blogging in the age of content marketing

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Amintiți-vă de vremurile bune ale blogging-ului - http://comunicarepr.ro/amintiti-va-de-vremurile-bune-ale-blogging-ului/ :D

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Page 1: Blogging In The Age Of Content Marketing
Page 2: Blogging In The Age Of Content Marketing

Why Blog ?

Intro

Two Peas in a Pod: Blogging and Content Marketing

Identifying Your Target Audience(s)

Getting Down to Business: The Blogging Process

Don’t leave them Hanging: the Importance of CTAs

Building your Audience

Guest Blogging

Conclusion

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TABLE OF

CONTENTS

EditingHana Abaza

Writing & ResearchAaliyah Madadi

Graphic DesignQuentin Zancanaro

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Blogging in the Age of Content Marketing4

BLOGGING IN THE AGE OFCONTENT MARKETING

Where do you find the time to write? What resources do you need? How do you manage and measure your con-tent?

Whether you are new to blogging or have been doing it for years, over the course of the following chapters you will find insight regarding best prac-tices for executing a comprehensive blogging strategy.

Even though blogs have been around for almost two decades (weblogs any-one?), they’ve only recently been seen as an important tool for brands. Pre-viously considered a “nice-to-have” rather than a “must-have”, blogs are now a proven, cost-effective market-ing channel for driving leads and gen-erating customers - if done well.

To become an effective blogger, you must create strong content that’s aligned with your business goals, pub-lish it regularly and promote it effec-tively. But what do you write about?

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WHY BLOG?

Perhaps you’re thinking about starting your own business blog or maybe you already have one and are looking to take it to the next level. Regardless of your reasons for reading this eBook right now, it’s important that we take a minute to understand and define the value and significance of effective business blogging in today’s digital world.

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Brand Awareness

Assuming that you’ve got the pieces aligned to write great content for a targeted audience (don’t worry, we’ll walk through this), blogs are a phenomenal avenue for building brand awareness. Interesting and relevant blog content can have a wide reach and although your content won’t explicitly discuss your brand and products/services, your brand’s name and logo will be apparent and associated with the content you produce. Producing high quality con-tent and sharing it with your audience and influencers means that your brand’s name will be shared across the web for more people to see, thereby increasing your brand awareness.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a big beast to tackle and would make for an entire eBook on its own; however, what’s important to know about SEO is that a blog is one of the easiest low-hanging fruits for build-ing your SEO strategy. Since your blog lives on your website, you can and should be writing content which

incorporates strategic keywords that are important to your company’s SEO and Search Engine Results Page (SERP) rankings. As your content drives more and more traffic to your site, search engines will begin to rank your site with higher authority which will increase your SEO and SERP results.

Furthermore, search engines crawl and index every page and keyword on your website – and that includes any new blog pieces you publish. Using targeted keywords within your con-tent means that your piece will appear higher in SERP results when people are searching for a particular topic.

Check out this piece for a step-by-step guide to creating an effective SEO keyword strategy.

Shareable content via blog impacts SEO as current

digital landscape changing – social SEO helps from that perspective.

2.

1.

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Thought Leadership

Great content produces authority and trust with your audience. Over time, your readers will associate your in-teresting, relevant, and informative content with your brand. Building this rapport and relationship with your au-dience is invaluable as you work to drive these people further down the funnel.

Qualified Leads

Assuming that your blog lives on your company’s website (which it definitely should), your content will ultimately pull a targeted audience of potential buyers directly to your website! Sounds pretty awesome, right? Forget for a moment the significant SEO ben-efits that this traffic will bring – you’ve ultimately got a group of people on your website that you’ve identified as being your target audience (as determined by your strategic content creation), who now trust your brand as a thought- leader, and have a gaping problem/pain point in their lives that your product/service can solve. Yes – done correctly, your blog can be a signif-icant driver of leads for your company!

Another way to think of blogging (and content marketing as a whole), is as a relationship. Through your content, you’re taking the time to build a relationship with your audience, showing them that you understand who they are, what they’re interested in, what they’re struggling with, and why they can trust you. Unlike the old school hard-sales approach (does a used-car salesman come to mind?), content marketing and blogging is all about building a genuine relationship with your audience – one that’s built on a strong foundation of trust and reliability.

