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How to Develop a Blog Content Strategy
Having an effective content marketing strategy is crucial for businesses looking to increase their online visibility and drive more traffic. One key element of a successful content marketing strategy is a well-developed blog content strategy.
15 Reasons Your Content Strategy Must Include Blogging
Blogging is an essential component of any content strategy for several reasons:
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You’ll generate 3x more leads via blogs than through ads: Blogs are a powerful lead generation tool that can help drive more traffic to your website and convert visitors into customers.
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Blogging provides 4x the likelihood of being found in organic search: By consistently creating high-quality blog content, you can improve your website’s search engine rankings and attract more organic traffic.
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52% of marketers agree that blogging is the most critical marketing tactic: In a survey of marketers worldwide, over half of them identified blogging as their most important marketing tactic.
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Blogging magnifies your brand: By regularly publishing blog content, you can increase brand awareness and establish your company as a thought leader in your industry.
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Blog posts help build a long-lasting content machine: Unlike other forms of content, blog posts have a longer lifespan and can continue to drive traffic and generate leads long after they are published.
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Your blogs are an opportunity for transparency: Blogs allow you to communicate directly with your audience and build trust by sharing valuable insights, tips, and behind-the-scenes information.
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Blogging showcases your WHY: Your blog is a platform for expressing your company’s values, mission, and purpose, helping to attract customers who align with your brand.
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Google likes blogging as a content marketing strategy: Search engines favor websites that regularly publish fresh, relevant, and informative content, making blogging an effective technique for improving search rankings.
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Short-form content still works well in many industries: While long-form blog posts are beneficial for SEO, shorter blog posts can still be effective, especially in industries where brevity is preferred.
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Summarizing key takeaways helps please your audience and boosts SEO: By providing concise summaries of key points in your blog posts, you can cater to readers who prefer quick overviews and improve your search engine optimization.
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Blogging gives influencers in your niche something to share from your brand: Creating valuable blog content can capture the attention of industry influencers, who may share your posts with their followers, providing valuable exposure for your brand.
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Blogging supports your other content strategies: Blogging can complement and support your other content marketing strategies, such as email marketing, social media marketing, and video marketing.
Step 1: Understand the Customer Buying Journey
To develop a successful blog content strategy, you need to have a deep understanding of your customers’ buying journey. This will inform your SEO strategy and help you prioritize which blog topics to tackle first.
For sales-led organizations, the customer buying journey typically follows eight stages:
- Awareness: The customer becomes aware of a problem or need.
- Research: The customer conducts research to understand potential solutions.
- Consideration: The customer evaluates different options and compares them.
- Selection: The customer chooses a solution and makes a purchase.
- Implementation: The customer implements the solution.
- Adoption: The customer adopts the solution and starts using it.
- Expansion: The customer expands their usage or buys additional products/services.
- Renewal: The customer renews their subscription or repurchases.
However, for product-led organizations, the focus is on acquiring as many free trial sign-ups as possible and converting those users into customers. In these cases, there may be variations in the customer buying journey based on the size of the customer (e.g., enterprise vs. small business).
Regardless of your business model, it’s important to create blog content that caters to each stage of the customer journey to provide valuable information and guidance to your potential customers.
Step 2: Do Your Keyphrase Research
Once you have a deeper understanding of the customer journey, you can start conducting keyphrase research for your blog content. The majority of your new blog content should target keyphrases relevant to the Awareness, Research, Consideration, and Selection stages. The other stages may account for a smaller portion of your blogging strategy.
Use SEO tools like Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, and Mangools to find keyphrases that align with your target audience’s search behavior. Consider the search volume and difficulty scores of the keyphrases to identify opportunities for ranking.
It can also be helpful to conduct competitor research to see what keyphrases your competitors are targeting. Use your SEO tools to analyze their URLs and identify relevant keyphrases to include in your own blog content.
Step 3: Set a Posting Schedule
To maintain consistency and keep your blog content strategy on track, it’s important to set a posting schedule. Determine how frequently you will publish new blog posts, whether it’s weekly, biweekly, or monthly.
Consider the resources available to you, such as your content team’s capacity and the topics you want to cover. Set realistic goals for the number of blog posts you aim to publish in a given timeframe.
Additionally, keep in mind that some keyphrases may require longer-form blog posts, while others may be better suited for shorter posts. Take into account the word count goals for your blog posts to ensure you create a diverse range of content.
Step 4: Choose Your Content Operations Software
An essential part of executing your blog content strategy efficiently is choosing the right content operations software. A content operations platform brings together all the tasks and collaborators involved in creating and publishing blog posts, streamlining your workflow.
With a content operations tool, you can easily brief writers, track progress, review content, and publish it across multiple channels with a single click. Having the right software in place reduces the time and effort required to publish high-quality blog posts.
Ensure that the content operations software you choose aligns with your team’s needs and facilitates collaboration. It should help automate your blogging process and improve overall efficiency.
Step 5: Iron Out Your Monthly Blogging Process
Once you have selected a content operations tool, it’s time to establish your monthly blogging process. This involves onboarding your team and training them on how to use the software effectively.
Create a step-by-step process for each stage of the blogging journey, from ideation to publication. This includes keyword research, topic selection, assigning writers, reviewing content, editing, and scheduling posts. Documenting your blogging process ensures consistency and prevents any tasks from falling through the cracks.
Ensure that your process is scalable and adaptable to the needs of your team and business. Regularly review and optimize your process to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
Step 6: Promote Your Blogs Based on Their Type and Priority
Not all blog posts should be promoted in the same way. It’s important to create a promotion plan that aligns with your blog content formats and categories.
Consider the different types of blog content you create, such as informative articles, case studies, interviews, or how-to guides. Each type of content may require a unique promotion strategy to maximize its reach and impact.
Prioritize your promotion efforts based on the level of importance or urgency of each blog post. Identify channels and tactics to promote your blog content effectively, such as social media, email marketing, influencer outreach, or paid advertising.
Implement a systematic approach to blog promotion to ensure your content reaches your target audience and generates maximum engagement.
Step 7: Have a Plan in Place for Conversion Rate Optimization
While blogging is primarily focused on driving traffic and improving search engine rankings, it’s crucial to pay attention to conversion rate optimization (CRO). Having a dedicated team member or role responsible for tracking conversions can help maximize the effectiveness of your blog content.
Monitor and analyze the performance of your blog posts and campaigns to identify areas for improvement. Continually test and optimize your blog posts to increase conversion rates. This can involve adjusting sidebar elements, changing call-to-action graphics, or incorporating more enticing lead magnets.
By prioritizing CRO in your blog content strategy, you can ensure that your blog posts not only attract visitors but also drive meaningful actions and conversions.
In conclusion, developing an effective blog content strategy is imperative for a successful content marketing campaign. By understanding your customers’ buying journey, conducting keyphrase research, establishing a posting schedule, choosing the right content operations software, ironing out your monthly blogging process, promoting your blogs strategically, and optimizing for conversion rates, you can create a robust and impactful blog content strategy that drives traffic, generates leads, and increases brand visibility. Don’t delay in implementing a well-planned blog content strategy – the benefits are significant and long-lasting.
