If B2B companies could only do one marketing activity, it should be blogging. Of course, no company is limited to just one marketing tactic, but blogging should be the marketing hub from which all other activities emanate.

One of the biggest benefits of blogging is the impact it has on your website’s search engine results.

Here’s why: each and every post you write gets published as its own, individual, indexed page on your website. If you think of indexable pages as lottery tickets for getting found online, then each page is a new opportunity to win more chances of the right people finding your site.

And the more pages, the better. According to a HubSpot study, businesses with 400-1,000 pages get six times more leads than sites with 50-100 pages.

But regardless of the number of total pages, companies that blog get 55% more website traffic than those that don’t blog. And, companies that blog get 70% more leads than those that don’t blog.

Blogs are so important that social media marketing thought leader Chris Brogan famously says, “No matter what, the very first piece of social media real estate I'd start with is a blog.”

Having people find your blog through search engines is important and is how most of your first time visitors will find you. However, the benefits really start to accrue when you get visitors to return to your blog and become regular readers.

When that happens, the visitors are much more likely to get to know, like and trust your company. And once that happends, sales follow.

But getting that consistent blog readership can be a challenge.

Social media is an excellent way to share your blog content, but it’s generally only going to be seen when your fans and followers are engaged in social media and happen to see it in the passing parade.

Similarly, RSS subscribers can catch your content, but only if they are using their RSS readers.

Email, however, can break through to every subscriber.

That’s why building an email list of blog subscribers is so important. An email list of blog subscribers is the most surefire way to reach the biggest audience. Blog readership from email lists also yields more consistent and long-term readership.

If the number of your blog email subscribers is increasing, it is one of the most important barometers of your blog’s ultimate success in generating leads and sales.

So how do you get more email subscribers for your blog? Here are four of the easiest ways to get those numbers going up and to the right:

Set up a blog subscription landing page. Optimize it like you would any lead generation landing page. Include a clear, benefit-oriented headline. Show examples of the types of content that readers will be receiving. Include social proof indicating how many other subscribers have already signed up. If you don’t have a lot of subscribers, include a testimonial of some type.
Use calls-to-action (CTAs). This is not to replace or take precedence over your lead generation CTAs. At the end of each blog post, however, include a secondary CTA inviting the reader who has just finished reading the post to sign up for regular updates via email. And don’t forget to tinker with your CTAs – A/B test them for color and verbiage optimization.
Email your existing contacts with an invitation to subscribe to the blog. You already have emails from lead generation activities and even existing customers. Some of the highest subscription conversions will come from your existing email lists.
Include blog content in your lead nurturing emails. Your lead nurturing, while trying to pull the prospect down the sales funnel with other lead generation offers, can also include links to your blog which can then prompt more readership and subscriptions.

One final reminder about building your email list of blog subscribers: frequency matters. According to a HubSpot study, businesses that blog more than once per week add new blog subscribers at twice the rate of businesses that blog just once per month.

What additional ways are you using to gain new email subscribers for your blog?