Lynne Murray
You know that blogging is an essential part of content marketing, but the time constraints of a day-to-day work load can mean that the thought of slowing down to write a blog, which may not provide you with instant results, can be daunting. This can mean falling behind on what is an essential task – not only does blogging add pages to your website and authority to your overall web presence (if the content is contextual and not plagiarised) blogging increases your rankings in the search engines, which is important for being found by potential customers.
So, what do you do when you need to publish more content but you are running out of ideas? How do you ensure your precious time is spent on a blog that is valuable to the reader and your business goals?
Hubspot published a blog recently titled “How to Blog Consistently without Burning Out.”
The key suggestions to keep up with blogging and to continue to be inspired to write:
1. Read a lot.
2. Write down your blog post as soon as you feel inspired.
3. Get brainstorming help.
These are great suggestions and we definitely agree with Husbpot.
In an earlier blog post they also offer a step-by-step guide to creating a successful blog strategy and here’s what you should bear in mind:
1. Purpose – Why does your blog exist?
2. Buyer Personas – Who are your ideal customers?
3. Competition – Which of your competitors have blogs?
4. Keywords – which keywords are you targeting?
5. Distribution Platforms – Where will you distribute your blog content?
6. Promotion – How will you promote your blog content?
7. Headcount – Who will run your blog?
8. Rhythm – How many blog posts can you commit to scheduling?
9. Metrics – Which metrics matter to you?
When you are blogging as part of your marketing strategy you are doing so with the goal that your reader is interested in what you have to say and gets value from your content. You are also looking for your reader to sign-up for further content which means you can begin to nurture them if they are a good fit as a business lead.
As an example, the 12 points above are essential components of a content marketing strategy. If you are doing content marketing, they will be valuable nuggets of information to help you succeed in achieving your goals. Sign-up below and we’ll be sure to send you more relevant content that will help with your content marketing.
Once you have written your blog you will need a great title to entice your readers. Try this tool. It’s not a blog name generator, but it will analyse your blog title for effectiveness based on common, uncommon, and emotional and power words helping to add some data and reasoning to your blog name ideas.
It’s also good to think about how your blog titles will show up when published via social media. For example, the twitter character limit for tweets is 140 characters, so, to avoid your title being cut-off when posted or shared, you may want to take this in to account and keep within the 140 characters.
If you are still struggling to come up with topics then check out his video on finding inspiration for your next blog post.
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