Instead of trying to hit a home run on the first date, content marketing is a long term approach that is built off layers of conversation and trust. When a connection is built and a relationship secured (i.e. a lead is generated), you can bet it’s been built out of love, not infatuation... or coercion.

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TWO PEASIN A POD: BLOGGING AND CONTENTMARKETING

Now that we have a strong understanding of the im-

portance and power of blogs in the realm of content marketing, let’s dive in and learn how we can create a blog and a killer blogging strategy!

2Blogging and content marketing truly go hand-in-hand. Your blog should be the central nervous system of your entire content marketing strategy: it is the home for all your content and the portal for your target audience to learn and engage with your brand.

Regardless of the type of content you’re producing (blog posts, vid-eos, infographics, eBooks, white-papers), your blog is the home and

Hub of all your content. You want to keep your audience engaged and interested in all the different types of content you produce (you know, to keep nurturing the relationships you’ve worked so hard to build), and a good blog is exactly the place where this relationship building happens.

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IDENTIFYINGYOURTARGETAUDIENCE(S)

Before you actually begin the con-tent brainstorming and creation pro-cess, it’s absolutely imperative that you have a strong understanding of who you’re speaking to: who’s your audience, what type of people are they, what do they like/dislike, what pain points do they experience...the ability to answer detailed questions such as these allows you to create content that speaks directly to your target consumer. Since the goal is to engage with people that are most inclined to become customers, the first step is to understand who they are and then to effectively communicate with them through awesome content.

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Creating Your Audience Personas

To write compelling content for your audience, you need to know every-thing about them. According to HubSpot, your audience personas should be “semi-fictional characters that represent your dream customers.” The key thing to remember is that they are characters – an identity that you create rather than one that’s based off real people. You want to be detailed in your description and include facts about both their personal and professional lives such that you paint a clear picture of the person(s) you’re speaking to.

Consider including facts such as:

1.

Personal andprofessional

goalsDemographics

Personal andprofessional

pain points Behaviourcharacteristics++

+ +

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Make sure to include a picture along with your character personas; you want to make the profile as

detailed and realistic as possible so every person in your company can visualize and empathize with the character.

IDENTIFIERS- Busy managing marketing activities- Approachable - May have a small team, buys into corporate culture

HOW WE HELP- Make it easy to create a central

destination for customers- Provide metrics to see what

content is effective

DEMOGRAPHICS- Skews female- Age 25 to 35

GOALS- Keep her boss happy (metrics)- Keep customers happy- Wants to learn

BACKGROUND- Marketing Manager at Targetly

- Works for Jimmy, she’s the doer - Experience in marketing; still

learning digital marketing landscape

CHALLENGES- She doesn’t know what’s working - Doesn’t know where to invest her time and budget - No time to create content, several approval steps- Planning and communication isn’t great

NIKKI

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If you’ve ever had the opportunity to watch a keynote presentation by Joe Pulizzi, he most likely spoke of the importance of creating a content marketing mission statement. Joe explains that

Especially if you’re just starting out in content marketing, building a mission statement is a great way to narrow the scope of your strategy; it will help you understand who your target audience is, what you should deliver to that audience, and how it affects them. Ultimately, this mission statement will guide you to create and deliver the right content to your audience, and to eliminate ones that don’t advance your end goals.

In simple terms, the mission statement must answer the question, “Why do we exist?”

Example : “The Uberflip Hub is a place where marketers can find useful information, advice, resources and inspiration to become a top-notch marketers that get results - whether that means increas-ing leads, brand awareness or your bottom line, we’ve got you covered.”

With your buyer personas and content marketing mis-

sion statement defined, you now have a strong understanding of the exact audience you’re writing for and the value you will provide them with your content. For every piece of content you create, always keep your buyer personas in mind and vet the content against your mission statement; the goal is to ensure that every piece of con-tent communicates well with your target audience and that it’s aligned with their needs and wants.

Joe explains that a strong content marketing mission statement consists of 3 key components:

Your core target audience (as defined by your audience

personas)

Content Marketing Mission Statement

2.

