic for a while
• Email
• Send your post to your email list - it’s bound to help someone
• Don’t repeat this one within a 4 month period

REPEAT

This is one of the most important steps for success with manufacturer blogging. You have to do it consistently. Week in and week out.

To make this easier on yourself and make sure you don’t fall out of the routine, come up with 12 weeks (1 quarter) worth of topics at a time and schedule when you’ll write each. When you only have 2 blog posts left to write, schedule another 12 weeks.

Picking something to write about is the most common source of failure to maintain consistency with blogging. By planning it out ahead of time, you’re setting yourself up for success.

Manufacturing Blog Posts: 99% Education, 1% Self Promotion

You want to scream from a mountain top: “My product is the best out there!” Rest assured, your competitors want to do the same. But that over-the-top sales pitch - the same one your grandmother fell for when the door-to-door vacuum salesman came knocking - doesn’t work anymore.

Buyers today are smarter. They want to see the value before they even talk to you. So give them value they crave in the form of blog content. Solve their problems. Give them the insights they need.

Once you’ve given them educational value, lead them to the next step. Strategically promote offers like:

• Product guides
• eBooks
• Free consultations

That’s what converts visitors into leads. And even if you’re a smaller company, that’s part of what helps your manufacturing marketing compete with giants.