The end of 2016 is fast approaching. This means it’s time to look towards the next year, and plan blog content for 2017.
Blogging is a valuable and easy way to create useful and actionable content for your prospects. But before you can start planning individual posts, you need to ask yourself three important questions.
What is the goal of your blog?
It’s difficult to plan blog content topics three or six months in advance if you don’t know the goal of your blog.
You can use your blog for several purposes. One option is to use a blog to show thought leadership in your industry. For example, publish posts on trends in your industry and how they can be used to a company’s advantage.
You could market your blog as a valuable source of information for your prospects. Show your expertise on a specific subject. For example, publish posts with answers to frequently asked questions from your users.
Another option is to use your blog to nurture potential buyers who already know of your company. This is useful for future and existing customers. They already know about your product, so keep them up to date on how you’re improving a product for them. For example, publish posts about updates of your products and success stories.
You may decide to have more than one goal for your blog. Consider publishing a post each week related to each goal. If the goal of your blog is to show thought leadership and nurture potential buyers, publish a thought leadership blog post the same day each week. On a separate day each week, publish a nurturing post.
This creates more posts for your blog and allows you to segment readers. When you direct prospects to your blog, you create a more targeted message.
Once you know the goal of your blog, it’s easier to create topic ideas to fill up your calendar.
What do you want your readers to do after they finish a blog post?
Creating a series of informative and resourceful blog posts helps your readers. You can introduce them to your company and demonstrate your knowledge about a specific topic.
After someone reads your blog post, they should be directed to another action step. When you plan blog content, each post you write should be part of a larger marketing campaign. You want a specific action in mind for your reader to take after they finish reading.
Some action steps might be
- signing up for a consultation call
- requesting a free demo
- reading another blog post related to the topic
- requesting a case study or white paper
The longer a reader spends on your website, the more likely they will go further in the buyer journey. When you give your reader the next step, it encourages them to spend more time on your site.
Don’t give six options on what to do next. Readers will likely leave the site instead of choosing an option. If you have many different call-to-actions in a blog post, it’s also difficult to track ROI and the customer journey.
If more than one call-to-action makes sense for a post, consider A/B testing to see which works best.
No matter what action step you choose, make it obvious and easy for the reader to perform the next step.
How are you measuring the effectiveness of your blog?
One of the most important aspects of any marketing plan is measuring ROI. When you plan blog content, you should have a system set up to do this as part of your planning.
Don’t stop at tracking simple conversions, such as how many sign-ups you receive for a free phone call. Instead, track the full customer journey from the blog.
You can do this with unique links to the next step for each blog. For example, direct readers to a landing page for a phone call. Track to see which blog posts have the highest conversion for that phone call sign-up. Also track to see how many of those first phone calls lead to a second call, or to other action steps.
Your blog is pre-selling your readers on your product. See which blog posts do the most work by tracking the customer from their first read through to their buy.
Don’t just rely on tracked links, which can generate a lot of data and be difficult to organize. Consider asking prospects what prompted them for that first phone call (or other action step) during the call and later in the process.
Once you set up a system to measure the effectiveness of your blog, planning out your content becomes easier. After a few weeks, you’ll be able to see what types of posts perform best, and create more of them.
Publishing a consistent and useful blog is easier when you know the goal of your blog, where you want to direct your traffic after they read a blog and how to track that traffic. Planning a blog editorial calendar helps you connect your blog with other parts of the buyer’s journey.
Are you ready to plan next year’s content calendar? Contact us to find out how we can help plan out your marketing. Or learn more about our other services.