Last week I talked about setting up your content marketing strategy with goals, objectives and tactics. Now we’re going to get into the nitty gritty stuff, how do you use your content marketing strategy to inform the blogs you’ll be writing?
Blogs come in all different forms and can be written by you, or hired out. Before you start writing your blogs (or having someone write them for you), think about your goal. “I want to increase my revenue by 10% in the next three months.” What type of value will you give your potential customers by writing a blog for them? And how do you know you’re using your time and money effectively?
Here are a few types of blogs you might use in your content marketing strategy:
- Educational (answering a question your potential customer might have)
- Founder story (why did you start your company? what did you learn this week/month about your business/yourself?)
- Case studies/customer success stories
Which one seems most reasonable to spend your time on if your goal is to increase your revenue? While a founder story might be great to have on-hand, and people love following a journey, I’m most likely going to want to spend my time on something educational. While I’m developing my client pipeline, I’ll begin to pepper in some case studies and success stories.
Keywords and where to find them
Have you ever tried searching something in Google and discovered a forum thread all about it? That forum thread could totally be your blog! If a topic that can help your potential clients is getting a lot of engagement on a forum, there’s probably a good case for you to write an educational blog about it.
Keep in mind the types of keywords your target audience might be looking for, such as “how to launch a content marketing strategy” or “how to automate my podcast marketing.” By thinking of a question that I can answer for my potential client, I’m immediately establishing trust and rapport instead of a classic sales pitch, which most people are very tired of.
Good educational blogs often have screen-shots or real-life examples and tell a true story while solving a problem. Remember, be authentic while you write and let your expertise shine through! People catch on very quickly if something sounds or looks fake. Let’s be the opposite of fake, let’s be SUPER REAL! Like a unicorn! Right? …right…?
In my next blog I’ll talk about using video for your content strategy and give you a few tips on how to produce great looking videos that people will actually want to watch.
