How to Create a Blog Content Strategy [Ultimate Guide for 2024]

Do you have a blog content strategy?

If you’re saying yes to this question – congratulations! You and I both understand the success of having such a strategy. I’m sure you’re already reaping the rewards of being strategic.

If you said no to my question – don’t worry! It’s never too late to create a content strategy for your blog, even if it has been around for a while. You can start enjoying the benefits of being strategic, too.

So, whether you have a blog content strategy or you don’t have one, this guide is still for you.

Those of you who have a strategy can still find extra bits of gold and recommendations in this guide that might help you further strengthen your strategy.

And if you’re new to strategic planning, after you read this guide, you’ll know just about everything there is to know about ensuring that your blog does better.

What is a Blog Content Strategy?

Let’s break down what a blog content strategy is based on the words used to make the terms up.

First, what is a blog? A blog is a typically and regularly updated website that contains article-like pieces of content based on specific or non-specific topics. One or more people usually update a blog. The article creators have control over the majority of content published. Users will read and comment on articles. Most blogs are run using WordPress blogging software.

Second, what is blog content? Blog content is what makes up the articles on a blog. Content is typically in written form. There are many different ways to present blog content, such as through listicles, how-to guides, and research articles. Most blog content focuses on a specific topic, which is known as a niche. For example, the niche of this blog is blogging.

Third, what is a strategy? A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve an overall goal through the completion of smaller objectives. Most businesses use strategic planning in order to compete and be able to raise their profit margins.

So, now you know what a blog is, what blog content is, and what a strategy is. Now, you just smash it all together and get a blog content strategy.

Your blog content strategy is a plan of action where you will use content publishing to achieve smaller objectives that lead to bigger goals, like making money with your blog or being a major authority in your niche.

You decide on the goals and objectives. That’s an important part of strategic planning. Without a blog content strategy, you’re basically running around in the dark without a plan of knowing what to do.

Once you strategize your routines, blogging gets a whole lot easier.

 

Why is it Important to Create a Content Strategy?

There are many reasons why you would need to develop a blog content strategy.

I could create an entire guide just on the topic of why you should have a strategy. But I’d rather sum it all up in this section so that we can move on to the best parts of the strategy, which is knowing how to create it.

As I stated above, a strategy is an overall plan. It’s your master plan for the main goal you want to complete. Without a strategy, you’re just hopelessly trying to complete a huge goal that is probably knocking you down in the process. Without a strategy, you are overwhelming yourself and your ambitions.

With a strategy, you’re focusing on smaller objectives that lead to the normalized completion of your main goal. You’re accepting small wins that are easier to obtain and then getting closer and close to completing your main goal.

Your blog content strategy is a framework to help you set the goals and objectives to begin with.

Without a strategy, you can’t really measure anything because you don’t have a design to measure something against. A strategy allows you to track and analyze the efforts being made to help you reach your main goals.

This will allow you to make important decisions and changes when they’re required. Without a strategy, you might have never known how to make the changes that were keeping you from achieving your goals.

A content strategy will help you identify new blogging opportunities. You’ll get these through the planning process, research, and as you measure success and objective completion.

Every business owner who does strategic planning will also let you in on a little secret. Having a strategy will help you save money and cut costs because you have a plan outline in place. You’ll know what to spend on projects because you’ll have measurable goals and objectives in place.

Your content strategy will effectively help you with marketing. Marketing plays a big role in blog content planning and strategy. If you want to create additional marketing and specific marketing strategies, you can easily integrate them into your main blog content strategy, too.

There are many benefits of having a strategy for your blog content. You’ll find more of them as you develop, initiate, and measure your strategy.

 

4 Steps to Starting Your Blog Content Strategy

Getting started with creating a blog content strategy can be challenging if you don’t know where to start. But you’re reading this guide, so now you have the plan in front of you so that it can be a much simpler and smoother process.

 

Step 1 – Define Your Blogging Niche

This is the most important step of your content strategy – defining your blog niche.