What will be delivered to your audience through your content

The outcome for your audience

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LEARN MORE ABOUT

TO SUPERCHARGE YOUR CONTENT MARKETING

Uberflip lets you organize and centralize all of your content into one beautiful, responsive and social site – attaching strong Call-to-Actions that convert leads into customers directly from your content experience.

Mobile in minutes - instantly make your content mobile

Sprinkle relevant CTAs throughout your content to generate leads

Measure which content turns leads into customers

Create targeted content streams for specific topics or personas

Try it FREE

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One of the biggest pain points for content marketers is coming up with blog topics to write. An easy way to circumvent this issue is to the stay on top of what’s buzzing in your indus-try. Set aside 30 minutes every day to read popular blogs, news sources, and social media for trends and con-versations taking place. Make note of articles you enjoyed reading or pieces that received a high volume of social shares. You’ll quickly find that staying current with industry news will allow you to have your finger on the pulse of what your audience is talking about.

Use these topics as a starting point for your own blog content and think about unique angles or perspectives you can provide. Your audience isn’t interested in repeatedly reading about the same topic, so this is where cre-ativity is important. Think about how you can provide additional viewpoints or how you can elaborate on exist-ing perspectives in a compelling way.

GETTING DOWNTO BUSINESS: THE BLOGGING PROCESS

4Topic Inspiration1.

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Another good strategy is to keep a document handy where you can record blog ideas as they come. It’s handy to have a bank of ideas readily available when you need them. Once you have your topic selected, give yourself some time to simply think about it – let it soak in your

mind and allow yourself to explore different angles of the topic. You’ll be surprised how much this process of actively thinking about your piece will flesh out your arguments and let you quickly nail the important aspects.

Need Inspiration?

Here are some (free) tools to get it going.

Portent Idea generator Think outside of the box before creat-ing any type of content. Portent offers a keyboard-based generator of titles for potential content pieces. Price: Free.

Pocket Save articles, videos or pretty much anything into Pocket. Save direct-ly from your desktop browser or from any mobile device. Price: Free.

Feedly An RSS reader that lets you easi-ly track, organize and read content from different sources. Price: Free.

Google Trends Google Trends shows you what’s popular with Google searchers in real time and in the past - great for making content decisions based on actual data. Price: Free.

MindNode Keep track of your brainstorming sessions on any device, including iPad, iPhone, and Mac. Price: $9.99.

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Blog titles are the first thing your audience sees and the effectiveness of your title will make or break whether they continue reading or move on to another piece. Especially with social media, a good title is the key for getting people to click on your link and read your content. However, despite knowing the impact that blog titles have on engagement, they are often the most difficult part of your piece to develop. Here are some tips for writing effective blog headlines to engage your audience and get them to read your piece.

Instructional Titles:People love reading articles that teach them how to improve and learn more about a topic. If your blog post offers instructional insight about a particular topic, consider the following types of titles:

- How To Create Engaging Titles- Tips for Creating Engaging Titles- Top 10 Ways to Create Engaging Titles

Titles that begin with “How-To”,

“Tips for” and “Top 10” (or any other number), are effective ways of indicating that the reader is going to learn useful information from your piece.

Ask Questions: Questions are a great way to catch your audience’s attention and entice them to read beyond your title. The best questions are ones that your audience is already thinking about as it will encourage them to discover answers by reading your piece.

Pulling Them In: Headline Pointers

2.

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Short Titles: To optimize your audience’s engage-ment, make sure blog titles aren’t too lengthy. A general rule is to keep your titles at 8 words or less…more than this and you risk losing your audience before they even get to your piece.

Transparency: Make sure your audience can quickly extract the main point of your piece from the title. Sometimes writers get carried away with crafty and creative titles that ultimately leave readers confused. Especially with pieces that are shared across social media, you need a headline that readers can quickly digest.

Test them Out:Try out different variations of titles and test their success. Depending on the type of content you’re writing and the preferences of your audience, you’ll start to notice trends in engagement. Assuming that the quality of your pieces are comparable, you can partly attribute engagement to the different types of titles you’re using.

