Setting up a blog isn’t hard but devising a proper strategy in order to drive a specific type of audience towards your platform is a process that holds critical importance. A strong plan clearly reflects in the readership of the blog and the level of its success. This is why it is very important to create a strategy for your blog rather than just randomly updating it without any particular agenda.
A research conducted by Content Marketing Institute clearly tells 45.9% marketers do possess a documented marketing content management plan for the month. A business should absolutely document such processes as they are an asset to the organization. Having a definite blogging strategy and an action plan saves a great deal of time and effort. You won’t feel like you are in the midst of a mad dash.
Where blogging is a variable process and every blogger has a different approach towards it, we would like to share a strategy of our own which actually proved to be really effective for us. It is a very systematic approach towards blogging and is divided into five steps. Let’s begin with it:
1. Planning:
Don’t just start a blog for the sake of starting one. Do it with a proper plan. The very first step in an effective blogging strategy is to plan what niche and particular domain you want to target, and develop a content publishing schedule according to that. Devise a list of actions so you know exactly how you’re going to accomplish your designed plan.
Conduct brainstorming sessions: Conduct brainstorming sessions and come up with interesting topics your audience can be interested in. You can also seek help from the Google trend tool in order to find out the trending topics in your niche. Or even to test the trend of your own ideas. Do not focus on constantly updating the content on the blog in the beginning, rather pay great attention to high-quality content and details.
I realized the need of planning after a few months of my blogging when I was working aimlessly and didn’t actually know what my audience really liked. I thought of planning my content pieces to analyze the behavior of my audience. That is when I truly realized blogging is mainly about planning and strategizing content.
Usually, the common perception of a successful blog is that it updates with 3-4 content pieces every day. But if you’re a newbie then 2-3 content pieces a week would be a good head start. Create an elaborate calendar for your blog in order to manage all the tasks. A blogger is a publisher and content curator at the same time. Manage and plan your blog on a weekly and monthly basis.
2. Researching:
Researching about “why, what and when” of the event you want to discuss in your blog is really important. You just cannot talk about anything at any time with no solid knowledge about it.
Researching involves two things:
- Keyword researching
- Information gathering
For example, if you’re to discuss how quality customer service directly affects the repute and credibility of a business, you’d have to gather facts and figures from all the companies which gained recognition because of their impeccable customer service. Lets say, you intend to discuss Cox communication’s success. This would entail you find out facts and figures pertaining to Cox live chat, Cox pay by phone service, and Cox online payment etc. because it was through such processes that Cox added the convenience factor to the customer experience the company provided.
3. Facts and information research:
Did you know that 50,000 new websites go live with WordPress daily? Yours can only standout among them by carefully and smartly implementing the above-mentioned two factors.
Researching not only involves a search for the topic and gathering authentic facts according to that, but keyword research too. Keyword researching is an important and crucial part of this process.
The most important factor for effective keyword research, which could help you with optimization of your content, is “user intent”. While finding keywords you must think from the user’s perspective. How a searcher will put his query into words to find the desired results. Target such keywords for every topic you choose in order to shape well-optimized content. Using just keywords doesn’t make a content piece SEO friendly rather a balanced blend of informative material and naturally inducted keywords is what makes a content piece truly optimized.
You can benefit from the following guides in order to conduct effective keyword research.
- Keyword research guide by Moz
- Know the basics of SEO for effective Content Marketing
- 12 effective tips for keyword selection
3.5 Billion Searches are made on Google every single day. And Google is filled with every type of information (authentic and inauthentic). You only stand a chance when you produce an authentic, well-researched facts-based article which actually connects dots and links the information obtained from reliable resources in order to increase the level of authority. I cannot stress enough on the importance of incorporating useful facts into the content. Also, do ensure to optimize the content both for desktops and mobile devices.
4. Content Creation:
After planning and researching, putting that idea out in words and arranging the content is a simpler task. Myself and other members of my team save this task for the resting hours when we have nothing to do and have all the focus available to direct to ourselves. I do this usually early morning or late at night. Don’t forget to create a format for the post in order to develop a rhythmic and flowing piece of content.
5. Updating the content on CMS and promotion:
Once content creation from facts and figures is complete, you move to the final step of uploading it to your Content Management System. Updating content on CMS is a simple process but people do miss out on a few small yet important things. Here they are:
- Images
- Inclusion of keywords in the images’ description and title
- Breaking the content into paragraphs (because most readers only skim through the content in order to save time)
- Adding internal and external links
- Optimized meta description and title
Promotion:
After you have updated your blog, the most important step that comes into play is “Promotion”. Promotion of a content piece is as important as its creation from authentic information. No matter how informative and original your post may be, it still requires promotion. Devise an effective strategy for your posts so that your content attracts the attention of as vast an audience as possible. Instead of sharing it only on your social media profiles, which can be automated with several tools available, what else can you do?
Well, on the day of publishing you can schedule multiple tweets throughout the day to increase the chances of your content being viewed by the maximum number of people possible. Here is a little tip: Try to reach out to followers from different time zones. Schedule your tweets so that you can meritoriously reach out to the audience from different time zones.
Another thing you can do is to give credit to all the authors, writers and others who you derive inspiration and information from. This way you’ll certainly grab their attention. And in case they tend to like your content you’ll gain appreciation and recommendations from them.
Email Marketing:
Email marketing is another effective method of promoting your content. Roll out the new features of a service or product to your subscribers. Or in order to build subscription for your email list, curate a few informative guides that would motivate people to subscribe to your blog.
Influencer marketing:
You can also utilize the potential of influencer marketing in order to gain the attention of a greater audience. Ask the influencers to promote your blog on their page, retweet about it or give a review.
Bonus Tip: Metrics monitoring:
A bonus tip here is just don’t do blogging aimlessly rather track all the metrics (shares, likes, engagements, time spent on your article, conversions, etc.) to see the effectiveness of your content. By monitoring these metrics you can also identify what type of content actually intrigues your audience. Interacting with your audience through social media platforms can also help you find out about their preferences.