Most new bloggers who fail at blogging will fail because of not being able to complete this step. It’s so important for you to define your niche.

But you can easily choose the wrong niche, too. Most bloggers who do choose the wrong niche do so because they’re choosing topics that are based on virality and trends rather than what they should be choosing.

So, how do you find and define what your blogging niche is then?

You ask three questions:

1. What is your biggest passion in life?
2. Does a community exist online based around the topics of your biggest passion in life?
3. Could you develop products and services around your passion that people would actually pay for?

Let’s dive a little deeper into each of these questions.

The best niche for you is your biggest passion. I have three blogs. The niches of each of them are blogging (this blog), hiking, and cycling. I’ve been blogging for nearly 25 years. I’m obsessed with blogging. I hike every weekend and have done so for 6 years straight. I’ve built an entire brand around hiking in my local area. I’ve been a cyclist for over 10 years. It’s what got me into the outdoors and saved my life.

Focus on your biggest passions in life to be your blog niche. This is because these are topics that you’ll never get sick of writing about. They’re topics that you’ll always want to keep learning about. They’re topics that you care deeply about.

If you choose a topic that you know nothing about just because it is popular, you’ll be a small fish in a large ocean of bloodthirsty sharks. Why? Because you’ll be competing against bloggers of a niche that they are extremely passionate about and they will always stay ahead of you because of their passion.

But it doesn’t stop there. You need to make sure there is a market online before you start blogging about your passion.

I wanted to blog about hiking in my local area specifically. I had to make sure that hiking was popular in my area before I created the blog. I did this by using YouTube videos and posting videos on my hikes. After that became popular, I knew that launching a blog about it would likely result in success. It has definitely been a success since I launched it seven years ago.

You need to have a market and an audience online. You want there to be other blogs and competition, too. It doesn’t mean that the niche is crowded and oversaturated. It means that there are people who enjoy the topic enough that your blog might reflect with them.

If you find a niche with no competition, it’s probably because there isn’t an audience for it. Trying to develop an audience on the internet is going to be one of the most challenging things you’ll ever do.

And you’ll want the option to sell products and services further down the road.

You might not want to use your blog to make money. This question might not feel that important to you. But in reality, the more you blog and the more popular your blog gets, the more expensive it will get. You’ll need to at least make the blog pay for itself; otherwise, it might get too expensive for you to keep going as a hobby.

I pay more than $200 a month for my hosting service. I make more than that with my blogs.

But if you’re in the business of making money blogging, this question will definitely be very important to answer. If that’s the case, look at other blogs in the niche (your competition) and see how they are making money.

Will you be able to compete with them and make money, too?

Answer these questions and then move on to step 2.

 

Step 2 – Define Your Blog Goals and Purpose

The next thing you want to do is define the goals and purpose of your blog.

What do you want to get out of your blog? What purpose will your blog serve to your niche? What is the overall mission of your content?

These questions have to be answered in order to develop a great blog content strategy.

I can tell you my answers for this blog to help you out.

• I want this blog to eventually get me leads that turn into customers for blog consulting services.
• I want my blog to be a go-to blog for getting the latest blogging tips and tricks.
• The mission of this blog is to help you become a better blogger.

Everyone has different goals and purposes for blogging. Yours may not match mine. But having goals and a purpose is extremely important.

It’s okay to have a big goal, too.

I’d love for my blog to one day be my full-time job. That’s a big goal. But it’s important I set smaller objectives to help me get to that goal instead of trying to reach such a large goal with no direction.

So, if you have a big goal, just make sure you also make smaller goals under the bigger goal that you can accomplish quicker and help you achieve the completion of the main goal.

Maybe your goal is to make $1,000 a month. That’s a big goal, but it can be very achievable if you create smaller objectives to help you get to that main goal. An example of a smaller objective would be to land two advertising clients who will pay $250 a month. If you can do that, that’s half of what you wish to make with your main goal.

If you attempt to win at a major goal all at once, you’ll overwhelm yourself, and if you fail, as most do when they do it like that, you probably won’t want to blog anymore after that. And who knows what you’ll be missing out on after that.