Check your analytics and analyze the historic page

view and click-through rates of your blogs. What are your top blog posts and are there similarities in the types of titles you used? Is a particular title format driving more engagement than others? By looking historically through your posts, you can start to track trends in engagement and optimize future posts accordingly.

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Set a timer for 45 minutes and close all unnecessary windows on your computer, including chats and email. If you want to get the piece done quickly, it’s important to minimize distractions that can lead you astray. These next 45 minutes aren’t the time to multitask between different proj-ects – not only will it take more time to write your piece, the content could

also appear fragmented since you aren’t writing with the same frame of mind.

Choose to write your pieces during a time of day where you’re most productive. Perhaps you’re a morning person and prefer to write pieces at the beginning of the day before

Don’t allow yourself to get bogged down by writing the perfect sentence or using glamorous words – just focus on writing the piece and getting all your ideas down first. Then you can always go back to edit and revise if necessary. Writers generally feel stuck when they’re thinking too hard about

Finding the Time to Write

3.

you get busy with other priorities. Some people might like to write at the end of the day, just before they head out. Find the time that works best for you and try to stick to it.

Now comes the easy part…writing!

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the topic or the writing process, and that simply won’t work when you have a short 45 minute dead-line. You can always go back and make the necessary grammatical, structural, and design changes, but first you need the content.

If you’ve hit a road bump and simply

can’t find the words to get down on the page, the best thing you can do is to take a short break from writing and come back to it later with a renewed energy. It happens to the best of us so don’t fret – better that you revisit the piece in a few hours then try to pump out content that just doesn’t work.

of people read blogs more than

once a day.

Check out :

Where is Your Content Hiding?

Content Marketing Hack: 5 Tips for Dealing With Writer’s Block

How to Create Great Content With Limited Resources

(HubSpot Science of Blogging 2010)

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You’ve done your research and (efficiently) created a well-writ-ten and informative blog piece for your audience. Through your buyer persona analysis, you know exactly who you’re writing for and how to best engage them. Your content market-ing mission statement has ensured that your piece adds value to your au-dience and delivers on the content promise you’re making to them.You’ve driven your target audience to your blog and they’re reading your content...but now what? This is your chance to contin-ue building a relationship with your audience but before that can happen, you’ve got to initiate the next step. This is where a ‘Call to Action’ (CTA) comes into play.

DON’T LEAVETHEM HANGING THE IMPORTANCEOF CTAS

5CTAs come in many forms – it could be a button on the side of your blog pro-voking readers to subscribe for updates:

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Or perhaps it’s a banner at the end of your blog piece compelling readers towards a lead-generation content piece, such as an eBook

Every CTA you create should always reflect one of your content marketing goals. Perhaps you’d like to increase eBook readership or blog subscriptions. Maybe you want to drive signups to a product demo or upcoming conference. Whatever the case may be, make sure you’re creating CTAs for strategic reasons.

Second, your CTA must be actionable. It’s important that you clearly tell your audience what you’d like them to do. A good CTA should be no longer than two sen-tences and should clearly state what action you want your reader to take. Remember not to overwhelm your audience with too many CTAs – depending on the length of your piece and the design of your site, aim to have between 1 to 3 CTAs on any given page.

But don’t forget...

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We’ve walked through the process of creating effective, targeted content – now we’ll learn how you can use your content to build your content marketing audience.

Frequency

The topic of blogging frequency often sparks the ‘quantity vs. quality’ debate: does posting content frequently sacrifice content quality? Quality content should always be your first and foremost goal. Yes, there is definitely an intricate balance between quantity and quality, and if posting more

frequently begins to compromise the quality of your work, then definitely scale back on frequency and focus on writing more detailed, well-researched, and thought-provoking pieces.

However, the ideal scenario is to frequently publish high-quality pieces.

