.png)
Many of my clients or even prospective clients tell me that they love to write. Many of them don't want help writing, they just want help getting organized and coming up with a strategy, which is a service I happily provide to those who need it. But more often than not, we end up talking about how to expand their ideas for blog content in order to consider the SEO implications and also to serve a definite need for their own prospective customers.
When marketing professionals talk about "the funnel," they are talking about the various stages that customers find themselves in during the process of making a buying decision. A good marketing funnel takes into consideration 5 different aspects of the buyer's journey:
Awareness
Consideration
Conversion (making a purchase!)
Loyalty
Advocacy
If you're focus is on top-of-the-funnel content that drives someone to make a purchase, then your content strategy must include topics that help with awareness and consideration. When you start to talk about this type of marketing strategy, this is typically where business owners who love to write start to sweat a little bit. There's a lot more to think about when it comes to crafting successful blog posts for your business than just the writing. Here are some tips that I like to share with the business owners that I chat with about content strategy for their blog:
Create Content With A Purpose
The best advice I can give to busy business owners when it comes to strategic content is to make sure that each piece of content they choose to spend time on serves a specific purpose and answers specific questions. Typically, I encourage clients to think about patterns that arise in FAQ's asked by customers and potential clients, which is a great jumping off point when it comes to content. It will also serve your business well when it comes to SEO.
Crafting content that will educate your audience and answer questions that might otherwise be preventing them from following through with a sale can be as valuable to your website as advertisements.
Keep It Simple (But Not Boring)
In this overly-digital age, I think it's important for online content to be easy to read and easy for the user to digest. Make sure that all posts, are well organized and easy to read by breaking the post up into sections using section headers (H2 for those who are paying attention to SEO), and use numbered lists or bullet points where applicable. If someone lands on your blog post, this will enable them to skim the article and get a high-level overview of the content before committing to reading it. Hopefully, your content is engaging and informative enough to keep them on the page (you can track this by looking at the Bounce Rate in your Analytics set up).
Well-organized and easy to digest, however, does not mean boring or low-quality. Each piece of content that your business puts out into the world should be high-quality work that you are proud of and that is of value to your audience.
Be Realistic About The Process
I also encourage clients to be realistic about their own time and abilities when it comes to writing. For many established businesses, running a regular blog and creating a content strategy is typically someone's full-time job, but as a small business or start up, you don't necessarily have that luxury. Start out small, by trying to commit to posting new content once or twice a month, and if that even becomes unmanageable, consider hiring a freelancer, like HYC, to do it for you.