Create a purpose for your blog. It will help you decide on goals, which will help you choose smaller objectives to help you achieve your main goals.

 

Step 4 – Identify Your Blog’s Target Market

The next step in creating your blog content strategy is to identify your target audience and market.

The easiest way to do this is to go where your audience will likely be.

This will most likely be social media. It might also be online communities and discussion forums. You might find your audience on other blogs like yours. You might find them through search engines and targeted keyword research.

There are many places where you will be able to find and identify your audience.

Not everyone in the niche will be everyone you market to.

A good blog content strategy will point out those who you market to, and “everyone” is not a good strategy to have in place.

You want to market to a specific type of person based on your specific niche and the information you have to offer.

This blog isn’t targeting people who want to build a business on LinkedIn or X. This blog’s market is bloggers, and that is the audience that I target with my content. Knowing who my audience is helps me make sound decisions that will impact those who I know will enjoy my content.

I save money this way.

I make more money this way, too.

There is a large ocean of people on the internet. If you target everyone, chances are, not everyone will benefit from your blog. But you’ll work extra hard trying to please them for no payoff in the end. Instead of working extra hard, work smart and target a specific type of audience with your content.

A blogger who knows their target market is a blogger who knows how to succeed at blogging.

 

Step 5 – Master SEO and Keyword Research

Search Engine Optimization is critical for any blog content strategy, yet it’s a function many bloggers ignore.

And sadly, because of that, their blogs don’t often rank higher. They lose out on potential traffic. They lose out of money. Without using some kind of SEO system, many bloggers will miss out on a lot of great opportunities.

There are four major parts of SEO that every blogger should be familiar with and even try to master if they can.

These four parts are:

• Keyword Research
• On-Page SEO
• Off-page SEO or Link-building
• Technical SEO

Keyword research is simple. You come up with keywords that relate to the content you’re creating. Then, you use a program like SEM Rush, Ahrefs, or Uber Suggest looking for a higher search volume and lower competition. That’s how you’ll “basically” find your best keywords. Longer-tailed keywords often do better than shorter keywords.

On-page SEO is how you set up each post to indicate to search engines what keyword you’re ranking for. The best formula I use is placing the researched keyword in my title, URL slug, H1, first H2, the first sentence in the first paragraph, the ALT tag on my first images, and a few more times throughout the post. You just need to make sure the keyword blends in with the content.

Off-page SEO is important for your blog content strategy because it helps you build reputation and authority. Off-page SEO is basically link-building. This is where you gain reputable backlinks for your blog content. You should do this in the form of guest blogging, podcast interviews, posting on online communities, blog commenting, and writing the types of content that people want to share and link to.

Technical SEO falls into a few tasks. You want to make sure your blog is secure. You can accomplish that using SSL and a security certificate. I use Let’s Encrypt. It’s free and used by a large number of bloggers across the internet. You’ll also want to make sure your blog is mobile-friendly. I create for mobile first, as do most bloggers. And finally, you’ll want to ensure that your blog loads fast. A page shouldn’t take more than a couple of seconds to fully load.

The SEO advice above is basic but will get you started. I highly recommend continuing to master your skills in search engine optimization as you blog more and more.

Identify Your Blog’s Core Content

A good blog content strategy will include a full understanding of what your core content will be. This is also called your cornerstone content.

 

Create Categories Under Core Content

Your core content is what main topics you want to cover based around your niche. For example, I have a hiking blog. Hiking is a broad topic with many sub-topics. My hiking blog focuses on hiking in the Shawnee National Forest and state parks in southern Illinois. My core content topics are “Shawnee National Forest” and “Southern Illinois State Parks.”

Choose your core content carefully. These are topics that you want to be able to keep blogging about. You want to eventually be known for being an expert on these topics. That’s why having these cornerstone core topics is so important.

After you determine your core content, decide on what categories you want to include on your blog. Choose a few categories and sub-categories for each of your core content topics. A few will help ensure you don’t choose too many and overwhelm yourself.

