Blog Content Strategy: How to Do It The Good, Ol’ Honest Way

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What the heck is blog content strategy? Isn’t a blog already a part of content strategy? It is. But you weren’t listening.

Wondering why there’s a need for another blog post on blogging tips to get results for your business? That’s because most businesses still don’t get anywhere close to implementing them. 

According to Sharon Hurley Hall of OptinMonster in her mammoth post on Content Marketing Statistics, most businesses are intent on getting the ball rolling as far as blog content strategy is concerned.

But most businesses (including bloggers, media sites, and businesses) rarely make it.

Research by The Content Marketing Institute, MarketingProfs, and BrightCove reveals that more than 63% of businesses don’t have a documented content strategy in place. 

Remember that this is just a research sample. 

You and I both know that there are several other small businesses, bloggers, creators, self-employed professionals and others that don’t have anything remotely close to a content strategy. 

Blogging As Content Strategy: It Brings In The Money 

Looking for the best lead generation strategies for your business? Say hello to blogging.  As applied to blogging as content strategy, blogging is the most popular way to generate leads for businesses according to data from OKDork and BuzzSumo.  

Blogging gets you relevant traffic: people who want to consume what you publish. That’s the start. 

Related:

The Ultimate List of Blogging Statistics & Facts  

Then, if they like what you publish, they’ll sign up for more (that’s when lead magnets such as free PDFs, free online courses, other freebies come in). 

As you nurture these leads (or subscribers or fans), they slowly turn into your customers (for life). 

It’s slow. It requires you to plan and implement sales funnels and landing pages. You’ll need to have email marketing workflows. 

It works, and that’s how it is. 

To make all of this work and to really put blog content strategy to work for you, embrace blogging for purpose:

Watch this video now 👇

Read More: 

How to Drive More Traffic to Your Website: Winning the Traffic Race

20+ SEO Experiments To Get More Organic Traffic

Blogging to Connect & Make an Impact 

I wrote how some 22 well-known brands built their businesses from the ground up just by using blogging content strategy. You can also see how a few individual bloggers can shame any business with the quality of content, persistence, commitment, and dedication.  

For a moment, forget about how to use blogging as a part of “content strategy”.

Look at the broader (and much nicer!) picture: Blogging opens windows for potential customers (and existing customers) to connect with your brand. Blogging helps educate, inspire, teach, train, and get closer to your customers. 

Blogging provides a way for visitors & customers to acquaint themselves with your brand (through your content on the blog) even before they consider parting with their hard earned cash. 

Further, blogging — through a varied mix of text, visual content, videos, infographics, and more — helps you create impact. 

However, chances are that you might be doing it all wrong. As Ryan Biddulph points out in post Why Should You Follow Your Blogging Strategy? ,

“Blogging Is Passion”

and…

“Passion Beats Robots”

If you are going to blog as a business, you’d have to be “generous, consistent, patient, trusting, persistent, and detached from outcomes”.

I know businesses want “outcomes” and only “outcomes”. Just that blogging content strategy positions you to teach, inspire, and educate and not just “sell, sell, and sell”.

Blogging For SEO

Blogging is a critical part of Search Engine Optimization. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that the only noteworthy SEO strategy is to publish blog posts.

That’s just how it’s done. (fancy schmancy SEO tricks won’t rock the boat). 

Thousands of businesses — from one-person businesses to large businesses — focus too much on fancy SEO strategies and miss blogging as a part of their content strategy(assuming they have one) completely. 

This is like keeping a monstrous Mustang V8 in the garage, raring to drive it, but knowing that the V8 engine inside is rusting (and you let it rust deliberately). 

Blogging for SEO doesn’t need you to hire SEO experts, create endless cycles of scraping pages, guest posting, or writing 5000 or 7000-word blog posts. 

Here’s what you need: Publishing velocity (with a frequency of publishing you can handle), basics of SEO (but not overdoing it) such as trying to use keywords (again, don’t overdo it), and using simple plugins such as Yoast SEO, RankMath, SEOsurfer, or the SEMRush Writing Assistant to keep you in the friendly neighbourhood. 

