Content Marketing: Creating the perfect Blog Creation Checklist to deliver the blogs that convert (episode 131)
by April Buencamino-dySarah Falcon is the VP of marketing at Object Edge where she leads marketing strategy and execution – including driving high-performing content marketing. Sarah gets to work across a number of industries including both B2B and B2C eCommerce.
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The Importance of Blog Content on Your eCommerce Site
When your blog content is focused and audience-specific, it can play an important part in your website.
Whether it’s for brand awareness, education, or re-engagement, you can move your customers in a particular direction with a tailored blog.
You can also repurpose your blog content in different ways, depending on the objectives you want to achieve with your content marketing strategy.
System-Driven Blog Content
Sarah says that even when you have the right people and technology for creating content, you still need a system to make the most out of your resources.
With writing, you may be able to create content with AI writers. But for Sarah, writing is really dependent on people and processes.
Building Your Blogging Checklist
To build your content marketing system, think through your process and all the possible components.
These can include:
- SEO research
- Writing
- Copy editing
- Graphic design
- Infographics
- Publishing and promotions
Make sure to include all the things you want to get done, regardless of whether you’re doing this on your own or dividing the tasks among team members.
Finding the Right People
Sarah says finding the right people to accomplish the tasks on your checklist is critical.
You have to find the ones who want to do a great job and who really understand what they’re supposed to write and talk about. And make sure to understand your people’s strengths and give them tasks that will play to their individual strengths.
Among the team, there also has to be constant communication so you can set the standards for what you want to achieve and each one becomes accountable for that part of the process they own.
How to Optimise Your Blogging
To optimise blog posts, do a lot of thinking and planning beforehand and schedule them out in batches so you can build them for scalability and growth.
Sarah also mentions repurposing blog content into emails and social media posts to maximise its impact.
Insider Tips
If we’ve inspired someone to take their first step with content marketing – what do they need to know to give themselves the best chance of success?
Think about your audience and then figure out the process that you can successfully execute. This can either be a process you own yourself or something you can assign to people you trust.
When you have the process, you can now start and learn as you go.
Once you’ve started of course you’ve got to ‘keep optimising’! So what’s your favourite way to improve content marketing performance?
Sarah’s tip is to build a process for optimisation.
In her case, every six months, she and her team look at every piece of content they’ve published and optimise each one.
If someone listening wants to learn more about content marketing is there one cheap/free resource you’d recommend?
She also recommends the book Write Useful Books: A modern approach to designing and refining recommendable nonfiction by Rob Fitzpatrick.
Crystal ball time – what’s coming up in the next 6-12 months that we should be getting ready for in content marketing?
There will definitely be tighter budgets but content demands will remain the same.
It’s important for you to understand your process and figure out where you can be more efficient in order to make things less expensive but faster and cleaner.
Interview Links
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