The core content decision of your strategy is one you should really consider precisely. Pivoting from core topics will often require you to start over.

 

Research Your Competitor’s Blog Content Strategy

It might seem daunting and too much work to research the blog content strategy of your competitors, but in reality, it’s not that difficult.

You will basically just look at the main core components of what you have enabled for your own content strategy. If you don’t have a strategy for LinkedIn and you don’t plan to get on LinkedIn, you don’t need to study the LinkedIn account of your competition. Instead, you should just focus on the parts of their strategy that match yours unless you want to expand.

Don’t just look at one competitor. Research multiple bloggers in your niche. Different bloggers will do different things in terms of blogging success and failure.

You want to look at all aspects of your blog competition. I recommend doing a SWOT analysis. The SWOT analysis allows you to measure the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of your competition. Once you get an understanding of the tool, it’s easy to use to better understand your blog competition and how their blog content strategy plays out.

It’s okay to spy on your competition because they are likely already spying on you.

 

Create Bulk Content

Once you have an idea of what your core content will be and what you plan to write about with your blog, you should then create bulk content.

Your content should solve problems. Look for the biggest problems in your niche. Research them and any solution that could solve them. Experiment with different solutions. Find one that fits. Find one that you can explain with words in an easy-to-understand format. Create blog posts that easily solve problems in your niche, and your blog will be favored by most of your target audience.

Get on online communities like Reddit, Quora, and social media. Find your audience and their communities on these platforms. Most of your audience will use these platforms to ask questions in relation to your niche. You can use your blog to answer these questions. This is an example of giving your audience what they desire. It should be a priority on your blog. The more of their questions you answer, the more trust and loyalty they will attach to your blog.

Every post you create should be high-quality and value-packed. If your post isn’t giving some kind of high value to a reader every time, then you’re doing it wrong. You should always write your content with your audience in mind. The content should always be about and for them. Don’t create content for you. Your audience is who it should always be geared towards.

You don’t have to be perfect with your grammar and spelling, but you should be very close to it. Make it a routine habit to edit your content. In the old days of blogging, you might spend more time editing your posts than you did writing them. It took up a lot of time back then. Nowadays, there are great tools available to make editing a lot faster. I use Grammarly myself. I’m an official ambassador of the service. It allows me to edit grammar and spelling the same day I finish the article. I highly recommend using it or something similar.

Your blog content strategy should implement a mission for each post you make. That mission should be that your next post needs to be better than the last post you published. This mission will help you stay aligned with creating value-packed content. If you strive to create better content each time, you’ll create better content each time again and again. Aim to better your art every time you write.

Do all of the above in bulk. That means that you should create and edit a lot of content at once. You’ll understand why in the next section below.

 

Create a Consistent Content Publishing Schedule

In the last section, I urged you to create value-packed, properly edited content in bulk. In this section, I’ll tell you why.

To sum it up, you’ll write content in bulk to stay ahead of the game.

I’ll explain.

You need to be consistent as a blogger. This doesn’t mean that you have to post a certain number of articles every week. It means that whatever amount you choose to post, you need to repeat that pattern routinely so that your audience knows when you will publish new content. That will allow them to put in more trust and become loyal readers of your blog.

The consistency of this blog is simple. I post once a week. I post every Wednesday at 10:00 AM CST. I consistently post every Wednesday at that time every week. Eventually, I’ll post twice a week, and while the days and times may change, I’ll consistently post twice a week until I change the amount of which I wish to publish. You can change your amount and experiment as long as you become consistent about it when you find that sweet spot.

Creating content in bulk will make being consistent a lot easier.

That’s because you’ll have many articles waiting to be published. You can schedule each article to be published on a certain day and time that is consistent with your desired schedule. However, you could also use this content to experiment and find your best posting schedule. Having this content available and scheduled will allow you to take a break when you need it, knowing you have something waiting to publish.

