Content Strategy
Before you even begin thinking about what content you’re going to create for your blog, it’s important to take a step back and first think about why you’re writing a blog, what are the main objectives and what resources do you have.
Once you have decided what you’re objectives are you can start to build up your content strategy for your blog. Here are some useful resources to help you on your way:
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/content-marketing/lifting-the-fog-of-the-blog/
http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/content-marketing-blueprint-ht
Content Planning
Now that you’ve created your all-important blog content strategy, it’s time to start thinking about formalising your blog article ideas into a series of schedules that look not only at your longer term plans but provide you with the details of each of these pieces of content.
There are two useful schedules that will be explained in this article. These will help you look at both your macro and micro level of detail for planning your blog content.
(1) Macro Level: Editorial Calendar:
This schedule provides you with an overview of what topics you want to cover and when. It could be as basic as a theme for each month, day or week or it could be a series of recurring features, themes, promotions and news to improve the variety of your content over a period of time.
It’s recommended that an editorial calendar focuses a longer period than just a month (three months to a year would be more beneficial).
(2) Micro Level: Publishing Plan:
This plan takes the editorial plan one step further and provides the detail of each of the content pieces – from information about the content right down to suggested titles, keywords, images and links.
Top Tips
Here are some top tips to help you on your way with setting up your editorial calendar and publishing planner:
- Create a large calendar (paper or electronic) so that you can insert your ideas easily and so that you can visualise the spread and variety of the content in one place.
- Plan how this content will integrate in the rest of your marketing campaigns. Make sure that the message is consistent and enhances other activities.
- Ensure your content supports any promotions or new product/service news.
- Consider the frequency of your blog posts and make a concrete decision on this.
- Determine the keywords that you want to feature in your blog posts to enhance your SEO campaigns by appearing for these keywords in search engines.
- If you are struggling for content for a particular week, leave some room and come back to it. Some of your best ideas will come when you aren’t thinking about it.
- Think about how you can re-purpose any of your current content.
- You’ll need to carry out research for your content. Use facts, expert opinion, state sources and highlight other useful resources.
- Upload and promote your blog across social media channels and other relevant online communities.
- Lastly, before you publish and share your blog post around the online world, consider setting up a metrics report to help you discover how successful your blog content has been. The ideal indicators to track would be traffic and social media shares, comments and lastly how many people have read your post and have converted to a lead or sale (by signing up to an email newsletter, following you on social networks or getting in touch directly)?
At Serps Invaders, we provide content strategy and copy writing services as part of our online marketing services. For a quote or to learn more about our offering drop us an email at hello@serps-invaders.com or call +44 (0)131 208 3669.
