Best content marketing strategy for blogs

Is “content king”? Yes, and he will not be dethroned! The phrase by Bill Gates that was successful in the mid-1990s remains – and I dare say it will continue – current and more than that, fundamental to ensure the success of a digital marketing strategy in any type of business, regardless of size and industry. So, you may want to read on to learn the best content marketing strategy for blogs.

What is the importance of content marketing for blogs?

Firstly, content helps build an audience, understand an audience, increase brand confidence, add value to the product/service and of course increase traffic to a given website or online store and, as a result, sales! Secondly, within the wide range of platforms for publishing content, the blog is also and will continue to be one of the most suitable tools for publishing relevant content with a view to attracting a certain target audience. Because? Because it establishes bonds of trust with customers and potential customers throughout the entire sales funnel, answering their questions and influencing their purchase decision.

What is the best blog content marketing strategy?

Over the last few years I’ve tested many content marketing strategies and I confess that most of them generated organic traffic to the site, but did not translate into sales. Until I discovered the winning content marketing strategy, the one that had me hooked due to the excellent results obtained on my own blog and on my clients’ blogs. Try implementing it on your blog too!

1. Create the persona

The first step of the best content marketing strategy is to produce content for your target audience, but this target audience concept has more generalized demographic and social characteristics than the persona concept, which represents your ideal customer. This time, before starting to define content for the blog, you have to create your persona in order to develop articles completely targeted to the person really interested in your product or service.

How to create a persona?

If you have already defined your target audience, the task is simple! Just gather the information collected about your target audience and then answer a series of questions that characterize your ideal customer with demographic data and also information about their interests, needs, motivations and problems. For example, if you manage a dental clinic, you must identify gender and age, level of education, profession, salary, needs, goals, dreams, problems and pains (literally), among other characteristics. With a framework that summarizes your persona, you can work with the right customers, offer a useful, quality and reliable service, and improve sales!

2. Segment the audience

Segmentation is the second step to implement the best content marketing strategy, since an audience can and should always be divided into groups of potential customers (or segments) based on certain characteristics in common. Because? Because your communications will be more assertive and effective if they are personalized, if they are a clear shot, individualized and differentiated! In other words, if your blog articles speak to different segments, each of them will receive high value-added content that clarifies their specific doubts, in their type of language and preferred format.

How to segment an audience?

As with the definition of the persona, the segmentation of an audience or public is done at the demographic level (gender, age, location, education, marital status, occupation, salary…) and at the level of needs (problems, desires, dreams, doubts… ). Once the groups are created, you must understand the particular needs of each one and produce your own content to meet them.

3. Produce valuable and shareable content

Your blog content may be interesting (I don’t question it!), but is it really valuable to the point of being shared and bringing incredible results? Hmm… to generate more leads, win more customers and retain the customers you’ve already won, you have to create digital content that stands out: informative and non-advertising material that serves as a gateway for people to get to know your products and services better. This is the third step of the best blogging content marketing strategy.

How to create valuable content?

Regardless of whether it has the function of informing, educating or entertaining, valuable content has to be relevant and useful to your persona. It must have quality, rather than quantity, in-depth information based on national and international sources and, preferably, differentiated from the competition. And of course, you shouldn’t promote yourself, because blog articles don’t even need to have the company’s name, if they help the consumer, he will end up discovering it! And finally, it’s not enough to produce relevant content if it doesn’t appear in the first places of search results, is it? Therefore, you will also have to optimize them with SEO techniques for search engines.

4. Discover your company’s competitive edge

Competitive differential? What is that? It is what makes your company unique in the market, that is, the killer argument that you can and should use in content marketing to win over consumers at the time of purchase. How do you say? Doesn’t have a competitive differential?! Of course it does! It’s what makes your customers prefer your brand instead of looking for a solution from the competition! Let’s go back to the example of the dental clinic… the differential of this business can be the location, but it can also be the excellence in the service, the effectiveness of the treatments, the innovation in terms of materials, technologies and solutions to improve the aesthetics of a smile. Basically, the competitive advantage – the last step of the best content marketing strategy – is what distinguishes your company from the competition and generates more sales, attracting new consumers and retaining regular customers.

I already applied this strategy, but my blog is not generating more organic traffic…

It doesn’t surprise me. And do you know why? Because many customers complain about the same thing when they apply this step by step on their own. It’s just that the lack of specialized monitoring, done by an agency expert in content marketing, can lead to some failures. And yes, over the last few years I’ve also identified some issues that may be preventing relevant blog articles from generating qualified traffic and getting conversions, they are:

Do not include images

Blog articles with images attract more readers because in addition to capturing people’s attention, the images complement the text, help it to be understood and provide a more pleasant reading experience.

Do not link

You already know that for Google and other search engines, links symbolize quality… and quality gets higher rankings in search results! Can we go back to the example of the dental clinic? Imagine you want to get your blog reader to schedule an appointment. You can place an internal link at the end of the text, to a contact form or appointment booking form. But you can also place external links (more valuable for search engines than internal links) to reference sites with scientific studies, for example, which value the blog’s information even more.

Not optimizing meta descriptions

The SEO optimization process is not complete without correctly filling in the meta description (meta description), that “summary” displayed below the title of the page in search results, which shows important information to users. So, never forget to optimize meta descriptions with the main keyword of your content, in a natural, objective and persuasive way, without exceeding 140 characters!

Do not promote content on social networks

Publications on social networks are the best way to connect your company to more people in a low cost way. But before you start promoting your blog articles, it’s a good idea to confirm that your company is present on your target audience’s favorite social networks, because it’s not worth wasting time and money on platforms that don’t interest your potential customers. Then just start promoting your content post by post instead of promoting your entire blog. Is it more work? Of course, but it also gives more results because that way you have a better chance of reaching users who are looking for an answer to a specific problem. You can also promote each published post more than once, as long as it is on different days and times to reach more people and within a reasonable time frame so as not to tire your followers. And by the way, put hashtags, which help to optimize your posts on social networks, and links to your website or online store to encourage people to get more information… or even to buy!