Just don’t let yourself fall behind. You’ll want to keep creating more content to keep that pool of content full. That way, if something does happen and you need to stop blogging for a while, you’ll have plenty of content waiting to be published.

Publishing ahead of time also frees you to focus more on other things like social media marketing and blog engagements. These things are important in blogging and often require more dedicated time on your part.

Consistency allows you to stay ahead, and it keeps you proficient at being aligned with your blog content strategy.

 

Create Editorial Guidelines for Content Contributors

It’s important to create guidelines for content distribution on your blog that you and other people have to follow at all times.

Having a planned and organized way of writing and publishing content on your blog is important. It’s a part of the strategy. It should definitely be a part of your blog content strategy, too. It should be a policy of how you write on your blog and of how other people will write on your blog.

Guest contributions and secondary writers will be very effective for you in making your blog more popular with even stronger content.

But these guests and other writers must create blog posts that align with your blog’s mission and goals.

The content should be very reflective of how your voice sounds on your blog. The guest post shouldn’t be just like your own content, but it should be in the same organization and uniform. If it’s entirely different than what you offer on your blog, you might confuse your audience.

I reject 9 out of 10 guest blog requests. This is because they will attempt to argue with me about my editorial guidelines and try to control how I will allow them to post on my blog. At that point, I reject their offer and cease any further business with them.

Make your perfect editorial guidelines and stick to your guidelines. Don’t let other bloggers try to push you around with them. Stick to your guns on the issue.

 

Create a Brand for Your Blog

Creating a brand is more important than anything these days.

The internet is huge. More and more people get on the internet every day.

Your niche is likely overcrowded and oversaturated. The competition is likely brutal in some respects. Don’t let this scare you away from blogging in that niche, though.

You can overcome it with branding.

Branding is giving your blog a distinctive design, voice, and expertise that makes you stand out from the crowd. You’ll use this same branding anywhere your blog is represented, including on social media.

With branding, you’ll typically choose a specific logo (or use a photo of yourself) and colors and communicate in a voice that matches how you communicate on your blog.

A brand will keep you apart from other blogs in your niche. This is important. If you don’t have a brand, you are competing with the next blog, and there is no indication that you’re any different from them. With a brand, you set yourself aside from the normal and you stand out. You’ll get more attention from those looking for the kind of content you offer.

Branding might as well be as important as blogging if you want to have a successful blog.

 

Create a Good Blog Content Marketing Strategy

A marketing strategy is a good thing to add to your blog content strategy. You want people to find your blog, and you want it to do well.

 

Social Media Marketing

Social media is going to be one of your best marketing efforts. Most audiences for just about any blog niche are using social media.

If you’re looking to market your blog, social media will likely be your best outlet for promotion.

Just understand it’s not just a plug-and-play effort. You’ll need to create a community on each social media platform you promote.

Once you establish a community, promoting your blog will be a simple task. Without a community, promotion will be extremely challenging.

You’ll also learn quickly that artificial intelligence and algorithms will play against you. Don’t use social media to link to your blog posts. You can link to them here and there, but don’t dedicate each post to linking to your content.

Instead, use social media to build a community, make a name for yourself, and lead people to your blog through loyalty and reputation.

Use the 90/10 content model on social media. 90% of your content is non-promotional and native content. 10% of your content is promotional. You shouldn’t post a link to your blog every day, either. You should post every day on your social media pages, though.

Mastering social media takes work. The work is often hard work. But when you accomplish it, the payment of success and authority really pays off at the end of the day.

 

Email Marketing

An email newsletter is essential to blog marketing.

You should have started your email list right when you started your blog. If you haven’t, then you should start one right now.

Of all the things that algorithms and AI can manipulate, your email list isn’t one of them. It’s your true connection to your fans, followers, and potential customers that other third parties can’t stop. You own your list. You have access to the email addresses, and you can move your list at any time.

Now, you’ll have to convince subscribers to remain subscribed to your email list. We do this by sending excellent value-packed newsletters.

