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A blog content strategy is critical to online business growth in 2023.
Businesses that blog have a 126% higher lead growth than businesses that don’t blog (Neal Schaffer, 2022).
Here are the 8 steps to create an effective blog content strategy:
Now, let’s break it down.
A blog content strategy is an actionable plan to achieve a defined goal using your blog.
In order to create an effective blog content strategy you need three things:
1. Defined blogging goals: we’ll talk more about this in step #3, but your blog content strategy depends on your goals. If your goal is to grow your email list, your strategy will be different than if you want to stand out as a thought leader.
2.Amazing, optimized content: there are billions of blogs on the internet. In order for yours to stand out, it needs to be amazing, and it needs to be optimized. How do you do this? It’s an art and a science. It involves understanding your client’s problems, and solving them better than anyone else. It also requires implementing search engine optimization.
3.Products and/or services that solve problems: for the best ROI on your blog content marketing efforts, you should focus on writing blog posts that position you as the expert, and your products and services as the solutions.
Here are the main benefits of an effective blog content strategy:
There are hundreds of different definitions for a niche on the internet.
At Samantha Digital, we like to think of your niche as who, what, and how of your business.
For example, at Samantha Digital, we help small business owners (who) get more high-quality leads and customers (what) using the latest digital marketing strategies (how).
Before you get started with your blog content strategy, it’s critical that you get clear on your niche.
This will ensure your content is intentional.
Your unique value proposition (UVP) is what makes you different.
Going back to our example with Samantha Digital –
There are thousands of digital marketing agencies that help small businesses.
So, what makes Samantha Digital different?
Why should small businesses want to work with us, instead of any other business?
Why should your target clients and customers want to work with you?
The answer to that question is your unique value proposition.
The UVP for Samantha Digital is our business goal –
Our goal is our client’s business success.
When we work with a client, we eat, sleep, and breathe our client’s success.
That’s our UVP.
If you want to stand out among the thousands of other businesses in your industry, you need a UVP.
Your blog content strategy depends on your business goals.
Ask yourself: what are you hoping to achieve from a blog?
The benefits of blogging go far beyond getting organic traffic to your website.
Blogging can help you grow your email list, increase affiliate sales, stand out as a thought leader, and more.
Getting clear on your blog content goals is essential to define, implement, and assess your content strategy.
For example, if your goal is to grow your email list, then your strategy might include creating an amazing freebie to offer to your readers.
Alternatively, if your goal is to stand out as a thought leader, then your strategy might include more CEO-level content about industry experiences.
Does this mean you can’t have multiple blogging goals?
Of course not.
You can have multiple blogging goals but your strategy will become more involved and more complex.
Our recommendation is to choose your top goal and focus your efforts there before moving on to the next.
Your business’s success is impacted by the market.
That’s why conducting market research is critical for any digital marketing campaign.
To get started with market research, you can start with a couple of Google searches.
Keyphrases such as ‘best <insert industry> provider near me’ and ‘<insert industry> tips’ will help identify competitors and what’s currently working in the market.
This should be enough to get started, but keep researching from there.
You’ll need to keep your findings in mind for the remainder of your blog content strategy.
During your market research, you’ve probably come across words and phrases that are used regularly throughout your research.
For example, in the digital marketing industry, common words and phrases might be ‘advertising’, ‘content marketing’, ‘SEO’, ‘web design and development’, etc.
These words and phrases are the starting point for keyword research.
In order to conduct keyword research, you’ll need to use a keyword research tool such as Ubersuggest, SEMRush, or Ahrefs.
Note: these keyword research tools also offer great features to research your competitors.
The topic of keyword research is broad enough to cover multiple blog posts and will depend on the tools you are using.
For the purposes of this blog post, we’ll keep it simple and say:
The goal of keyword research is to identify keywords that you can write blog posts about to drive organic traffic to your site.
When choosing keywords, keep in mind:
Search volume is the frequency a keyword is searched.
Ask yourself: is the keyword searched regularly on the internet to drive traffic to your site?
For example, if a keyword has an estimated search volume of 10 searches per month, is it worth it to spend your time and resources writing a 3,000 article?
Probably not.
However, there may be a similar keyword that is searched 1000 times per month, which may be worth it.
Search intent is the reason why the user is searching.
Ask yourself: when the user searches for the keyphrase, are they hoping to learn something?
For example, if someone searches ‘best chocolate chip cookies near me’, they are likely looking for a bakery.
However, if they search ‘best chocolate chip cookies recipe’, they likely want to learn how to make the best chocolate chip cookies.
Competition refers to what you’re up against when it comes to ranking a blog post.
If the top results for ‘best chocolate chip cookies’ is Budget Bytes, Sally’s Baking Addiction, and Minimalist Baker, then it’s important to know you’ve got your work cut out for you.
On the other hand, if the top search results are tiny microblogs and forums, your chance to rank for the keyword are much higher.
Once you’ve identified your list of keywords you plan to write blog posts about, it’s time to create your blog content calendar which is simply a schedule of when you plan to publish blog posts.
Your blog content calendar should include the following three things:
1.Blog post title: your blog post title should be click-worthy but not clickbait. This means getting readers to want to click to read your post without misrepresenting what your post is about.
2.Blog post objective: every single blog post you write should have a purpose and should contribute to your larger blog content goals.
3.Publish date: this probably sounds obvious but we need to mention it. A rule of thumb is to publish your blog posts three months in advance of when you are anticipate a spike in searches. To determine peak search volume, check out Google Trends.
Now it’s time to take the keywords you’ve researched and actually write optimized blog posts.
At Samantha Digital, every blog post we write begins with a content brief.
A content brief is a game plan for your blog post.
It identifies the focus keyword, table of content, frequently asked questions, and more, to make the actual writing process a breeze.
Here are some things to keep in mind when writing your blog posts:
1. Each blog post must have a unique perspective. Recycling content from the top 3 results in Google isn’t going to cut it.
2. Each blog post should be optimized for search engines and users. To learn more about SEO, check out our guide: SEO For Beginners
3. Blog posts should be related to your other blog posts, but not be duplicative. The reason it’s important to create blog posts that are related is so that you can establish internal linking throughout your site.
Your work isn’t quite done once you’ve researched, written, and published your blog post.
You’ll also want to promote your blog post on social media.
We recommend choosing one social media platform where you can find your ideal clients and breaking up your blog post into bite sized social media posts.
Now that you’ve published your content, it’s time to analyze performance and adjust.
After all, being successful in business is about continuous learning and improvement.
We recommend using a the free tools, Google Analytics and Google Search Console to analyze your traffic.
Here are some key metrics to track:
Implementing a successful blog content marketing strategy can have many positive benefits for your business such as increasing traffic to your website, increasing sales, and helping your business stand out from competitors.
Here are the 9 steps to create an effective blog content strategy:
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