Maintaining a company blog is great for staying connected with customers and attracting your target buyer. Still, just as a ship needs an experienced navigator, your blog needs to have a well-defined path, route, and destination if you are to get the most out of this invaluable communication channel.
Creating a blog content strategy saves you time and effort, and it keeps you from implementing promotion strategies that don’t fit your business model.
Imagine sliding and gliding your way to blogging success, becoming an authority in your industry, and forging genuine connections with your audience. It’s all possible when your blog, company products, and company goals are well-linked. Before sharing another blog post, learn five priceless tips, including defining your objectives, understanding your core content, and creating keyword and topic targets.
1. Specify Your Blog Goals
With a clearly defined goal for your blog, you have a springboard that catapults you over hurdles you’re bound to encounter while creating quality content for your readers. To connect with your “why,” ask yourself a few questions:
- Do you want to use your blog to build your brand?
- Do you hope to attract more foot traffic into your brick-and-mortar store with your blog?
- Do you want to boost sales or find leads with your posts?
- How important is it to educate your audience while they read your blog?
These questions are examples of objectives for your blog content strategy. Try to focus on only one or two goals, as more than that could make your blog feel indistinct.
If you struggle with defining what you want your blog to do for your company, enlist some professional help. An eCommerce SEO agency can help you connect your blog goal with your business goal and company culture to create a blog content strategy that is unique to you. In addition, some agencies offer ECommerce SEO services that include planning your blog content strategy, creating posts, and publishing them on your site.
2. Understand Your Core Content
After pinpointing your blog goals, identify your core content, where the value your company offers, and your audience’s interest intersect.
Core content elevates you beyond building your readership and attracting traffic and makes it easier to deliver helpful content.
Another reason to understand your core content is, so you do not risk creating content that people like but that fails to turn them into loyal shoppers and brand advocates. If that happens, you may watch as blog traffic grows while your revenue remains stagnant.
When your core content guides you, you don’t have to worry about posts becoming too promotional, which doesn’t offer target buyers much value. With minimal advertising in your posts, it’s easier for your target customer to bond with your product or service and reward you with visits.
To connect with your core content, consider using audience research such as email surveys, corresponding with past and current customers, and poring through comments on your company’s social media sites. When you have a better idea of your target consumer’s interests, it’s simpler to write about topics that intrigue them and provide valuable posts.
3. Create Keyword and Topic Targets
A good blog content strategy becomes an excellent one when you account for keywords and phrases. Supplementing posts with popular keywords helps ensure they reach more eyes by climbing the search engine rankings.
Use keyword tools to find keywords you want your business to rank for, focusing on highly favored phrases and words with little competition. Once you have the right phrases and words, please include them in your posts’ image alt text, body, title, and headers. Err on the side of scarcity with keywords, as overstuffing your posts with keywords makes for an unpleasant reading experience but is also considered a black hat technique, which will harm your site.
Try not to let popular keywords dictate your every blog post. If you feel you’ve got a great idea for a topic but haven’t found the right keywords to use, don’t let that stop you from sharing your unique perspective.
4. Use Blog Categories
Organizing your blog helps you maintain your sanity and makes it a breeze for visitors to find what they’re looking for when they visit your blog. Blog categories are advanced-level topics that help your audience understand your blog goals and navigate your site. You lend structure to your blog with well-thought-out categories by cataloging individual posts and sub-topics under various key topics.
Another reason to curate blog categories as part of your blog content strategy is, so you have a reliable way to sort blog topics. Categorizing posts also makes it easy to develop new ideas for future posts.
When brainstorming blog category ideas, think about the products you offer and your core content. For instance, if you sell flashlights, your blog categories may include “tactical flashlights,” “bike lights,” “bike accessories,” and “traffic wands.” No matter your industry, aim to have ten categories or fewer so you do not risk bewildering your audience.
5. Maintain a Blog Calendar
With a detailed, well-designed blog calendar, you build a system that helps ensure you always publish posts on time and only provide excellent content. Aside from post publishing dates, your calendar can also include details about integrating posts with email marketing and social media campaigns.
It’s a good idea to use something other than a basic calendar app like the one on your phone. Instead, opt for calendars with content asset organization, real-time updates, and end-to-end visibility features. For example, if you have different people handling posts, consider a calendar that makes it easy for everyone to see post due dates and share post progress.
Experiment with your calendar until you cultivate a system that works for you and your goals. For instance, you may initially try publishing posts on different days and times of day until you learn when you garner the most traffic. Once you do, set a consistent posting schedule and stick to it.
You deserve to understand how to maximize every resource at your disposal while growing your company and business reach. Trust your blog content strategy to give your target customers another reason to confide in what you say on and off the page.
