Are you tired of posting blog after blog and never seeing any major traction? Whether you’re simply trying to gain readership, create customer conversions, or educate other businesses about your company, having an effective blog content strategy can help.
Unfortunately, most people don’t want to tell you exactly how to form a blog content strategy out of fear of creating competition. Luckily, we have the information you need to help your blog become successful.
Yes, it’ll take a little time and effort. However, if you put in the work, you are sure to see your numbers grow! Keep reading for the 6 tips you need to create a successful blog content strategy!
What Are Your Blog’s Goals?
One of the first steps you will need to take when creating your blog content strategy is to identify the goals of your blog. Your goals may include those mentioned above – increased readership, customer conversions, or B2B sales.
Regardless of what your goals are, make sure that they are defined and measurable. If one of your goals is to increase the amount of traffic to your website, include how much of an increase you’d like to see (15% more? 30% more?)
The idea here is to help you remember why you’re blogging in the first place and to give you a way to measure success. Measuring your successes means that you can celebrate when you meet your goals or make changes when you miss them. Having a goal will also give you a better idea of how to frame your topics and calls to action in order to see results.
Who Is Your Audience?
Aside from naming your goals, you need to figure out who your target market is. Your target market and your audience should go hand-in-hand; the people who read your blog are the ones that will help you meet your goals.
While some people believe that having a vast audience is ideal, it can make it difficult to decide on which topics to write about and the voice or tone you use. Having an unspecified audience means that you are pandering to the masses without actually targeting any specific group; this will make readers feel like you aren’t speaking to them directly and is often a turnoff for repeat visitors.
A chosen audience can help you determine which topics are more desirable and engaging; your audience can also help you learn when to schedule your posts based on when they are most likely online. Ultimately, you want to cater blog posts to your audience as they will be the ones who read your content most often.
How to Find Topic Ideas
After setting goals and defining your audience, you might be wondering how to decide what to post. The easiest way to go about this is by doing a little keyword research. Keyword research is basically learning what words and phrases your audience is searching for.
When you learn what keywords your audience types in, you will begin to compile a list of topics based on the popular results. If you build your topics on those keywords and use proper linking within your blog, your site will rank better on search engine results which will ultimately drive traffic.
Create a Schedule
Before you get too carried away and create a ton of content, you need to figure out when you’ll be posting it. Sure, you could just post all the blogs at once, but that will only generate traffic for a short amount of time.
Instead of sharing multiple posts at once, consider placing them on a schedule. Having a content schedule will allow you to share posts on the same day, at the same time each week/month. This allows you to continually generate traffic, allows more people to find you, and will help your readers know when to expect new content.
If you can’t seem to remember to share your content at regular intervals, you may wish to automate your posts. You’ll still have to create content, but blog automation will ensure your content is posted as often as you desire and when your audience is most likely to be online.
Edit Blog Content Carefully
Typos happen. Maybe you misplaced a comma or forgot to capitalize something. While the occasional error will occur, you should avoid them at all costs. Many readers hate grammatical errors and sometimes those errors can cause your content to be misinterpreted, be the cause of complaints, or cause site abandonment.
With this said, it is far better to catch your mistakes before hitting publish. The easiest way to do this is to step away from your work when it is completed, take a break, and return to reread it, looking for any errors. You may also choose to run your work through editing apps that will catch major mistakes (just don’t rely too heavily on these apps because they can sometimes be wrong).
Let Your Voice Be Heard
The chances are high that if you’ve blogged before, you already have a certain style or voice which is apparent in your work. If you’re comfortable writing in this voice and it fits the topics you’re dealing with, use it!
Whether your voice is developed or it’s still a work in progress, you should commit to it once you begin publishing your blogs. Basically, if several blog posts are published in a business or professional tone, you don’t want another one to sound like you’re talking to old friends.
Ideally, your writing style will be similar to the way you speak which will make your content easy to read and far more enjoyable. Even if your tone is meant to be more professional, it isn’t advisable to constantly use jargon or hard-to-understand words.
Being able to use a constant voice that is representative of you or your company will help ensure readers keep returning for your newest content!
Your Blog Strategy: A Reflection of Your Business
At the end of the day, your blog content strategy is a reflection of your business or personal brand. You are trying to build a readership and traffic based on the people who would benefit most from your product, service, or information.
With this said, treat your blog as a valuable asset to your marketing department and use your strategy to help meet your business/brand’s goals. Although it may seem like a lot of work at first, your content strategy will somewhat fall into place and each of these tips will become second nature.