It’s a valuable piece of owned media that allows a company to speak in a tone different than that used in an article featured in a trade outlet. It also creates a direct path back to your own branded source of content. Sharing posts on social media outlets or referencing a published feature article in a recent post can help lead your audience to your site, versus having them clicking through various, other websites to get additional information on a certain topic.
While posts can have a bit more of a company-centric approach, as well as a more conversational style and tone, make sure they are written with the end user in mind, and that you are providing value to the reader, not just hocking your wares.
Providing insightful, educational and consistent content will gain you priceless authority with potential customers. You’re building a rapport with your readers, who will view your blog as an informative resource that keeps them up to date on the industry, applications, technologies and other relevant topics.
Merely posting your content without a thought to the strategy behind the posts will leave you disappointed. Make sure you understand what your goal is with your blog and how you will measure that success (is it merely traffic or will you have a newsletter sign up to capture leads?). How are you tracking the activity on the blog?
Also be sure you to set a content calendar. Posts need to cover a variety of topics, trends and technologies to account for the modern sales funnel, where people are entering at various stages of the buying process.
Most importantly, set a posting schedule that you know you can maintain. It doesn’t necessarily need to be daily or weekly. It depends on your business, available resources and internal commitment, so start modest and increase as it makes sense.
And optimizing content through SEO best practices will increase your visibility, so don’t forget this often overlooked, yet crucial, aspect when developing a content calendar tied to industry trends, researching audiences to write for or identifying interesting topics for posting.
Consistent creation of useful content provides a steady flow of information, posted in different forms—from written articles to audio, video and graphical presentations. This ensures that you reach your audience with insightful information in the format best suited to them.
These distinct types of content serve specific purposes. Take written posts, for example. Designed to establish thought leadership, long-form content provides you with the ability to dive into technical details or analyze specific issues.
Consumable content, such as short opinion pieces, reactions to industry trends, insights into market developments and product and company news, keeps your audience informed on the latest happenings.
Be sure to include links to additional content assets, such as videos, presentations or application notes, to help position your blog as the go-to place for information.
And because you’ve applied the right tracking mechanisms to your blog (see ‘set the right framework’ above…), you should have a clear picture of the topics visitors are most interested in.
Re-examine higher performing content for use in other marketing avenues, such as in your company newsletter or in social media posts. Not only will brand awareness increase, but this strategy will help you manage the types of content you need to be developing.
Use the highly-ranked content to serve as the basis for other assets you need, such as taking a popular whitepaper and creating an infographic of a specific technical concept or developing a short video discussing some of the challenges that were overcome in a certain aspect of the project.
Marketing budgets are limited, no matter how large or small your business is. Making the most of useful, informative content means the difference between optimizing each dollar spent or squandering away your resources.