What is your Blog's Content Plan and how to create the best one?
The term blog has been redefined and changed so many times over the last decade, that now it has become the ‘thought’ based media of this century.
The potential of a blog is to drive traffic to your website and with all the search engines creating this drive, you need to be able to create a level of engagement that is unique and thought provoking.
Even in some cases, companies or individuals have made a fortune off purely having articles and words on a page that appeals to a certain market.
Establishing consistent blog content and engaging content comes down to one important element – what is your content plan? And it isn’t about putting a handful of words on a page and seeing if someone would read it.
This blog concept in marketing terms is the definition of Content Marketing. Content marketing is an online marketing strategy that’s used to entice and stimulate interest in a certain product or brand without openly promoting it. You need to understand that a blog is a ‘notch in your belt’ of your Content Marketing strategy, and you will need other elements like social media and newsletters to help drive traffic as well.
Let’s dive into blog content and how you can capitalize off of a blog with the perfect plan.
What is a content plan?
A content plan covers all the marketing assets and engagement (including all SEO and data-gathering functions) needed to achieve the goals that you have made in your Content Marketing Strategy.
Your content plan is supported with the following primary phases: awareness, consideration, conversion and decision. What us marketers call it is ‘Lead generation’. You may have heard the term ‘lead’ a lot, this is what you are basically doing, you are trying to lead them into making a decision about your product or service.
What is a blog content plan?
To define your blog content plan, you need to know your target audience at the basic level – who they are, and what they like to read. Then, you look at your product – what makes your product different? Why do people like your product? What are the needs that your audience seeks from your product?
When you have both your target audience and product defined, you use the blog content to connect them.
For example, if you are a motivational speaker, you would want to appeal to the leadership/entrepreneur target audience – your blog content would be about leadership, how to better yourself, or even ways to achieve your goals.
The content that connects both your target audience and the product/service is what helps establish a link between a problem your target is facing and an effective solution that your product or service provides.
What type of content should you create for your blog?
Considering the target audience and product needs that you established before, there are numerous topics and themes that you will need to start the blogging process.
Here are the types of content you can write about:
1. Drives Revenue and Transaction
For any business that needs to create revenue or a transaction this is the content for you. This content is used to drive audiences online where they seek information about your product and you in turn need a transaction to happen then and there. This can include anything from a direct purchase or booking online.
This type of content can be from plain text or promotional videos. Creating this content results in sales growth and can be used to benefit new and old products.
2. Information and knowledge
This content is helpful when someone is looking for a piece of information where they learn something new. Do you know? Or 5 things to help?
The goal of this content is to provide answers and solve a problem that the seeker is wanting. This type of content is what people seek blogs for more than others, and it’s important to note that most of your blogs you create need to be information based more than anything.
Like most seekers on the WWW, you are “looking” for something, and this is where it becomes handy to drive them to your website with some new information that in turn, you create a community following where you can utilize a transaction later.
With this type of content, you are recognised as an expert in your area, and they want to follow you more. A lot of websites don’t utilise informative content enough and are more transactional than anything. But the whole idea of a blog is for you to understand what your audience is looking for.
People hate to be sold to, but if you are giving them information for free it’s a good way to build trust to sell your products later on.
3. Leading and expert-driven
This content is where your company is seen by experts and panels that seek information from you based on your level of expertise. Your information is more factual and based on papers or submissions from others or yourself. Your blog will be seen as a trusted source of relevant information for their industry.
This content can only be used if you have successes, innovations, and a reputation to back it up. Only then will your company have earned the industry’s trust to start this specific type of content.
If you aren’t any of this, then your blog will be more informative.
4. Trending content
This type of content is basically as it says, you are using a blog for ‘trending’ topics that will go viral to get millions of engagements and shares.
Most viral content works on video or images, but with blogs, you can use this as a topic of conversation for current issues that have been seen on other platforms like social media.
This type of content is more impactful, memorable, and relatable and in turn, you want it to be shared.
This has been known as the digital version of ‘word of mouth’. Where you create content that is more about recommendations, things that people are relating to at the moment or even ideas that people are searching for the most and need information. The easiest example to explain would have been anything to do with COVID-19 two years ago.
With this type of blog, you need to be able to write then and there and always be posting when a story hits.
This version is seen more as a full-time job, than part-time. But it is seen as the best way to get the fastest engagement with blogs than any other.
So, if you want to make your blog a career, then this is the best method.
Now you know what a good content plan is and what type of blogs you can write.
Take some time away from distraction and map out the “theme” that you want your blog to entail and then start writing.
There are also plenty of blog and copywriting courses that you can take, if you need some help or engage a professional copywriter that can write for you instead.
But most of all, don’t start writing or creating a blog unless you know what your content will be first.