How to Be 3x More Strategic with Your Blog | ProductiveandFree

Blogging is a content marketing strategy that aims to attract and convert customers.

In many ways, it’s more effective than traditional marketing efforts because you can use a blog to creatively expound on topics, establish your expertise, and connect with your target audience on a deeper, more personal level.

The problem is that it can be challenging to consistently publish high quality content especially since it takes a lot of time and effort before you can reap the rewards.

For this reason, I always advise my coaching clients to set blogging goals first. After all, no one wants to put in time and effort for nothing and it’s easier to move forward if you actually know which direction you’re supposed to be headed.

Here are two questions to start.

1. What is your purpose for blogging? Do you want to increase awareness about your products and services? Establish your expertise and authority? Use it to get more leads or subscribers? Connect with your audience?

2. What does success look like? Do you want 100,000 visitors a month? 10,000 shares on social media? 1,000 sign ups to your content upgrade that leads to a 100 sales from your sales funnel?

Next, I suggest creating a blog strategy that serves three different but interconnected purposes:

I. Blog for your target audience

II. Blog for your business

III. Blog for search engines

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I. Blog for your target audience

Since you want your blog to be read by your target audience, it only makes sense to actually make your blog cater to them.

Your blog strategy should focus on attracting and connecting with them by getting to know them, putting yourself in their shoes, and writing for their benefit.

1. What topics are they interested in? What do they search for? And what do they actually click on? These help determine your blog post topics, blog post titles, and blog post descriptions.

2. What is their background and demographics? This helps determine the tone, voice, language, and copy you should use when writing your blog posts.

3. What issues or values do they deem important? What do they prioritize in life? What do they struggle with? These help determine what you both have in common and how you can connect with them on a deeper level.

4. What websites do they visit, books/magazines do they purchase, or shops do they buy from? These help determine how you should style and design your blog including the colors, fonts, and images you use.

5. What type of blog posts do they enjoy reading? This helps determine the type of blog posts you should focus on (ex. lists, tutorials, case studies, etc.)

6. How often do they consume blog content? What time do they prefer to read blog posts? These help determine how many blog posts you should publish each week and what time you should publish them.

7. What are their objections to buying your products or booking your services? This helps determine how you should approach writing about your products or services.

8. What blogs or blog posts have they read before and how did they find them? This helps determine the gaps your blog could fill in terms of providing valuable content they can’t find anywhere else.

9. Which of your blog posts are getting the most engagement from them (shares, likes, and comments)? This helps determine the kind of content you should publish more of.

10. Which of your blog posts are not getting any engagement from them? This helps determine the kind of content you can think of improving or simply stop publishing.

II. Blog for your business

Since blogging is a surefire way to attract and convert your target audience, it also makes sense to create a blog strategy that highlights how your business solves their problems or helps them reach their goals.

1. What do you sell, provide, offer, create, or do as a business? This helps determine the end goal or final step you want your target customers to take after reading your blog post/s.

2. What features and benefits do your products or services have? This helps determine the way you write about your products or services in a non-sleazy and genuinely helpful way.

3. What results have your customers or clients experienced or achieved because of your products or services? This also helps you blog about your products or services in a non-sleazy and genuinely helpful way.

4. What sets you apart from your competition? This helps determine the way you blog about your unique value proposition (UVP) to highlight yourself as the #1 choice to help your target customers.

5. What topics do you know a lot about or have a lot of experience in? This helps determine the topics you should blog about to prove that you’re an expert they can trust and rely on.

6. How does your business continuously improve or stay on top of industry changes? This helps determine the way you write to convince your target customers of your dedication, trustworthiness, and authority.

7. What does your business stand for? What does your business stand against? This helps determine the way you write to connect with your target audience on a deeper level.

III. Blog for search engines

Since the content of your blog is primarily in text format and since your blog lives on the internet, it only makes sense to create a blog strategy that focuses on search engine optimization or SEO.

1. What keywords are your target customers searching for that are related to your business, products, or services? These help determine the blog topics or categories you should consistently and extensively write about.

2. What keywords are your target customers searching for that you are ranking high for? These help determine the pages you should optimize to capture those people and lead them to eventually buy your products or book your services.

3. What keywords are your target customers searching for that your competitors are ranking high for? These help determine the blog posts you should analyze (what makes them successful and what gaps do they have) so you could write better articles to compete with them.

4. Given the keywords you’re targeting for each blog post, have you made sure to include them in your title, tags, categories, images, excerpt, and blog post url slug? This helps increase your SEO (and help you create a blog post template or blogging workflow).

5. Which of your previous blog posts are related to the blog post you’re currently writing? This helps you add relevant backlinks to your post, provide more information to your readers, and of course, increase SEO.

6. Which of your previous blog posts are ranking unusually high in search results? This helps determine what you did well when you wrote and promoted those blog posts.

7. Which of your previous blog posts are ranking extremely low in search results? This helps determine what you did poorly when you wrote and promoted those blog posts.

+ Related post: 5 Website Tips for Businesses

Conclusion

Blogging may take time and effort before you get to reap its rewards but that doesn’t mean you can’t be smart about the process. Identify your blogging goals and create a blog strategy that caters to your target audience, to your business, and to search engines.