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Does your content marketing include a blogging strategy?
Blogging is great to use in your content marketing strategy for your business. It’s a non-salesy way to market without having to do cold calling. In fact, according to Hubspot, 55% of marketers say blogging is their top inbound marketing priority.
“Without good content, you don’t get anybody in the hopper,” Matthew Lacroix, Director of Brand Marketing, Newell Rubbermaid (LENOX), said. “Specifically, LENOX’s blog has been a great entryway tool for getting customers into the lead generation funnel.”
Reasons A Blog Is Good for Your Business
- The internet allows you to reach people across the globe with your blog. Even when you’re sleeping. How cool is that?!
- It’s a good SEO (search engine optimization) and marketing tool.
- You can link to other relevant content on the web making you a valuable resource.
- It allows you to cultivate relationships with your readers, prospects, and customers.
- It can be used to funnel people into your email list or sales funnel. Yeah!
- It allows you a way to show up for, serve, and nurture your audience.
- It provides a platform to build the know, like, trust factor which can lead to gaining clients or customers.
- You are more likely to see a positive ROI (return on investment) than those who don’t blog.
Although blogging is great for your business, publishing good blog content can be a significant time commitment. And consistency is key. Something I’ve struggled with myself. But it’s inexpensive and has a long-term effectiveness for lead generation and increased revenue.
One thing I hear from my prospects and clients is they don’t always know what to write about. They run out of ideas.
It Helps to Have a Blogging Strategy
The days are gone when you could slap up a 300-word blog that you quickly wrote and expect a lot of visits. Readers today, along with the Google algorithm, expect more and better. And there are still no guarantees that anyone will read it.
It starts with knowing what your purpose and goals are for your blog. If you’re writing for personal enjoyment, strategy isn’t as important. If you’re blogging for business, strategy is essential!
According to Neil Patel, the average word count of a popular blog post is 1,839. That’s a lot of words. Don’t think so? Go ahead and try to write consistent blog posts of that length.
You’ll eventually run out of words. Trust me…it happens to the best of us. (blush) That’s why I love Hubspot’s Blog Ideas Generator.
Keywords Are Important in Your Blogging Strategy
A keyword is a primary word or phrase for your blog post. Keywords can help your blog post get found and boost higher in the search engine ranking.
Knowing your target market and ideal client well will come in handy here. You’ll want to use words they would use when describing their problems or goals. Think about what they would type into Google to find an answer to a question regarding the topic.
You’ll want to optimize your blog post with these keywords. Make sure they’re used in your headline, sub-headlines, content, and URL of the blog post. Just make sure they appear and sound natural in your content.
More than 90% of pages don’t get traffic from Google because the writer didn’t do their keyword research. Neil Patel’s free tool, UberSuggest, is very helpful for this research.
Using Good Headlines in Your Blogging Strategy
A good headline will grab the reader’s attention and cause them to want to keep reading. Without an attention-grabbing headline, you will lose a lot of interest.
There are several different ways that you can grab your reader’s attention with the headline. But try to think of it from your reader’s perspective. What do they want to know about? What are they curious about? What will they learn from reading your blog?
And please use sub-headlines as well to break up your content. They help. No one wants to read long paragraphs of text all crammed together. No one!
See here on this post how I’ve used sub-headlines and kept my paragraphs and sentences short? Breaking up your text and using sub-headlines to break up your content makes it easier for the reader to keep reading. And isn’t that what you want?
Your Blog Post Content Formula
I already mentioned keeping your paragraphs and sentences short. Make sure your post has plenty of white space to make it easier on your reader. If it’s not easy to read, it won’t get read. Period.
Another way to break up your text is with a bulleted list. It’s easier to read a bulleted list than a long paragraph of things listed. It’s much easier on the eyes and brain!
You can also make your content easier to read by being concise.
- Eliminate unnecessary words and punctuation.
- Always read through your content after you’ve written it and remove excessive words.
- Only one punctuation mark per sentence with a rare exception.
- See what I did there? LOL
Be sure to include both internal and external links in your post. If you have any relevant past blog posts, be sure to link to them where appropriate. And don’t be afraid to link to other blogs as well. Doing so only helps you be more of a resource for your readers and creates more credibility for you.
Another way to break up the text and make it more appealing is by adding graphics. But don’t just steal them from others because then you could get in trouble with copyright violations. You can purchase them or hire me to create them for you. But you can also use Canva to create your own for free.
When creating and editing content, always keep the reader in mind. You want to keep them reading on your website for as long as possible. Think about how you can retain their attention.
Sharing Your Blog Post
After you’ve published your blog post, you’re not done. Now you have to drive traffic to it. This is the “marketing” part of content marketing.
You’ll want to share your new blog post with your email list of course. My email list is always my top priority, and they’re always the first to be notified by me of a new blog posting.
Next, you’ll want to share to your social media profiles. And not just once. Share it multiple times. But in different ways. You don’t want to just repeat the same thing on social.
Try changing the headline. Try one of the sub-headlines from the post. Ask your social audience questions that will lead them to your blog content.
Be sure to add social share buttons to your website so others can share your posts. This can add a little extra traffic to your blog post that you’ve worked so hard to create. And people love to share good content.
Keep in mind that blog traffic is a long-term ROI game. Yes, you’ll get immediate traffic from sharing it, but you’ll also get traffic over time from organic search traffic. That is if you’ve optimized for SEO. But your organic, evergreen content is what helps your blog be successful over the long haul.
You can also run ads or use influencers to market your blog posts. But that topic is for another day. 😉
“Your evergreen content is an ongoing asset and, in many cases, has more potential to perform than a new, unproven post.” ~ Amanda Sellers, HubSpot’s Historical Optimization Writer
Schedule and Publish Blog Posts Consistently
Now that you know how good blogging is for your business, why you should be blogging for your business, and some best practices, start planning your blog posts on a regular schedule. Remember, consistency is key.
Without consistency, your audience can either become overwhelmed with too much content or may think that you’re inactive. You simply must have a publishing plan in place. Having a plan in place will allow you to maintain a posting frequency.
How often you blog is really up to you. Some people blog daily, some weekly, some bi-weekly. I would suggest not going less than once a month at the very least. The important thing is that you are making a commitment to regularly publish quality content. Quality always trumps quantity!
The more you plan and implement, the easier it gets and the more you’ll benefit. So, block out time on your calendar to plan, research, and write your blog posts. Just like you do every other important task.
But if you struggle with knowing what to blog about and don’t have a budget yet to hire someone to help or prefer the DIY method, get this package of blog content templates (enter coupon code: EWLBLOG to save 40%).
Don’t sit at your computer and stare at a blank screen and lose valuable time and leads. Use these easy-to-implement templates and get the guidance you need to grow your audience and create a more successful blogging strategy.
Conclusion
Today, there are over 1 billion blogs. So, blogging isn’t dead. It’s just become more challenging. Having a blogging strategy will help you be more successful with your blog posts AND your business.
What questions do you have about your blogging strategy? Let’s hop on a call and discuss how we can work together and create a better blogging strategy to help you be more successful.