Related: 

The Top 10 #SEO Tasks You Shouldn’t Be Ignoring

Make Your Blog a Hub For Other Content Assets 

Think of your blog as the central hub. From here, you’ll lead your visitors to get into your marketing system. 

You’ll sign them up as subscribers for: 

  • PDF checklists, eBooks, Whitepapers, or reports (Use Canva, Visme, or other awesome tools to create these) 
  • Free online courses or free membership tiers (use Thinkific or Podia) 
  • Webinars (use Demio) 

Or you can just have them deep dive into long-form content, tutorials, videos, or live streams available (without even signing up for access) such as: 

  • Link to Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, or other social media platforms for more (lets them interact with your brand without any upfront commitments) 
  • Have your visitors watch pre-recorded live streams or webinars. 
  • Preview or demo your software, apps, or anything else (depends on your business) 

Critical note: Begging for links, sending out crappy cold emails for backlinks, trading links for “links” (reciprocal link) are useless and are a complete waste of time. You’ll never be able to connect these superhuman (but wasted) efforts for ROI unless you are very good with this (most people are not. Further, most small businesses and solo business owners don’t have the time or resources for this)

The concept of other websites linking back to your website was primarily based on “value”. If your content is valuable, or if you are featured, or if you are mentioned, you earn a link. 

Backlinks are best when they are “earned”. Try to find shortcuts and you’ll go nowhere. 

While you blog, you’ll owe it to yourself to check on who’s linking to you naturally, the toxic backlinks you earn (yes, this happens too), and more. 

One incredibly easy way to do it is with SEMRush Site Audits and SEMRush Backlink Analysis tools. You can also use Google Search Console, of course. 

Blogging For Lead Generation 

While many businesses focus on most of the things above (it’s as random as it gets), most businesses forget why blogging is a crucial part of content strategy in the first place. 

You are not blogging to impress your English teacher, to get a Pulitzer prize, or to win a “Who’s grammar is the best” content. 

For businesses (including individual bloggers, creators, professionals, and others), blogging is primarily done to generate leads. 

As you blog, be sure to include calls-to-action in the middle or at the end (or both) of your blog posts. 

Want to find out how to add Calls to Action buttons inside your blog posts?

If you want more, here are some more tools you can use to make this happen: 

Push Satellite Content

Satellite content is all of that extra article pieces and other types of content published elsewhere (yes, it’s indeed a lot of work). Your satellite content could consist of the following:

  • LinkedIn Publishing (publishing articles on LinkedIn. Fresh content. Not just rewrites or direct copies of your existing content).
  • Detailed answers you might post on Quora. While you are here, check out my Quora Ads course
  • Infographics you might publish and upload them on third-party sites or on other blogs (create Infographics with tools like Visme or Canva).
  • SlideDecks you can create and post on SlideShare.
  • Articles you’d write for Medium.

Remember that while you can repurpose your content (and you should), each of these satellite content pieces should be as original as possible (add your own twist, as per platform).

For instance, Quora responses could be more like a simple answer to a specific question.

LinkedIn content could have additional comments on your original post, and so on.

Be sure to link (where appropriate) back to relevant blog posts, guides, or other content on your own blog.

How are you going to implement blogging for business? What’s your blog content strategy like? What do you do blogging for? How will you include blogging as a content strategy to grow your business?

3 thoughts on “Blog Content Strategy: How to Do It The Good, Ol’ Honest Way”

  1. Pingback: Digital Marketing Implementation: Your Grade is F. Back To School | fetchprofits

  2. Hey Ryan,

    Blogging rocks in so many ways, right? Help build a network, get to know your readers (and your readers get to know you), generate leads, helps sell products and services, provides amplification to your personal brand, and so much more.

    I know people who started with blogs and went to write books, publish courses, speak TED events, get featured on newspapers (and journals), and more.

    Thats why, as you put it, it’s important to believe in the journey and the process. It’s amazing what happens if you do it long enough (and good enough).

    Ash

  3. Ash thanks as always my friend. Blogging rocks but few see its power so most skip out on the work, the effort, the energy and time one needs to put in, to do this gig successfully. Blog, guys! Create and connect. You will be amazed at where blogging takes you.

    Ryan

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