The changes in the marketing landscape mean that marketers can no longer rely on ‘time served’ or accreditations and qualifications to establish our credentials.
Yes, experience is a benefit for many reasons, but it is not a testament to knowledge or best practice capability.
The industry is evolving and innovating far too quickly for that. Neither is the size of your budget the impactful element that it used to be.
Today, it’s all about being current, knowing what options are out there (and they change almost daily) and how to best harness them – often at little financial cost – it’s all about the size of your brain – how creative are you and can you adapt to our shifting communications environment?
Digital solutions have provided literally hundreds of diverse and varied options for communicating, some have lasted, some have not, some are loved, others loathed or tolerated. One such evolution that has taken place in our marketing universe is the rise in popularity over the last 15 years or so of blogging. Blogging – a word which strikes fear into many business’ hearts, a word which produces a reaction of total apathy in others and a word which, here at Thrive, makes us bounce in our seats with excitement! We love it and so, by the way, should you!!
Be aware, however, that simply blogging isn’t enough – it’s become a widely accepted means of showing who you are, what you do and, like all things, you need to do it well – it isn’t the mere act of blogging that is important (though actually committing to doing it is), it’s the quality of the content that matters.
And, as with all things that we advocate – if you are going to do it, you need to do it well and YOU NEED TO HAVE A STRATEGY (sorry to shout, but we wanted to make sure that you heard that bit!). Time spent at this point to develop a strategy that plans for high quality, engaging content that drives traffic, builds reputation, helps and shares knowledge pays off in the longer term – remember inbound marketing isn’t a one night stand, it’s a long term relationship!!
From our experience, it’s this initial element that tends to be neglected – for a number of reasons: some are so eager they just want to dive on in, others find the whole concept of strategising intimidating and some just think that ‘rules are for fools’! Whatever you past reasons for not planning and putting some strategic thought behind your marketing activities, we would urge you to do some leg work at this stage in order to give yourselves the best possible chances of delivering the right type of results and succeeding.
Using the questions and information below, you can work your way to a blog-tastic strategy!
The 9 Ws Of A Successful Blogging Strategy
Step 1: Why?
What is the reason for your blog? What purpose is it serving? Think about…
- As a company, what are you looking to achieve by blogging?
- Is this a shared vision?
- Is your team ‘on board’ with undertaking this commitment?
ACTION: Write down a single statement which clearly articulates the purpose for your blog.
Step 2: Who?
To create engaging content that resonates and, ideally, converts, you need to know who you are writing for.
Check out our various resources on ‘buyer personas’ but, briefly, this is all about knowing your audience and adapting your blog content to address elements such as their pain points, their interests, their challenges – all in a language which not only reflects your own brand tone but which is attractive to them too.
Activities which can help are:
- Other blogs and the comments posted on them – look at the type of content your audience is already engaging with.
- Forums – questions and answers can provide valuable insight.
- Social media – groups, searches, communities.
- Measurements of similar content in your sector – use tools such as Topsy or BuzzSumo to see what’s popular.
Why is this particularly important? Inbound is all about creating relationships.
Relationships are based, largely, on trust. If you become a reliable source for the type of information that your customers are looking for, they are more likely to grow and develop their relationship with (and trust in) you, increasing the likelihood of then conducting a transaction (or doing business) with you.
ACTION: Clearly document a profile of your ideal customers (this workbook may help).
Step 3: Who Else?
You need to know what other people are doing and saying online – after all, if you aren’t providing answers, help or information and one of your competitors is, then it’s a bit of a no brainer that your potential clients (who are also their potential clients) are going to have little choice other than to go where the content is and then it’s just a short step from them doing business with them rather than you.
ACTION: Conduct a competitor content audit – look at who is saying what and how they are ranking.
Step 4: Words
In order to get found, it’s important that the search engines understand exactly what your content is – when one of you (potential) customers is searching for information, what phrasing are they using? You want them to be directed to YOU, not someone else – so what is it that they are searching for exactly? If you’ve got a good handle on step 2 above, you need to supplement your research by finding out which keywords it is that they are using – what are they physically typing onto Google?
Once you’ve done this, you need to make sure that these are the words and phrases that you are including in the blogs that you are producing.
