Unlock the Power of Blogging

Blogging Strategy Benefits: 15 Reasons to Prioritise Your Blog

A strong blogging strategy benefits your content marketing plan. It drives traffic, generates leads, and improves SEO. See how the blogging strategy benefits can transform your marketing and deliver long-term results. Search engines drive much of all online traffic, so a well-structured blog can lift your rankings.

The range of content types can feel overwhelming. Even so, blogging stays a key format because it pays off, especially for B2B firms that want to cut their advertising spend.

Developing Your Blog Content Strategy

To build a successful blog content strategy, start by understanding your target audience and aligning with your business goals. This is how you unlock the full blogging strategy benefits. For example, learn how your customers make buying decisions and what they want from your brand. These insights shape your SEO strategy and help you prioritise content.

Step 1: Grasp the Customer Buying Journey

In sales-driven businesses, brand visibility and the sales team fuel revenue growth. There, the customer journey usually spans eight stages:

• Awareness
• Research
• Consideration
• Selection
• Purchase
• Satisfaction
• Retention and Loyalty
• Advocacy

Product-led organisations work differently. They aim to win lots of free trial sign-ups and turn those users into paying customers with little sales input, which maximises blogging strategy benefits. Some enterprise customers still follow the traditional cycle. Smaller businesses often move through these stages faster.

Whatever your revenue model, create content that addresses each stage of your ideal customer's journey.

Step 2: Conduct Keyphrase Research

Once you understand the customer journey, move on to keyphrase research.

Your new blog content should mostly cover the Awareness, Research, Consideration, and Selection stages. The other stages may take up 10-15% of your blogging efforts.

Use SEO tools such as Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, and Mangools to find keyphrases with good search volumes and difficulty scores. Target both highly competitive and less competitive keyphrases across every stage of the buying cycle.

Competitor analysis helps too. Put your competitors' URLs into SEO tools to see their ranking keyphrases. Then add relevant terms to your own list. Use these keyphrases to write compelling headlines. For example, turn "content marketing plan" into "How to Create a Content Marketing Plan That Generates Leads."

Step 3: Establish a Posting Schedule

If you don't already have a content calendar or editorial calendar, set up a blogging schedule that fits your resources. Set goals for the number of posts per week or month.

Some keyphrases need long-form content, so set word count goals too. Say your target is 10,000 words per month. You might schedule three posts of 3,500 words one month and five posts of 2,000 words the next.

Clear content goals keep your blogging consistent. You won't wait around for free time to appear.

Step 4: Select Your Content Operations Software

Running a blog without dedicated content operations software is hard work. Without the right platform, briefing writers, keeping a content calendar, tracking progress, reviewing drafts, and publishing all become scattered and slow.

A content operations platform brings these tasks and people together in one place, which boosts your blogging strategy benefits. When content is ready, you can publish and distribute it across channels with a single click.

Step 5: Optimise Your Monthly Blogging Process

Once you've chosen a content operations platform, setting up your blogging process gets much easier. Make sure your team is trained to use the software well.

Here's an example of a streamlined blogging process:

• The content manager briefs a freelance writer using Byter.
• The writer completes the blog in Byter, conducts keyword research with SEO and readability tools, and submits it for approval.
• The content manager reviews and approves the blog, schedules it for publication in the CMS, and plans corresponding social media posts.

Without a content operations platform, this process gets more complex and delivers fewer blogging strategy benefits. So it pays to pick the right software before you map out your process.

Step 6: Tailor Blog Promotion Strategies

Your blog content strategy should cover promotion too. Not every post should be promoted the same way.

Build separate promotion plans for different types of blogs. Here are some strategies:

• SEO Mega Guides: Focus on keyword research and link building to enhance search engine authority. Promote these guides on social media with an evergreen posting strategy, such as monthly or bi-monthly posts.
• Customer Stories: Share these via email with potential customers, encourage sales representatives to promote them on social media, and consider running paid social media ads.
• Expert Roundups: Distribute these on all social media platforms, tagging participants, and create micro-content (like infographics or short videos) to repurpose on social media.

Look at the format and category of each piece, then build a tailored promotion plan for each type.

Step 7: Implement Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)

SEO is a primary focus for blogging, but don't neglect conversion rate optimisation (CRO). Give one team member the job of monitoring and improving conversions.

Track key metrics for blog posts and campaigns, such as:

• Email subscriptions
• New trial sign-ups
• Lead magnet downloads
• Demo requests
• Closed deals

Keep refining the conversion rate of your blog posts. Adjust elements such as sidebar content, CTA graphics, and lead magnets to improve engagement and results.

Blogging Strategy Benefits: 15 Reasons Your Content Strategy Should Prioritise Blogging

Still on the fence about blogging? Here are 15 compelling reasons a blog is not just helpful but essential to your content strategy.