That newsletter is great for sharing your blog content. You can share your latest post and also share previously created posts through anchor text and bring back older topics that are relevant to your current newsletter edition.

You need to start building a strong email list now.

You can do this by offering a lead magnet for subscribing to your list. A lead magnet is something of high value that you provide for free for those who subscribe to your email list. Most of the time, blogs will offer an eBook or template of some kind as a lead magnet.

You also want to plaster your email list subscribe button everywhere on your blog. Make it show on every post. Make it pop up on pages. Get it out there, advertising your lead magnet so that you can start getting more subscribers.

You’ll quickly understand how important an email list is once you establish your and start marketing your blog with it.

 

Video Marketing

Video is the now content. Blogging is still very popular but video is a very growing popular form of content.

Video one day may rule as far as content marketing goes.

It’s good to get into video marketing now, master it, learn how to be the best editor you can be, and embrace it if a day ever comes when it’s the only relevant content.

Short-form video is where most of the viral content sits. This is platforms like YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, Facebook Reeks, and TikTok. If you can make entertaining short-form content that people can relate to, you can use it to get thousands of views on your blog content in just 24 hours.

Long-form content is also a good idea, as it’s still very popular. This is especially true if the video content is helping people in your niche with the hardest challenges of the industry.

As you develop your video marketing skills, try to aim for posting videos as frequently as possible. If you can, post one on a daily basis, even if it’s short-form content.

The more you use video marketing, the more popular your blog will likely get.

 

Evergreen Marketing

Evergreen marketing is very simple to do and very effective for your overall blog content strategy, too.

Evergreen content is content that stays fresh and relevant and can be used for reference again and again without worrying about the information having an expiration date.

A guide about how to create blog content (like this one) will stay relevant as long as blogs exist. This article is an example of what evergreen content looks like. A post about the latest changes in a software version isn’t evergreen because it will expire as new versions come out.

While some non-evergreen content has its place in the blogging world, the majority of your content should be evergreen.

You want your audience to be able to come back to your blog again and again to seek information and share it without friends and family. This can happen if the majority of your content is evergreen.

Make sure you write a lot of evergreen content on your blog so you can keep readers coming back.

 

Publication Marketing

Publication marketing is the type of blog content strategy that many bloggers fail to achieve.

What is publication marketing, though?

It’s marketing where your blog is publicized around your niche.

There are many examples of this, including:

• Guest blogging on other blogs similar to your own
• Getting interviewed on podcast shows within your niche
• Getting interviewed on the local and national news for your industry
• Being mentioned in industry and niche magazines and publications
• Becoming a guest speaker at events that are related to your niche
• Cited on educational, college, and university websites
• Getting linked to government websites and directories

You should strive to grasp and master publication marketing success.

But most of the time, you’ll only land these successful publications when you consult with businesses and organizations about being published on their platforms.

You need to show them that you’re worthy enough to be published. You do this with your content and your efforts in building an audience around your blog.

Most of the time, this form of marketing will take place after you start to become popular. But once it does, it can help you become viral and get even more popular.

Anytime you have the opportunity to become published, take that opportunity.

Track Your Blog Content Success

It’s important to track your blog content strategy successes and failures. The more you understand the analytical side of things, the better your modifications and changes to your strategy will become. Many bloggers opt out of this phase because of the challenge of being analytical. It’s easy to do, and missing out on this feature can be what ends your blogging career.

 

Traffic

Try to understand your traffic.

Understanding your blog traffic will paint a picture of overall visits to your main blog, each post, every page, and subdomains within your main blog domain.

If you have unique visitors, reoccurring users, and average users, you can monitor these users after you gain an understanding of the traffic analysis feature on practically any sort of analytics tool you use.

You can also compare data with past data to see which timeframes did better than others.

You can find out your traffic sources or where your readers are coming from. You can also see where they live and what kind of device they are using to access and consume your blog.

Understanding your blog traffic will help you make improvements that will grow your readership.

 

Leads

A lead is a potential customer or subscriber who has shown interest in your products, services, or content.

