As SaaS marketing leaders, you are consuming content from brands you admire every day. As you navigate the resource section of an industry-leading SaaS brand’s website, you may be impressed by the quality and quantity of content…including a contributed post from a competitor’s CIO. What now?
Mature software companies invest heavily in content teams, including hiring former journalists to pen compelling commentary on the brand’s behalf, as well as accept guest posts from outside authors who can add value to their audience (ahem, your competitor’s CIO). These corporate blogs have become destinations for thought leadership opportunities.
While we all want Forbes, Insider and Wall Street Journal to feature our spokespeople, it’s not always the place to start, especially for a new thought leader. Top-tier reporters often want to see if your thought leader can offer interesting knowledge concisely before requesting an interview. That’s why non-traditional methods of SaaS PR are making their way into strategies, including software company blogs.
What are software company blogs, exactly? Software companies like HubSpot, Drift, Moz and Crunchbase leverage their online platforms (website, webinars, podcasts) to showcase expertise from subject matter experts in industries that map back to their technology.
But how can software company blogs benefit my SaaS PR strategy? Much like podcasts, software company blogs fall into their own PR category. They reach a niche audience comprised of professionals who seek news, advice and learning opportunities about a specific topic.
HubSpot, for example, is a leading customer relationship management (CRM) platform. The company invites thought leaders in sales, marketing and customer service to contribute content and commentary for publication on HubSpot’s blog. It welcomes approximately 8.2M monthly visitors to its site.
We have found that securing coverage on Hubspot’s blog drives referral traffic to our client’s website, partly because it is a highly-targeted audience who trusts the brand’s content. For example, we leveraged executive quotes and data reports to garner interest and secure coverage for our clients in HubSpot recently:
- Executive Quote: Kim Giroux, Director of Marketing at Beautiful.ai, shared her thoughts on the future of content marketing, including the adoption of AI-powered design tools, with HubSpot Blog contributor, Caroline Forsey.
- Data: Data from Litmus’ State of Email Report helped HubSpot contributor Sheryl Green showcase the popularity of email marketing and how to improve an organization’s click-through rate.
Moz offers tools that make SEO, inbound marketing, link building and content marketing easy. The software company’s blog invites industry experts to share their best research, how-tos, insights and advice to help its nearly 970,000 readers improve their SEO and online marketing skills.
Drift, a leading conversational marketing and sales platform, welcomes contributed content and commentary from executives in the sales, marketing and tech industries. Approximately 300,000 professionals visit Drift’s company blog per month.
Our team tapped into a sales professional’s leadership style to secure a byline on Drift:
- Contributed Content: Ernest Owusu, Director of Sales Development at 6sense, shared his top five must-read sales books in a piece of contributed content for Drift.
Crunchbase, an online platform that houses information about private and public companies, shares news and thought leadership regarding technology, sales, leadership and DEI initiatives. The software company’s blog reaches more than 1.2M readers each month.
We leveraged thought leadership and a company announcement to secure coverage for Allego and Ironclad in Crunchbase last year:
- Contributed Content: George Donovan, Chief Revenue Officer at Allego, leveraged his expertise in sales to share his take on using asynchronous video to close the credibility gap with prospects in a byline for Crunchbase.
- Mention: Ironclad’s Series E funding was mentioned alongside some of the biggest VC funding deals among tech startups in 2021.
Software company blogs are powerful, often untapped, outlets for SaaS thought leadership and company news. They can help further your PR strategy and elevate your company’s mission and message by reaching specific target audiences.
Ready to shake up your digital PR strategy and stay a step ahead of the competition? Contact Lindsey Groepper to see how PANBlast can use software company blogs to leverage your company’s thought leaders.