How to use inbound marketing principles to lay a foundation for blogging success
Our blogging calendar is a valuable resource that helps business owners implement a blogging program that brings in new prospects and leads.
The calendar is a template for 12 months of consistent blogging. It provides guidance for all the elements that make for an effective inbound marketing campaign. Once all the fields are filled out in a way that is specific to your business, you’ll have a dependable resource to carry you through a long-term blogging strategy.
To make the most of the calendar, ask yourself these three questions before setting it up.
1. Who Are My Prospects And How Are They Researching My Industry?
Take everything you know about your ideal customer and distill it into a buyer persona that you can refer back to when crafting your blogs. A buyer persona is a written description about your ideal buyer that includes details such as demographics, goals, challenges, and preferences for finding information about products and services.
A good source of this information is your current customer list. What questions and concerns do they express to you? What motivates them?
A well-researched buyer persona will inspire your blogging program and the topics you choose to highlight.
With your buyer personas set, consider how these prospects are using the internet to research your industry. What would they type into a Google search bar for help with the solutions that you provide?
These search words form the basis of the search engine optimization component of your blogging program. Use at least one of them in each blog you publish to alert search engines that you are an authority on the subject.
2. What Information Is Most Relevant To My Prospects And Customers?
A key component of a successful blogging program is determining how you can be of value to people who are researching products and services in your industry.
Content that prospects find educational and helpful is the first step to generating and nurturing the leads that will fill the top of your sales funnel.
Keep in mind that your company’s prospects are all at different stages of their buyer’s journey. Some are urgently seeking a solution, others have identified a problem and are beginning to search solutions, and others are just becoming aware that they have an issue that needs to be addressed.
It’s important that your blogging program produces content for prospects at each stage of their journey.
The type of content that is helpful to a qualified lead will be different than content that speaks to someone in the early stages of their buyer’s journey.
3. How Will I Sustain Content Creation And Where Will I Distribute It?
A blogging calendar is an essential tool to ensure your efforts are sustained. It prompts you to determine topics ahead of time for a steady workflow and underpins each topic with a visual display of the keywords, buyer persona, and buyer stage associated with it.
A calendar keeps you aligned with the inbound marketing principles that fuel your efforts.
Consistent blogging will generate a trove of assets to leverage across the web. Take advantage of your social media profiles to increase the audience that will see your content. A thoughtful introduction, compelling image, and link to your blog make for a strong social media post.
If you have a post that is generating positive feedback and dialogue, consider expanding its reach with a paid boost to take it to a larger audience.
Popular blog posts are an asset that can be periodically updated and reposted. They can also be used in your email marketing campaigns and highlighted on different parts of your website.
With these three questions answered, you are ready to hit the ground running starting a blogging program that will attract new prospects, leads, and customers.
Thanks for stopping by,
Laura
Breezy Hill Marketing is a Vermont web design agency specializing in marketing strategy,inbound marketing, social media marketing, and building optimized and mobile responsive websites for customers throughout the United States.
