So You’ve Decided to Start Blogging. Now What?

Posting on your company blog is quickly becoming one of the best online marketing tools for businesses. Search engines like Google love websites that are updated regularly, have keywords that are relevant to people’s online searches, and are shared by people on social media.

So having a blog on your website that is frequently updated, full of great keywords that are relevant to your business, and can be shared by anyone who reads it is the perfect way to increase your website’s odds of showing up organically in searches.

But this article isn’t about why you should blog. You’re already there.

(If you’re not fully convinced that blogging is worth your time, HubSpot’s article Why Blog? The Benefits of Blogging for Business and Marketing does a fantastic job of outlining the reasons for and benefits of blogging.)

This article is about what, exactly, you should blog about.

Know What Your Audience Likes to Read About

Step 1 in any marketing venture is to know who your target audience is. The goal is to attract the RIGHT people to your website and give them what they want.

So, figure out who they are and what they want! In the marketing world, we call the different types of people you want to attract to your business “User Personas.”

You probably already know a lot about your customers, but it’s helpful to dive a little deeper into their details. Getting to know their pain points, desires, motivations, etc. will help you answer their questions and solve their problems with your blogging.

Having trouble identifying your personas? Here’s an article on creating personas with examples.

What to Blog About?

If you know who you’re writing for, and you have ideas for each stage of the buyer journey that they are in, you’re almost ready to start clacking away on the keyboard. And here’s a little motivation for you: You will be helping people! Your goal is to improve your customers’ lives.

Improving their life can be as simple as making them smile or giving them a nugget of information they’d find useful.

Here are more ways blogs help people:

• Entertaining them
• Helping them do something
• Teaching them something
• Answering their questions
• Letting them connect with you and your business emotionally
• Getting them involved
• Making them think deeply
• Giving them something valuable to share with their friends

But the underlying reason to blog is to make sales! Your words can help guide your customers through their journey toward making a purchase.

The 3 Stages of the Buyer’s Journey: What to Blog about for Each Stage

Stage 1: They’re thinking about it.

When customers are in the first stage, they could be looking to get inspiration or ideas. Say they’re thinking about renovating their kitchen.

They would be interested in blogs about kitchen trends, kitchen products, and before and afters of kitchen renovation projects.

Or maybe they’re thinking about replacing their bathtub because their current one is old and leaking water into the basement.

If they’re looking to repair or upgrade something, Stage 1 blogs should address their problems. Topics like, “How to Tell if I Need a Bathroom Upgrade?” or “Top Ten Bathtub Problems” can help bring potential customers closer to the decision to do repairs or replacements.

Here are some blog format ideas for customers in Stage 1:

• Product Reviews
• Inspirational or Motivational
• Infographic

Stage 2: They’re looking into the details.

Once your customer feels that now is the time to do the kitchen upgrade or get the repairs, they will start looking into the details. They want to know what their options are. Some customers want to know about the processes, the ins and outs, and the pros and cons of all their options.

Blogs that address Stage 2 would be customer stories that talk about projects from start to finish. Or you could blog about the tools you use to do the job they want done.

A blog about the different tiers of service would also address your customers’ need for details.

Here are some blogs to help people in Stage 2:

• Customer Showcase
• Highlight a Product or Service
• Before and After
• Tools of the Trade
• Industry Myths

Stage 3: They’re ready to buy and deciding who to buy from.

When people are ready to make a purchase, they are in Stage 3. This is when blogs about your company, your people, and your services will help seal the deal.

For Stage 3 customers, try these blog formats to help them choose you:

• AMA: Ask Me Anything
• Testimonials
• A series where you walk them through a process
• Case Study
• Posts about WHY you do things the way you do

And those examples are just a few of the dozens of blog formats you can use. Click here to find out which blog formats that work for our clients:

Top 12 Blog Formats that Bring Traffic.

Create a Content Calendar to Keep Blogging Organized

I bet that reading those blog ideas and a format to write them in made you think of some posts that would be easy for you to do. There are probably some that you might actually have fun writing (perhaps the rant? 🙂 )!

So now, take the ideas you like and plug them into a content calendar.

Your content calendar is simply a document you create that helps you plan and organize topics to write about in advance. With it, you can plan to write about similar topics together. One month can be for kitchen renovation topics, the next can be all about the customer: problems they have and how to solve them.

The ideal content calendar will outline what type of blog format you plan to use every day. It will help keep you on track. When creating the calendar, you select the format you want to write. Choose the blog format based on which stage of the buyer journey you want to talk about.

Here’s an example of a content calendar that outlines the blog format a month:

Look at your calendar often to help keep the topics on your mind, so that when you sit down to write, you’ll have the words flowing out of you like water from a tap.

If You’re not Blogging, Start Today

Take advantage of the benefits of blogging. Your pages will be found when customers search for answers to their questions. Your words will help relieve the customer service burden by taking the worry out of choosing the best place to buy.

Over time, you show people that you’re a trusted expert and your website will gain authority.

Blogging is part of Nyche Marketing’s Living Website package, which includes SEO, content marketing, social media, Pay Per Click advertising, and marketing automation.