Most of the time, you’ve collected contact information from a lead. This allows you to potentially turn the lead into a customer. This is important when you’re trying to make money with your blog.

You want to be able to analyze your leads so that you can keep doing things to get more of them.

Referrals will show you how your leads got to your blog. Then, you’ll understand where to strengthen you’re your referral strategies so that you can acquire more leads for your blog.

You also want to analyze the quality of your leads. You want to understand their subscription and buying behaviors. This allows you to cease trying to convert a lead to a customer if you know that they’re not quick to buy things and often have second thoughts about purchasing things. You can save a lot of time by analyzing the quality of your leads.

Leads are important to fully understand when creating a blog content strategy so that you know who to strive to convert into a paying customer.

 

Conversion Rates

Conversion rates in blogging refer to the percentage of blog readers or visitors who take a specific desired action that you want them to take.

These actions are usually your CTAs or Call-to-Actions. You should be implementing CTAs on every blog post you create.

There are many reasons to implement a CTA including but not limited to:

• Getting email list subscribers
• Selling a product or service
• Gaining online community membership
• Redirecting users to a sponsor
• Leaving a comment on your blog posts

This list isn’t extensive. You may have other CTAs that you wish to add. It’s best to have one CTA per content page. Having more than one can rob one from the other. It can also look desperate.

You want to measure the conversion rates of your CTA results.

This will help you understand how many people are acting on your CTA and whether or not you need to adjust it to make it more effective.

You can measure these analytics through subscriptions, purchases, downloads, registrations, comments, and clicks recorded by codes such as through an affiliate link.

There is a common formula used in measuring conversion rates:

Conversion Rate (%) = (Number of Conversions / Total Number of Visitors) * 100

A higher conversion rate means that your blog is effectively converting readers into action-taking users. Lower rates mean that your methods of conversion need improvement and better-persuading elements introduced into them.

Understanding how to measure your CTAs is just as important as having CTAs to begin with.

 

Social Media Engagement

It’s very important to measure your social media engagement, especially when it comes to social media platforms being used to help market your blog.

It’s important to first define the metrics you want to analyze for social media engagement. Different metrics mean different things to different people.

I pay attention to comments more than I pay attention to shares when it comes to my social media engagement metrics. I want to be able to develop a relationship with the people who are already on my social media engaging with me.

You should use social media tools that are available for analytics and metric reading. These tools are often meant to help you get better on social media and get more popular because that will effectively help the social media platform gain more users.

Try to regularly monitor and track your engagement metrics. Create a spreadsheet and update it with new values per line each day that you’re able to. If you can update a line on the spreadsheet every day or once a week, you should try to do so. It will help you understand which days or weeks were better than others. Then, you can figure out what you need to do to improve.

Understanding social media engagement is very important when developing a community on social media as an effort to make your blog more popular.

 

Blog Engagement

Understanding what your readers think about your blog is critical to the success of your blog. This understanding can be measured through your blog engagement elements.

This metric is fairly simple to analyze.

You’re looking at comments, shares, and likes to your blog content.

You want to understand what posts are getting the most comments and why. You also want to understand what posts are getting shared the most and where. You also want to know about likes and ratings if you offer that feature.

This is another set of metrics that deserve to be added to your daily or weekly updated spreadsheet. It will help you determine the best changes to make to improve your blog content strategy.

You should also pay attention to what is being written in your blog comments. This can often help you keep your readers happy by implementing their requested changes.

 

Cost-Per-Lead

If you’re spending money on advertising and other marketing efforts, it’s important to make a profit that exceeds the amount in which you have spent. This can be measured by understanding your cost-per-lead.

Measuring this metric is fairly simple.

You will divide the marketing price (the price you paid) by the number of leads that the marketing effort gained for your blog.

A higher percentage will mean that your efforts are paying off. A lower percentage might mean that you’re spending more than what you are making in return for a lead.

ROI is very important.

ROI stands for Return-on-Investment and it simply is a way of measuring how much is returned to you after you have invested in something.

