Great blog content will build momentum with the community if it works as part of a long-term blog content strategy. Depending on the objective, brand core and target group, the necessary measures for a strong performance can be effectively narrowed down.
In the meantime, the majority of marketing decision-makers in Germany have recognized the importance of content for the sales economy. The US-American CMI found in a survey that 81 percent of all companies surveyed in 2016 will increasingly rely on the company blog as a central content marketing measure for their content-driven communication. However, even here only 48 percent of the companies have a written content strategy; the return on investment of the marketing measures of those companies is much higher and puts the marketing efforts of the competitors in the shade.
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The company blog plays in the premier league of content formats, but without a strategy for the blog, the higher-level content strategy is also useless for the company.
The Blog Content Strategy Starts With The Brand Story
The first step and thus entry into a holistic content strategy succeeds with the macro perspective: Which story should the company tell in the long term?
The brand can function as an equivalent to the classic hero to assert itself against the antagonist, the competitor.
The company blog works like a tool for the brand to achieve specific company goals, be it lead generation, increased conversion, or image building.
But as in any good story, the hero’s need meets external challenges; and so the goals of a brand strategy are constantly evolving in parallel with changes in the market environment.
The company must therefore be aware of the marketing offerings of its competitors on the one hand and the constantly changing needs of the target group on the other to tailor its added value from the choice of topic to the tonality.
At the same time, the company blog should pursue a dramaturgical approach to the publication of content, because the company appears as a “narrator” but also as a “hero” of its own brand story.
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A blog content marketing strategy that is based on the overarching brand strategy enables content integrity and an authentic encounter with the target group on an equal footing. After all, a blog lives from the subjective perspective of the operator and the dialogue with the readership.
The Perfect Strategy For The Company Blog
The format of a corporate blog is primarily subordinate to the needs of the target group. The target group is limited by the definition of the communication goals. Whether employees, investors, or clients: depending on which stakeholder the blog is intended to address, its content is aimed either at proactive image building or at increased conversion – for example from reader to lead and from lead to customer.
2.1 Image Building
- A blog can serve as a cultural space for the presentation of a brand and the company.
- The content in the blog is characterized less by its informative content and more by its entertaining character.
- The blog can therefore be compared to an online magazine, which combines various sections, topics, and perspectives on the brand.
- In the form of reports, reports, or comments, the content of a company becomes tangible and tangible for the reader.
The brand receives a face for the target group because it unites stories in the form of storytelling, which links the company’s facts with a personal meaning. At a suitable point, the company’s commercial offers can also be linked to the added value.
However, this should not be exaggerated: Too much advertising quickly makes the blog implausible, harms the user experience, and scares the reader.
2.2 Conversion-Relevant Strategy
A blog is far more interesting for the economic goals of a company if it offers the user high-quality informational use (for example in the form of a specialist blog on the subject of entertainment electronics or a guide for cosmetics), and at the same time serves to link the added value with specific, commercial offers.
The creation of advisory, argumentative descriptions of products as part of the content has a positive effect on the willingness of the user to conclude a purchase.
The following are the most important levers for a conversion-relevant blog content strategy.
Blog Content Strategy: From The Conception To The Optimization Of The Conversion
Goal Determination
- As already explained, the goals of the blog should first be defined.
- With a conversion-relevant strategy in marketing, measures must be taken that introduces the user to the company’s commercial offer through concise positioning.
- The results of the target definition are used to identify the operational measures in marketing.
From Target Group Analysis To The Target Persona
- To convert readers to buyers with the help of content, the needs of the target group must first be identified. This is done by creating the target persona, an archetype of the target group, which is defined through qualitative and quantitative research.
- Based on the company’s brand strategy, the core characteristics of the target group, whose needs the brand addresses, are portrayed and narrowed down.
- The content can thus be created from the keyword to the format and adapted to the attributes of the persona.
Keywords Research
- Based on the results of the target group analysis, the relevant keywords are researched, which address the needs of the target group and offer a framework for the content strategy.
- Ultimately, the goal of blog content as a relevant search result is to pick up potential customers in their customer journey and remove the hurdles for them to deal with a brand, a company, and its offer.
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It is worth taking a look at the keywording of the competition: a keyword-relevant to the company, for which there is a high demand among the target group, but is only used slightly by the competition, offers the company blog the highest SEO success. Long-tail keywords have great potential to position yourself successfully in search results with differentiated content on relevant topics. Keyword tool. and SEMrush Are helpful tools for keyword research.