WARNING: We have many, many resources elsewhere here on our website about the ever-changing world of Google algorithms – don’t try to be clever by over-stuffing keywords into you content – it makes for dull reading and can, these days, actually work against your ranking efforts rather than for them. Remember – you are writing for humans not for search engines!
ACTION: Create a list of between 5 and 10 keyword terms or phrases that you want to be found for.
Step 5: Where?
How and where are you going to disseminate and distribute your blog content? As we constantly remind our clients, this isn’t a case of publish on a Friday and have people beating down the doors the following Monday! Blogging isn’t just about the writing, it’s about signposting to that content and driving traffic, being discovered.
Doing some (or all of the following) will help your blog to deliver results:
- Promote snippets on social media, making sure to include a link.
- Use a series of emails to promote, again with links.
- Produce the content in a different way and create a SlideShare.
- Translate the data (if it is possible) into an infographic.
ACTION: List the platforms that you are going to use to promote your blog.
Step 6: Waves
You want your content to create waves! Like a pebble into a pond you want to launch it out there but for the effect to last and for its reach to increase.
A great way of doing this is to get noticed by some influential people, to leverage your network or catch the eye of interested parties who will be willing to ‘share the love’ and help to spread the word.
Put some time and effort into identifying who the ‘key influencers’ in your sector/community are. It’s nice to be nice so behave as you would like others to behave – look at their content and, as well as reading it, comment on it, share it, recommend it. Sign up to their email list if they have one and, where appropriate, engage and interact with them that way too. Consciously work on this area of your strategy, devote time to it and expand your network so that you can leverage the collective power of their ‘word of mouth’ going forward (as well as contributing your own voice to their efforts too).
ACTION: Make a list of potential key influencers that may be able to assist in promoting your blog.
Step 7: Wherewithal
By jingo, this sounds like a huge undertaking! Once you have completed your strategy do you have the internal resource to execute it? It’s a very valid question and it could be that this is where you need to call in some blog-tastic support (we’re here if you need us!!).
These are the main elements that you need to consider when planning your resources:
- Keyword analysis
- Facts, stats and examples research
- Copywriting
- Editing
- Strategic continuation, review and monitoring
- Creative input
- Promotional activities
- Repurposing
ACTION: Work out exactly who will do what and when and whether it is achievable.
If needs be, solicit the assistance of a company like Thrive who will be able to step in and take the strain.
Step 8: When?
Blogging is not like the hokey-cokey – it isn’t a case of ‘in, out, in out and shake it all about’!! You have to be prepared to commit to a schedule of events and publishing in a regular and timely manner. You are working to attract regular visitors to your site and with that come levels of expectation. For example, if you have a regular Friday night take away and one week you are looking forward to that delicious chicken chow mein only to find that they have decided to close that evening, you are left feeling a little let down and disappointed. Blogging is similar – you need to have regular content there otherwise what is the motivation for people to come back and visit regularly?
We would therefore suggest that at this stage you create an editorial schedule – and to help, here’s a link to one we have set up for you to download, modify and use.
ACTION: Create an editorial calendar.
Step 9: Worth?
Having done all of this, is it all worth it? How will you know?
Setting goals and identifying metrics in advance will enable you to know what success looks like. There are a number of key issues to take into consideration at this point:
- Any metrics you decide to use MUST be able to be tracked back to a meaningful outcome and, if possible, tie back to your bottom line.
- The period over which you are going to measure needs to be sufficiently long to really allow you to see whether the strategy is working (we would suggest 60 days minimum).
Ask yourself these questions when trying to identify which metrics are most relevant to your business:
- Does this goal help us to achieve our purpose?
- Is it aligned with other activities we are undertaking?
- What indicator will help us most to measure our progress towards this objective?
- Are metrics available and do you know how/where to access them?
Remember, when setting your goals to make them ‘smart’ (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely). There is no exact science involved in assessing your blogging success but having indicators in place will help you to understand how specific metrics contribute to direct outcomes.
Blogs are a great way to attract and nurture would-be clients. If you regularly post information that helps your readers and satisfies their curiosity, you are on the road to success!