In most cases, you don’t ever want to pay for a marketing effort unless you’re going to make more than what you have spent. This is especially true if you’re thinking about buying ads for your blog content.

You want to profit more than you spend every time; otherwise, you waste your money.

 

 

Audience Listening

Audience listening is extremely important. By understanding what your audience wants, you can control the success of your blog precisely.

Listening to your audience is critical to your blogging success.

Your audience will gladly tell you what they expect and want out of your blog content. You should always aim to serve them and give them exactly what they want and desire.

A good way to do this is to survey your audience.

Place a QUICK survey link on every blog, every newsletter issue, and on social media, asking for feedback. Make it easy to do the survey and quick to do. The easier you make it, the more likely your readers and followers will complete it.

A survey can help you shape everything about your blog and give users what they need in order to keep coming back to your blog again and again.

 

Blog Content Strategy FAQs

These are some common frequently asked questions about maintaining a blog content strategy.

 

What is involved in creating a blog content strategy?

The main thing that is involved in creating a content strategy is your attention. You are going to need to be able to research, plan, modify, and perfect your strategy. You’ll need to research your competition and your target audience. You’ll need to fully understand what you want to get out of blogging. You’ll want to spend time perfecting your strategy.

 

Why is a content strategy needed for a blog?

A good business includes a strategy of how to run it. If you treat your blog like a business, you’ll likely have more success meeting your goals and objectives. In most cases, your blog will be a business endeavor. Most bloggers aim to be able to blog full-time at some point. If you create a content strategy for your blog, you’ll be setting yourself up to make your blog more business-like.

 

What’s the first step in creating a content strategy for my blog?

The first step is finding your niche. You need to choose a niche that is a topic you’re very passionate about. If you choose a niche you know nothing about just because it’s popular or trending, you’ll be a small fish in a large ocean of sharks, and they’ll eat you alive. Your competition will likely be passionate about the niche and will always stay ahead of you. Choose a niche that you’ll enjoy writing about again and again.

 

What if I don’t make a content strategy for my blog?

You may or may not miss opportunities that can help make your blog better, get you more traffic, and earn you more money. Most of the bloggers who fail at blogging don’t have any kind of strategy in place. Most companies and businesses can achieve success by having a proper strategy in place. Your blog is very much a business, and whether making money or not is your goal, a strategy for your blog is very important.

 

Does it cost anything to create a blog content strategy?

It only takes your time and energy. Creating a strategy is free and doesn’t require you to pay anything if doing it yourself. Not doing a blog content strategy might be what actually costs you money in the long run. With no direction for your content, you might make many blogging mistakes that require you to pay for tools and services in order to make your blog successful. The truth is that you could have done it yourself at no cost versus having to pay someone else to do it at a later date.

 

What other types of blog strategies should I create?

A marketing strategy and a revenue strategy are two good strategies to include in your planning efforts. Your marketing strategy will help you promote your blog and gain more attention for it. Your revenue strategy will help you earn money and a profit with your blog. Both of these strategies can easily be integrated into your blog content strategy, too.

 

Final Thoughts About Creating a Blog Content Strategy

This ends my guide to creating your perfect blog content strategy.

This strategy is very important. It will decide the fate on which your blog can be a complete success or a complete failure. With the advice above, you now have a basic understanding of how to make your blog successful through efficient content management and marketing.

If you’ve enjoyed this post, please share it with other bloggers to help support me in creating it.

I recommend you follow me on X for even more blogging tips. I’ve also created a free online community dedicated to blogging and would love for you to join it. It’s called Blogging Collective, and you should join today.

About the Author

Shawn Gossman has created content, blogged, ran online communities, and shared a passion for digital marketing for over twenty years. Shawn believes the best way to help content creators, businesses, brands, and marketers is to give away more than you sell. The same advice is recommended for the readers that follow this blog. Shawn also offers a variety of services for extra help in the area of content creation, blogging, forums, and digital marketing. Learn more about Shawn Gossman by clicking here.