Blogs are a staple in the marketing realm. Seemingly every B2B company creates blog content!
Marketing blogs are a great way to engage with and educate prospects and customers, and also help build SEO authority and backlinks. Blogs are a go-to for a reason.
But if everyone is writing blogs (and they definitely are), how can you differentiate yours from the pack? How can you make sure your blog strikes that balance between informative and effective?
It’s time to take content creation to the next level. Whether your blogs are written in-house or by a content creation agency, there are several simple and effective ways to elevate content, from changing a blog’s design to using topics clusters. With the right blog, sites can attract the right kind of visitors.
Though topic clusters have been around for a few years, HubSpot has really taken them to the next level. The method is this: companies create a long, authoritative pillar page centered around a primary keyword, and then create other content, like blogs, that link back to and harmoniously align with the pillar page.
Altogether, this creates a cluster of semantically related content that builds authority and climbs the ranks of the search engine results pages (SERP). Topic clusters are the newest evolution of SEO, and if a company writes blogs without a strategy, or stuffs keyword after keyword into every blog, then the blogs won’t do their job.
Always remember that the main job of SEO is to answer the questions that people ask. The best way to show up in search results and drive organic traffic is to develop content that is useful for both readers and SEO.
There are around 600 million blogs on the internet, so deciding what to write about that hasn’t already been done before can seem like a Herculean task. Luckily, there are ways to avoid the fatigue that comes with developing blog topics. Here are some major ones:
It might seem simple but it’s always worth mentioning. People are visual creatures, so a blog with large blocks of dense text and no visual elements is not appealing or easy to read.
For blogs, it’s best to keep paragraphs fairly short, and use numbered or bulleted lists that make skimming easy. (A fact of blog writing: people might not read every word, and that’s fine. The goal is for them to come away from a blog with new insight on a topic.) White space is the best friend of a blog because no one wants to be visually overwhelmed.
On a design level, blogs should have a cohesive theme and on-brand imagery to create a recognizable connection to the rest of the website. Blogs, like all marketing content, are ultimately meant to drive conversions. They should be designed well on the individual level and in connection to the larger site to help drive that big-picture goal.
We often say that you can’t market in a vacuum, and that extends to content marketing in a vacuum. Writing a blog should never be a siloed task. At the minimum, using email and social media to promote blogs makes for a more fleshed-out content strategy.
But there’s even more to it than that. Content creation strategy should play into larger company goals. If a business is focused on revenue marketing, then each blog needs to play into that objective. Content should be leveraged in as many ways as possible to drive traffic, acquire leads, and convert leads into customers and revenue.
A great way to give a blog some extra personality and build it into a brand is to name the blog. Whether that name is clever or just something a little more straightforward, naming a blog, while not a necessity, can add some creativity and brand awareness to the content.
Blogs are a popular marketing channel for a reason. They can showcase creativity and thought leadership while building credibility, answering real questions, and supporting an SEO strategy. Staying up to date on tips and best practices will help content creators put together blogs that people will actually want to read.
You want content that’s readable, informative, aesthetic, strengthens SEO, and leads to conversion and revenue. Simple, right?
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