Strategic Blog and Content Planning: Make your content stand out

There are many ways to develop a highly successful Blogging and Content Production game plan, but coming up with the right balance of content - high quality, consumer focused, and available at the right time - is no game, it's more of an elegant strategy.

Because of our partnership with HubSpot, one of the leading experts in the area of content marketing, they provide us with many helpful hints. These four top ideas, once implemented, will help in you create effective blogs and intriguing content.

1. Build an accurate, thoughtful persona around your potential buyers / prospects: 

If you know your buyer persona, you should know the following:

• What are the problems your prospects are trying to solve?
• What is the title of the person with the list of problems you can fix?
• Where are they obtaining their industry information ... where are they researching?

Once you have the answers to these questions, you should have a few blog titles already developed and ready to go. Remember, you don’t need to write a book for every blog, but lengthier content tends to be more informative and rank higher in search results. In the past, 350-600 words was considered enough to get to the point quickly and answer a question without an in depth analysis. By today's standards, the ideal blog should be somewhere between 1500-2500 words to provide "thorough and educational" information that your prospects will find useful.

2. Identify your buyers/persona purchasing cycle:

Potential buyers have a buying cycle or stage they are in when they identify you (and your information) as a potential fir for their needs. In this stage, you are identifying the solution to the problems for their current situation. Below are four (4) stages of the typical purchasing cycle that will carry your buyer further down the path of finding the answer to their problems. (If you need assistance with this process, we would be more than happy to help. Contact us with your questions.)

• Awareness- prospects are getting acquainted with you.
• Research and education- Prospect identifies the problem and is researching potential solutions.
• Comparison/validation- Prospect examines the options and begins to narrow the list.
• Purchase- Prospect decides whom to buy from and moves to the final stage.

Your content needs to hit each of these stages for them to return, share and appreciate your content, and choose you as the provider of their solution.

3. Map your content:

When you identify the best type of content and channel that works for each stage of the buying process, you are now mapping your content.

Ask yourself:

• What is your buyer’s typical buying cycle?
• When is the ideal time for you to engage?

Certain types of content are more useful and play a better role at a specific stage of the buying process. If your content is strategic, it will be received at a higher level of interest because it addresses their needs and problems specifically, at the right time. Use the four stages shared in step two (above) to create content your prospects will appreciate (and share!)

4. Build an editorial calendar:

An effective way to share and create content is with an Editorial calendar. Google has a free calendar that can be shared and is collaborative. Create and edit the calendar constantly, be the lead on it and invite contributors on your team to add content with their expertise and input. There are plenty of free and low-cost task management applications available online to help you with this process.

In your newly created content calendar:

• Assign buyer personas and keywords to content ideas
• Assign due dates to complete specific posts
• Incorporate Social Media posts for greater reach

We tend to use our Blog post tool within our Content Management System and place them in "Pending and Draft" status to share. We use online tools to check spelling and grammar. Once published, we can also share our blog through our social media sites connected within the HubSpot CRM.

Once your team members begin to contribute, they can go into the calendar and review the content and create additions or begin a blog based on the needs you've researched and identified.

Finally, continue to write content about your prospects' problems and you will gain trust in your market.  

Are you ready?

Would you welcome some help in creating strong content and a project calendar for your organization? Connection Model is focused on helping clients get results through measurable, accountable Inbound Marketing. Contact us today to begin a discussion about where your current strategies are and where you want them to be with our help.