SEO Editorial Plan
- The creation of a time, form, and content plan for the SEO strategy enables centralized coordination of all editorial processes.
- At the same time, from creation to distribution, all relevant keywords for the content formats should be defined and documented in the editorial plan, which corresponds to the conversion-relevant basic idea of the content strategy.
Also Read : Increase Content Marketing ROI: In 3 Steps To Increase Sales
Conversion-Relevant Content Formats
- The targeted use of competitions, coupons, or online tools in marketing creates incentives for users to leave their contact details – for example, to win them over to a newsletter subscription.
- Likewise, products such as white papers or e-books can be offered for free download by entering the contact details.
- Contact forms in the sidebar or product advertisements below the article enable a subtle bridge between the initial interest of the reader and the needs of the consumer.
- However, the focus of the blog must always be the editorial content: Anyone who advertises too much for something or emphasizes the branding of the company will quickly lose their credibility.
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From the user’s point of view, the added value must predominate and justify the interaction with a brand.
Also Read: What Is Branded Content, Its Goals, And Functions?
Seeding
- When creating content, you should always think beyond the blog.
- Strategic placement of the content in the form of seeding in social media, forums, or even other blogs ultimately generates not only greater reach, but also higher brand awareness and thus higher traffic quality.
Measurement Of Success
- According to the initial objectives, the performance of the individual content must be evaluated. There’s no point in investing a lot of effort into creating high-quality content if nobody notices it in the end.
- To evaluate the content strategy, key performance indicators must be defined, which can be used to measure success.
- This happens on the level of user behavior on the blog as well as on the level of sales-relevant factors such as lead generation through individual content or the repurchase rate from existing customers.
Tips For A Vibrant Blog
A blog content strategy is a prerequisite for long-term good performance in marketing, but if you only concentrate on the content and do not understand how to bring your offer together with the audience, you waste time and effort.
A blog has to reach its target group where it is: on social media, in the blogger community, and Google. Here are a few tips for creating and preparing the blog content for all levels:
4.1 Social Media
The company is not an island, but needs to know what its target group is talking about – also on social media channels: When viral content storms the net, this is a good opportunity to benefit from the phenomenon as a company. From the Ice bucket Challenge to Drake’s “Hotline Bling”: bloggers, Youtubers and Instagrammers have used the attention of the community by placing their content in the context of viral campaigns – for example through hashtags.
Audiovisual formats dominate all social media channels.
Especially due to the increased use of mobile devices, videos are gaining the attention of the community – short video clips for on the go that are entertaining and get to the point quickly.
The YouTube boom was just the beginning. Platforms like Instagram and Twitter are now following suit by creating their video applications.
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Neither selfies nor status messages are asked for by the community. Instead, original content such as self-made memes spreads quickly because they are unique, humorous, and look at topics from a fresh perspective.Anyone who makes the user laugh or offers a valuable “aha” effect will not only be rewarded with more attention but will also receive more traffic to their blog.
If you want to teaser your posts on Facebook or Twitter, you should put all your energy into making the user curious.
On the one hand, social media platforms require a short, concise communication of information, on the other hand, they live from emotional content. Matters in blog posts can become interesting for the target group in social media if they indicate added value to the user through emotionalized promises.
The headline addresses a need of the reader and with one linked informative value-added promise. The reader is left with the feeling that if they don’t read the content they are missing out.
4.2 Blogger Community
Depending on the focus and added value, the next step is a targeted link with other bloggers that are correct and important in marketing to attract increased attention from blog readers with your blog. So it makes sense for individual editors and authors to seek contact on other blogs and forums, ask questions, and provide feedback on the content of individual contributions.
Constructive comments in other blogs with relevant, content-related overlaps profile the authors and build trust with the readers. However, it is important not to place too many links to the company blog in the comment field of other blogs too quickly – too much self-promotion builds a bad reputation and makes the company blog untrustworthy.
4.3 SEO
The SEO trends point to increasingly complex content, which brings the highest traffic for a homepage. An initially good placement in the Google search results is of no use if the created content is so thin that the user already gets his search query answered in the SERPs and therefore does not even have to visit the homepage – a challenge that is posed by Google knowledge Graph has tightened in recent years. Instead, long-tail keywords promise the greatest success for complex issues, provided that the topics are easily comprehensible for the user.
The keyword ranking of individual content in the company blog must be continuously monitored to optimize the blog content strategy at a suitable point: Online tools such as SEMrush or Search metrics enable website rankings to be monitored. At the same time, the performance of posts from the click-through rate to the page views in the blog must be evaluated to improve the conversion in a targeted manner.