BUILDING YOURAUDIENCE

6

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Content Distribution

The more frequently you post, the more content there is to drive people to your site. Try experimenting with posting at different frequencies per day. You’ll most likely find a correla-tion between frequency and traffic to your blog, but play around and try to find that sweet spot. For example, perhaps posting 7 pieces a week drives double the amount of traffic than posting 5 pieces, but posting 10 pieces a week fails to drive a substan-tial increase in traffic or leads. Keep track of your metrics and don’t be afraid to play around and get creative. Content marketing is an iterative process which means you should always be experimenting and trying new tactics, with a keen eye towards analyzing and adjusting your tactics.

Without spending too much time focusing on social media strategies in this eBook, it’s important to note that social media is a phenomenal

tool for content distribution. Use your social channels to engage in conversation surrounding the content you’ve

created and share it with your audience.

When sharing content, mention the author in your tweets so they also share the piece with their audience. Also share with people or companies that are mentioned within a piece of content as well as key influencers in your industry. You want to be strategic about this, however, as you don’t want to bombard the same influencers with content over and over again. Share different pieces with different influ-

encers, based on their expertise and interests; share it with them because your content will add value to their life and/or the lives of their audience.

By approaching content marketing with a genuine desire to provide value for your audience, people will be happy to read and share your content.

Check out:HootsuiteClickToTweetTapInfuence Buffer

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Guest blogging can be an effective approach for building awareness and credibility for your brand. Start your guest blogging strategy by iden-tifying the influential blogs that your target audience reads. Most influen-tial blogs accept guest submissions and this is a fantastic way to get your content and brand to a wider audience. Incorporate guest blogging into your content strategy and submit exclusive, well- written, and strategic content to these blogs. Content on sites like this can easily yield a couple hundred social shares in a single day; make sure you strategically incorporate back links in your content body and bio, and include references to your brand if appropriate (don’t do a sales pitch!).

Over time, guest blogging can raise brand awareness with your target

audience and positions you as a thought-leader on key industry outlets

– not to mention the SEO benefits of a popular blog linking back to your site.

Also consider opening your blog up to guest writers. Remember that you likely won’t get much traction with guest blogging until you’ve in-creased your brand awareness and audience. All of this takes time and patience so don’t fret if people aren’t rushing to submit pieces to your blog.

As you continue your content marketing strategy and post on larger blogs, guest blogger submissions will start to trickle in.

GUEST BLOGGING7

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For blog management to be stress-free, you need to have an organized content calendar. Uberflip’s content calendar is planned for a few months ahead and we schedule our writers based on the frequency they’ve committed to writing. Keep in mind that your writers have different expertise, styles of writing, and themes that they cover. As a result, it’s important to plan your calendar accordingly so that the authors and topics in any given week are varied and diverse.

Being organized doesn’t mean being rigid – in reality, your calendar rarely stays exactly as planned. Impromptu content may be written based on industry news or writers may fall short of meeting their deadlines. The important thing is to be flexible to such changes in your schedule.

Managing your Blog

1.

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If you want to have a really stellar blog, never forget your audience. What engages them? What content do they share? Which pieces do they spend the most time on? Knowing these facts is part of your role as content manager and can be one of the most interesting and rewarding parts. Yes, blog content is important for SEO and a million other reasons, but at the simple core of it, your blog is nothing if you don’t have an engaged audience.

GUEST BLOGGING

Know your Audience

3.

What are the keys for ensuring that all your writers are engaged and writing the quality pieces your blog deserves? You need to be flexible and accommo-dating. You’ll quickly get to know your writers and their styles: some might write 2 pieces when they only need one, some might submit their post the morning it’s due, while others might simply miss their deadline…the point is that you learn how your team members operate and that you’re strategic in accommodating them. As mentioned before, you need to be flexible if things don’t work out the way you anticipated.

Managing your Writers

2.

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CONCLUSION

Know your Audience YOU MAY ALSO LIKE

Launch Flipbook

*Blogging is a long-term strategic journey that can increase traffic, establish a steady stream of leads and customers, and increase engagement with your brand.

While getting started can be daunt-ing, take it step by step, consistently investing time and energy into your

blog. By following these 7 steps, you will certainly build a strong foundation for your business, and can rest assured that the processes and tactics you implemented will pay off over time.

So what are you waiting for? Happy blogging!

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CURIOUSABOUT

Check out how Uberflip can supercharge your blog.

?

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