So if you’re not already blogging, start today!

How to Get Started with Social Media Automation

Part of marketing a business or brand these days is getting yourself out there on social media, and if you’re still on the fence as to whether you need to be on social media, read the article, “Why Social Media Marketing – 1o ways Social Media can help grow your business”You may be convinced to try it out. In this article, I’ll tell you how to get started with social media automation in order to make social media marketing for your business quick and easy.

Get the Most out of the Time You Spend on Social Media

Setting up a Facebook account is easy enough, but not everyone is a social media guru right off the bat. It takes time to turn a fan page into a lively, effective marketing tool.

As a modern marketing professional in Edmonton, I often help my clients with their social media accounts. It can be anything from discussing the (many!) social platforms out there to helping them develop a strategy to managing social posting on their behalf. I find that one of the major drawbacks of social, and why some business owners don’t see the value, is the amount of time and effort involved.

Any time you spend on social media takes away from time you could be spending doing your usual day-to-day activities, and most people barely have enough time for that! Fortunately there are ways to concentrate your efforts and minimize the amount of time you spend focusing on social media.

There are activities and tools you can use to automate your social media posts, which can help you continually engage your audience, respond to their queries, contribute to conversations or trends, build your brand, and manage your reputation.

Get Started with Social Media Automation

Social Media Automation is a part of Marketing Automation, which is “the process of using software and technology to optimize, automate and measure repetitive online marketing tasks.”

Many people overlook what I think is the most important part of being on social media: a strategy. Before you post a single thing on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat or anything else, you should have a strategy.

Your strategy should involve analyzing your audience, figuring out who they are, what they want, what interests them, and what problems they have. From there it’s much easier to find and post content that is relevant and appealing to them.
Your strategy should also outline what your social media accounts are going to be for. Do you want to have a Facebook page so that your customers have another way to access customer service? Do you want to educate, entertain, engage?

Social Media for Customer Service

Many large companies like Dell, for example, respond to customer service issues on Facebook, and people have come to expect quick responses and resolutions to their issues when they reach out on social media.

The customer service aspect is helpful because it helps you listen to your customers.

Social Media to Build Awareness of your Brand

Customer service is just one aspect of social. You may not want Facebook or Twitter to be where your customers reach out for help but rather use social media to help build awareness about your brand.

You can link to your website, introduce yourself, showcase your products and service, and provide insight into the day-to-day workings of your business. This helps customers develop familiarity with you and your products, and they will feel more comfortable coming to you when they need your services.

Use Social Media to Become a Thought Leader

Another reason to be on social media may be to set yourself apart from your competition by being a “thought leader”.  Forbes gives a great definition of what exactly a “thought leader” is:

“A thought leader is an individual or firm that prospects, clients, referral sources, intermediaries and even competitors recognize as one of the foremost authorities in selected areas of specialization, resulting in its being the go-to individual or organization for said expertise.”

Being a thought leader in your field is extremely valuable and can lead to profits. For example, if you are an Edmonton roofing expert and your website and social media accounts are full of educational information around the subject of roofing, you can become the go-to source that people access regularly and trust as being knowledgeable.

When they have roofing questions, they’ll check out your material. And when they (or someone they know) needs roofing services, they’ll come to you rather than another company that lacks the authority that you created online.

A Content Calendar to Help you Plan Automation

Once you have a social media strategy, your key to success with social media automation is planning, which is why a content calendar is absolutely essential. A content calendar can be as simple as a spreadsheet made with Excel or Google Sheets or you could search the web to find a template that appeals to you. After all, if you don’t like it, you won’t use it.

A content calendar helps you plan and curate what and when you want to post. It’s easy and manageable to have a monthly calendar. Basically you can sit down once a month and create or curate content for the month, schedule it, and then check on your social accounts periodically to see what’s performing well with your audience. Social doesn’t have to be a daily chore, it can be a monthly task where you set everything up and then watch to see how things go.

There are many tools to help you automate your social media accounts, and one of the big ones is Hootsuite. Hootsuite allows your to curate and schedule posts for multiple social media accounts. It works with all the major social networks like Facebook, Twitter, G+, Linkedin, and Instagram. Best of all, it’s free unless you want to manage more than one brand, like for digital marketers who manage multiple clients.

Hootsuite isn’t the only tool out there to help you with social media marketing automation. Social Media Examiner (an excellent resource for all things social), has explored 7 Time Saving Social Media Automation Tools You Have to Use.

Check out the article. You may see a tool that excites you that you’ll want to use. Again, if you don’t like it, you’re not going to use it. Don’t be afraid to try out a few. Spending a little bit of time figuring out what you like will make social media marketing more fun and easy for you.

So to wrap up, you can tackle social media posting with a strategy, a focused approach to what content you post, and by using tools to help you find and schedule your social media posts.

Are you just winging it with social and feel like you’re wasting your time? Give social media automation a try!

Share this article to help other businesses and brands with social media automation. Any questions? Ask us in the comments below.

Nyche Marketing can help you build your website, set up your social accounts, develop a strategy for posting, and manage your social accounts for you. Get in contact with us for information about our services or a quote. We’d love to hear from you!