When it comes to content marketing, there are many approaches you can take. By creating a blog post strategy, you ensure that the audience stays up to date on the company’s news, as well as any product innovations. Plus, it adds a personal touch and builds rapport which leads to a long cooperation. That is why we’ve selected the most important tips to keep in mind when writing blog posts.
Set a goal
Before venturing into strategy creation and content writing, you need to have a clear goal in mind. Without a goal to work towards, it is likely that your efforts will be in vain – scattered, with no focus, and needing to be redone. So, start with selecting one of the milestones you wish to hit and write towards it. For example, you may choose to raise traffic, brand awareness, or lead generation.
- Website traffic is a measure that essentially counts how many people visit a website. These visits are often called sessions, and your aim is to have as many of those as possible since this is how your ability to attract an audience will be measured. To increase traffic, you can use newsletters, backlinking, and high-quality content to keep your readers coming back, as well as attract new ones. By offering them a useful tool and something to help them with their challenges, you can be sure that they will visit your page again.
- Brand awareness, as its name implies, is used to describe how aware people are of a brand or how memorable a brand is. Having a memorable brand means generating more traffic and leads, which means more profitability. Through posting quality content and useful tools (checklists, comparisons, etc.), you make sure that the brand is recognized and discussed in a positive light. You should also add social media posts to your plan as well since it is more likely a client will run into your article on LinkedIn than they will manually check your page for it.
- Leads are contact information (e.g., emails) and demographic information that helps you build your audience and perfect your target buyer persona. If you’re creating content for the purpose of acquiring more of that information (lead generation), you need to give the reader something in return for these details. For example, you can offer additional material, such as an article, newsletter, or free demo, that can be sent via email. This way, both parties get something valuable.
Prioritize the audience
Another step that should be taken before starting the writing process is keyword research for SEO. You’ve probably heard that you should create content not around what you want to tell people, but around what people want to discover. In other words, you should get your audience to come to you. Keyword research helps you find out what topics your audience is looking for, what keywords they use, what kind of articles they like, and how popular those topics actually are among your audience. So all of this is necessary if you want your audience to find your article, and without SEO to get it to the top of the page, it might end up not getting noticed at all.
But, don’t forget that you’re not writing for Google; you’re writing for a human being. Even when writing the most business formal articles, there is a person sitting on the other end of the screen, and they don’t want to feel like a robot reading words written by an algorithm. Whatever product or service you’re selling, it is that person who is going to make the decision to buy it, and not Google’s SEO system. Keep in mind that your audience consists of real people and not stats and analytics.
If you focus too much on including many clunky keywords, your post sounds unnatural and unenjoyable, defeating the purpose of writing.
Answer a question
Great writers can observe their content from the perspective of the consumer. When you google a problem you’re facing, do you want to see an extensive analysis of every other problem everyone else has ever encountered or just the brief answer you need? B2B marketing blogs should be focused and straight to the point and give your reader a solution to something specific and worth their time. Although content marketing is still marketing and has an aim to achieve, nobody is going to click on a thousand-word advertisement.
Have proof to back up what you’re saying
It is okay and even expected to some extent that you will occasionally play up the positives of whatever you’re writing about. However, there is no excuse for making baseless claims. For example, if you want to refer to a piece of exciting data and include a statistic or form a discussion around the results of a particularly relevant study, you should always link it. Your reader might be interested in reading more about what you’re saying or doing their own research, which you should enable. Furthermore, your expertise may come into question as it may sound like you’re making information up on the spot.
Similarly, if you want to say that a product or service is the best in its rank, it is wise to add a piece of social proof. Social proof can come in various forms, and quotes from satisfied customers are perhaps the most appealing way to go. Not only is a quote from a CEO trustworthy, but it is also a good-looking way to break up a chunk of text. You can also present a case study detailing an experience with a client and then discuss its segments or present the findings from a satisfaction survey.
Whichever way you choose to go when presenting evidence for your claims, do not forget that the audience may not be as well versed in the topic as you. It’s a good practice to use formal and scientific terms and tone in blogs, but don’t spare any details. Explain terminology and jargon, comment on dynamic graphs and charts, and break it up with a joke here and there.
Don’t be boring
No matter how closely you follow any set of rules or advice on content marketing, it could all fall on deaf ears if it turns out bland. But if you make it an interesting and informative read, your goals will practically reach themselves. A good blog gets talked about and shared via natural communication and doesn’t need to rely solely on SEO and technicalities. Think of it this way: would you rather read something recommended by a friend or a sponsored post?
To make your content stand out, don’t be afraid to play around with the form. Here are some recommendations to break up text-only blogs:
- Put a video or image at the focus– you can add any form of media relevant to your topic and audience and then base your text around the discussion, providing comments or explanations on how it relates to the business.
- Do an interview – pick an expert from your field and ask them to answer a couple of questions for you. Make sure this interview is not only about how you got a big name on your page but that it has focus as well. This raises both your and their brand awareness.
- Write a story – stories are more personal and exciting than, say, a market analysis. Occasionally throwing in something to that effect turns your content into a refreshing break from whatever the reader was previously doing – making it memorable.
Conclusion
To sum up, the best way to build your content marketing strategy is to keep it functional, focused, and fresh. Start by setting a goal and reverse-engineering your steps towards it. Rely on keywords, but not too much – remember whom you’re talking to (it’s not an algorithm). Answer specific questions and tackle real problems your audience encounters; try not to be too broad. Keep your tone positive, as long as you can prove that what you’re saying is true, and you can backlink the proof. Finally, don’t be afraid of having fun. Although B2B marketing keeps up a professional appearance, there is no better way to stand out than to be human, and humans prefer being entertained to being bored.
Hybrid Digital is a digital marketing agency that deals with creating highly personalized strategies. We put the clients’ needs and opinions first and help them hit all their milestones in no time.
If you want to write a new chapter of your company’s story, feel free to reach out.
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