1. Blogs Generate Three Times More Leads Than Ads

Done well, a content marketing strategy built around blogging beats the short-term gains of paid search ads. Research shows blogs can generate up to three times more leads than advertisements. So why overspend on ads when you can put that effort into great content?

2. Boost Your Website Traffic and Enhance SEO

Blogging is a powerful way to drive traffic to your website, through both social media and SEO. Regular posts give users a reason to come back, which strengthens your online presence. Use our Content Writing Checklist to optimise every post for maximum impact.

3. Increase Your Visibility in Organic Search by Fourfold

A high-quality blog greatly improves your chances of ranking well in organic search, a clear example of the blogging strategy benefits. Companies with active blogs are four times more likely to appear prominently in search results and secure 97% more inbound links. These links raise your domain authority, which lifts the ranking of all your future content.

4. Blogging is Considered the Top Marketing Tactic by 52% of Marketers

In a recent survey of 2,562 content marketers, 52% ranked blogging as their most crucial tactic. That beats email marketing and social media, rated critical by 40% of marketers, and video, which only 30% saw as essential. With so many content marketing tactics to choose from, blogging's top spot shows its lasting power.

5. Amplify Your Brand’s Presence

A well-kept blog is a platform to reflect and reinforce your brand. Drift's blog, for example, aligns perfectly with their brand identity. Blogging attracts organic traffic and strengthens your brand across every content-sharing channel.

6. Build a Sustainable Content Machine

Blogs can become a long-lasting content engine. Hubspot's blog proves it, drawing over a million visits through organic search. Keeping a blog's SEO performance up takes effort. Still, blogs tend to last longer than other marketing strategies. Regular updates and optimisations keep your content relevant.

7. Foster Transparency Through Blogging

Blogs give you a chance for transparency and honest communication. Take a cue from Buffer, known for its openness. Use your blog to share your company's core values and experiences. This authenticity helps build a loyal community and earns your audience's trust.

8. Highlight Your Brand’s Purpose

Every brand has a purpose behind what it offers. Your blog can showcase your passion and your commitment to solving specific problems. Use it for thought leadership, customer interviews, and other content that highlights your brand's mission and values.

9. Google Favors Blogs for SEO

Google prefers longer blog posts. They tend to attract relevant backlinks and work as evergreen content. Longer posts also keep readers engaged for longer, which boosts your site's credibility. As a result, long-form content is growing more popular among bloggers.

10. Short-Form Content Remains Effective

Long-form content excels at SEO, but short-form content still has value in many industries. Concise posts of 500 words or fewer can work well, especially in B2C sectors or where visual content dominates.

11. Use Summaries to Enhance Readability and SEO

Adding summaries, or TLDR sections, to your posts serves readers who are short on time and helps your SEO. Summaries give a quick overview of the content. They also create extra chances to include long-tail keywords.

12. Blogging is a Long-Term Strategy

Despite many predictions, blogging is still a viable, effective long-term strategy that keeps delivering blogging strategy benefits. Consistent blogging builds thought leadership and credibility over time. Inbound links become a valuable asset to your content's success.

13. Provide Shareable Content for Influencers

Blogging gives influencers in your niche valuable content to share, which expands your reach. When you create engaging, shareable content, you tap into their audiences and raise your brand's visibility.

14. Blogging is Cost-Effective

Blogging is one of the most affordable content strategies around. Whether you use free platforms or invest in high-quality tools, it's a cost-effective way to drive traffic and repurpose content. Next to videos or webinars, blogging is both manageable and economical.

15. Support Your Other Content Strategies

Think of your blog as the central hub of your content strategy. It supports and connects other formats, such as podcasts and YouTube videos. Embed videos in your posts or share other content types on your blog. This pulls your strategy together and maximises its impact.

Measuring the Success of Your Blog Content Strategy

The content operations software you choose should include features to monitor and evaluate your blog's performance, so you get the most from your blogging strategy benefits. Pair these analytics with SEO tools for a full view of how your blog performs in search and social media.

Focus on assessing:

• Campaign performance
• Channel effectiveness
• Individual blog posts
• Search rankings

Reviewing these areas shows you which channels, campaigns, and blog posts work best. Then you can repeat the content strategies that succeed.

Blogging Strategy Benefits: Learn from Successful Blogging Strategies

To refine your own approach, study the strategies of successful companies. Here are five examples of companies with exemplary blogging strategies:

• Webflow: Organises content across diverse categories effectively.
• Freshbooks: Focuses on customer-centric content to attract small businesses.
• Drift: Covers all stages of the B2B buyer journey.
• ActiveCampaign: Emphasises SEO mega guides and driving free trial sign-ups.
• LucidChart: Continuously updates old posts and optimises blog layout for conversions.

In short, good content operations tools and processes help you run a successful blogging strategy. They let you publish high-quality content efficiently.