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Time again we see the same question posed to marketing agencies to grow their business, whether they’re b2c or b2b: “are you blogging?” It’s a genuine question! Blogging is a great way to get a content strategy started in your company, and it helps boost your SEO and thought leadership. With so many notable benefits, what’s keeping marketing companies from blogging? Here are a few reasons marketers are hesitant to start blogging and how tips to overcome these fears!
Challenge: Marketers don’t know where to start with their blogging!
Tip: Focus on defining your audience first, before you start writing
Whether your marketing company is in the professional services, graphic design, or research industry, starting a blog from scratch can be intimidating. It’s not as simple as pulling up a blank document and pouring your thoughts onto a page (well, maybe this could work for a personal blog). Before starting a marketing blog—and even before brainstorming topics—you need to define your target audience. The best place to start is with your buyer personas.
Buyer personas act as a fictional representation of the ideal person your company wants to ultimately sell to. Here is an example of what a buyer persona could look like:
Marketing Mary is the director of marketing for both existing clients. Her focus is on creating content through blogging and promoting it via social media. However, she struggles with generating leads and growing her existing client-base. Her work is spread too thin, and she is unable to obtain new leads and customers.
With this buyer persona framework, your marketing company is able to define its target audience based on a user’s role in their company, the daily challenges they experience, and the outcomes they are looking for. From here, you’ll have a better idea of what your topics you should be focusing on. For example, if you are looking to blog around brand development strategies, some of your topics may include:
- Branding strategies for small businesses
- How to perform a brand refresh
- What is a brand positioning statement?
- Branding checklist for marketing companies
Challenge: Blogging for search engines is tedious and feels unnatural
Tip: You don’t need to stuff keywords into your blog posts
It’s true; writing your blog content to appease the search engine overlords isn’t exactly the most appealing concept; there is certainly some exaggeration behind how writing with SEO in mind actually works. You do not need to (and definitely shouldn’t) be throwing keywords all over your blog in an effort to prove to search engines that your content is focused on a specific topic.
Today, there are plenty of ways to help boost your SEO efforts in your blogging, and none of them require you to spam keywords. Some best practices include the following:
- Keep your blog page meta descriptions under 155 characters.
- Write your posts at around 300 words or more. Search engines prefer lengthier, content-heavy pages, so aim for at least 300-500 words.
- Add alt text to your images. This is a simple task that can be done quickly. The alt text should describe what’s going on in the image, to help search engines interpret what the image actually is.
- Try to include some keywords/phrases in your section headlines and especially in your H1 header. It helps to mention keywords in your headers because they are one of the top areas that search engines will index when ranking your webpage.
Above all, blog with your audience in mind—not just what search engines want to hear! Your blog should be helpful to their needs and provide relief from the everyday challenges and pain points they experience.
With these tips in mind, your marketing company will be able to kickstart and grow a strong blogging strategy! For more marketing and content development advice, contact thinkdm2 today. Thinkdm2 is a digital marketing and branding agency with experience in the technology and professional services industries. To learn more about how to enhance your content strategy and SEO, download our free Topic Clusters eBook.
