It really is not possible to overrate the importance of developing a content strategy that will attract visitors to your website, and help you achieve the kind of success you’re looking for.
In order to have a really good content strategy, you will either need to be a very good writer, or you will need to be proficient at making videos or podcasts.
Whether you’re writing or preparing video content, you should try to stick to topics that you’re passionate about or which you’re knowledgeable about, because that will come through in your content. If you don’t thoroughly understand a topic that you are going to be writing or preparing videos for, there are endless sources on the Internet available to help you fill in the gaps in your knowledge.
When you couple your excellent content strategy with patience and persistence, there will be no stopping you when it comes to drawing in all kinds of new visitors to your website.
Establish your Goals
When you begin to write a new blog, you should always have a strong motivation for preparing the content for this particular topic.
It might be self-promotion, establishing yourself as an authority in your field, trying to earn money, or simply engaging in an enjoyable hobby. All of these are perfectly valid motivations, and the degree to which you are attached to any one of them will be the driving force in how successful your next blog is.
Besides motivation, you’ll need to establish some goals, because it will be much easier to reach those objectives once you have identified exactly what they are, and then prepare a roadmap for how to get there. Probably the two most important measurements for the success of a blog are the number of subscribers and the number of daily visits.
While there are other metrics that are also important, e.g. average time on site, page views per visit, and bounce rate, the two metrics regarding the number of daily visits and subscribers are probably most crucial for bloggers.
Once you establish your goals, make sure to measure them using Google Analytics, and you should also establish interim milestones for two-month or three-month periods to make sure you’re on target for achieving your goals. If you find that you’re falling short, you may need to take some kind of action to pick up the pace.
Define your Target Market
Your target market will consist of those people who are most likely to purchase your product or service, and it’s very important that you identify exactly who that group will be.
In order to do that, you will have to analyze your supply and demand. In terms of demand, make sure that before you start writing, you already know that there are people who are searching for the topic you intend to write about.
Acquaint yourself with the terms people normally use when they’re searching for your content, so you can use these terms to match up with their searches. If you determine that there is not much search activity for the topic you’re going to write about, you might want to find an alternative topic, because you probably won’t generate much traffic, even with a really well-written piece of content.
Next, you’ll need to analyze the supply side. To do this, you’ll need to research the best blogs in your particular industry, to see what kind of content they are offering. Take note of how long these articles are, and how well structured they are. Consider whether they offer personal opinions or provide objective data to readers, and note what kind of images are used in the content.
You should also observe how these successful blogs make use of videos, images, and tables, and whether they link to external websites or other content.
Choose your Products
When you’re writing a blog, the product is actually the content you’re preparing. The way to attract your target audience is to offer them something which is different from all other blogs on the Internet.
In terms of content length, some experts argue that the most appealing blogs are those written no longer than 500 words, but there is just as much evidence to support the fact that longer blogs in the range of 1500 to 3000 words are just as successful.
There are also a number of “gurus” who insist that to have a really successful following for your blog, you have to crank out content every day of the week. The truth is, you shouldn’t be writing a blog just for the sake of writing and producing content.
The better approach is probably to recognize that quality supersedes quantity, and if you can actually write two or three really good articles each week, you’ll be doing fine.
Develop a Plan
One really good habit you should get into is to establish an editorial calendar and stick to it because this is more likely to lead to a successful content strategy than simply writing whenever you have the urge.
You should prepare a monthly plan about those topics you intend to write about, and even develop a theme for each month, with blogs that support that theme.
When you’ve established a plan for the month, it will be easier to find topics to write about that will support your theme and emphasize it more fully. It will be a good habit to spend some time every day reading articles that might serve as background material for the blogs you intend to write.
You might also want to subscribe to various newsletters which will be fertile ground for new ideas and new material that you can include in your blogs.
Promote your Blog
The final component for developing a really killer strategy is to promote your blog in any way available to you. In fact, this would be a good time to invoke the Pareto Principle whereby you would spend 20% of your time actually preparing the articles, but then spend 80% of your time promoting what you’ve written.
Especially if you’re a new blogger, it will be important to promote your blog at every opportunity. There are lots of ways you can do that, including promotion through groups and forums on various social platforms, and contacting social influencers who might attract interest to your blog posts.
Once you get going, you will undoubtedly come across all kinds of ways that you can promote your blog and attract more followers.
With all these components in mind, you will then have developed your own killer strategy content strategy for 2021.
