New to blogging? Or wish to revisit your content plan for your long-forgotten blog? You've come to the right place.
Content strategy can either make or break your blog success and hence it is important to follow a correct one!
And who can guide you to the correct strategy except for the blogging experts itself!
Here is the list of industry experts' opinions about content planning and strategy when it comes to blogging:
Content Strategy Tips For Tech Bloggers From Experts:
Shivbhadrasinh Gohil, Co-Founder and CMO at Meetanshi
"Content strategy matters the most for the success of the blog."
For upcoming bloggers, things to keep in mind are:
- Offer solutions to niche readers
- Offer solutions consistently
- Offer solutions in a readable format
- Offer solutions that readers are seeking"
Matthew Mirror - CMO and co-founder of PurpleCup Digital, a digital marketing agency
"If you're just starting your blog, then you want to get as much content up as possible, so that you have more value to offer your audience. My best advice is to write three to four minimum 1,000-word articles per week for the first two months. This tells Google that you're serious about creating great content, you have a lot of content for your audience to read, and you're starting to create SEO power.
High-quality content at a high volume can be a great way to get started, rather than making one or two skyscraper pieces of content that aren't enough to rank your website or feed a large audience."
Christine Wang, Founder of The Ski Girl
"A very basic thing to understand when starting any blog is that you are, more often than not, trying to provide solutions to your reader's problems. Whether they want to know a good product to buy, have a direct question, or are just curious about something simple, the goal of the blog should be to give them the answers they are looking for. By providing these answers, you become a trusted resource, and readers will return time and time again.
A solid technique to find out what answers to provide is to get a good grasp on your keyword research. Once you have your blog niche dialed in, this keyword research will directly point you towards what subjects and topics you should be writing on. It's related and blends right into the first tactic mentioned above and these two tips go hand in hand for a highly effective content marketing strategy."
Richie Pusateri, Marketing Associate for Postal.io:
"For upcoming bloggers, I would recommend mapping our pillar pages of the website before writing blog posts. A pillar page is a main topic or tag that your blog will hone in on. Pillar pages are generally broad topics under which you can write multitude of subtopics for. For instance, a website might have 3-8 pillar page topics and for each of those and additional 10-20 subtopics keywords. Your blog post would cover one of those subtopics within the broader topic or tag. Understanding and developing a long term content strategy is paramount before writing more blog posts."
Scott Jones, Owner, Blogger and chief dog trainer at Pupster Passion
"There is an amazing free tool called AnswerThePublic.com. Drop niche related words and phrases into it and then trawl through all the data it feeds you. Grab all the best suggestions you can write about and sort them into clusters, around subtopics.
You have now built a basic, phase one content strategy for your blog, you have list of niche related topics that you know people are interested in reading about.
Take action and get writing.
Always write for what your readers, don’t try to please the search engines, don’t try to force sales products into the content.
Write for your readers, build a following and you will reap the rewards."
Anna Barker, personal finance expert and founder of LogicalDollar:
"For up and coming bloggers, my number one recommendation in terms of content is always to see what's working for others in your niche and do the same.
If you're looking to monetize your blog, your initial focus for the first few months - if not longer - should be on generating content that will rank in Google and grow your traffic. And the easiest way to do this is to see what your competitors are doing and base your own content strategy on this.
This doesn't mean directly copying them. But there are several tools you can use to see the top pages of your competitors (Ahrefs' one-week trial is great for this), which can give you some good ideas on the posts you should be writing with the goal of having similar success as others in your niche."
Jayson DeMers, Founder & CEO, EmailAnalytics
"If you're just starting a blog, there are 3 important things to keep in mind:
1. Before you start writing any content, you need to first figure out what keyword you are going to target for each post. If you just write a post without targeting a keyword, it'll be unlikely to get visibility in Google search results. And for a new blog, you really need that boost from Google to get readers. So, start by conducting keyword research. Each post you write should target one unique keyword.
2. Cover your topic thoroughly. The more comprehensive, thorough, and well-researched your blog post is, the more people will like it, share it, and read it. And the better visibility it'll get in Google search results!
3. Spend as much time promoting your content as you writing it. These days, there are a lot of blogs, and it's hard to rise above the noise. You need exceptional content to rise above it, and you need to give it a boost by promoting it. You can do this through social media, paid ads, or even just strategic SEO optimization."
Peter Koch, founder of DollarSanity:
"What's your area of expertise? What is the topic you can write about that hasn't be covered already? What's the niche you can establish yourself as an expert? What's the niche you can bring something new to the table? Those are the questions you have to ask yourself.
Do you have some unique recipes your grandma left you? Go, start a food blog.
Did you lose 100 pounds in under a year? Great, write about it. People will read it as you have the knowledge about it and you know how to do it.
Are you a mini-golf expert? Go for it.
No matter how small niche is you 're gonna make it if you know what are you talking about."
Adriana Tica, Owner and Founder of Idunn:
"With millions of blogs out there, it's not easy to stand out from the crowd. If you're just beginning, you can monetize your blog quickly (whether it's a business blog or a personal blog) by:
"What's your area of expertise? What is the topic you can write about that hasn't be covered already? What's the niche you can establish yourself as an expert? What's the niche you can bring something new to the table? Those are the questions you have to ask yourself.
Do you have some unique recipes your grandma left you? Go, start a food blog.
Did you lose 100 pounds in under a year? Great, write about it. People will read it as you have the knowledge about it and you know how to do it.
Are you a mini-golf expert? Go for it.
No matter how small niche is you 're gonna make it if you know what are you talking about."
Adriana Tica, Owner and Founder of Idunn:
"With millions of blogs out there, it's not easy to stand out from the crowd. If you're just beginning, you can monetize your blog quickly (whether it's a business blog or a personal blog) by:
- Finding a niche you are really good at. People can spot thin content a million miles away, so make sure you know what you're talking about. Also, research is key!
- Invest in promoting your blog early on. Even a tiny Facebook ads budget can get the ball rolling and help boost your organic reach.
- Focus on SEO from your first post. Don't choose the most popular keywords (aka those with a high search volume). Focus on those that matter to your goals instead. For example, for a boutique wedding dress shop it's much easier (and much more relevant) to rank for "how to find the perfect wedding dress in X city" than simply
"wedding dresses" - Don't expect wonders from day one. Blogging takes time to produce results. If you keep at it and post great content regularly, you will get tangible results in a few months to a year (depending on industry, topics and competition in your field)."
Folajomi Ballo, SEO Strategist at Hugestepup:
"Compile A list of Great Content Ideas (50 Minimum)
As a beginning blogger, there are many cups to fill. But the most vital one is coming up with content ideas strategically. Your first batch of content will define your blog's intent and will create a portfolio for you.
Content is king, but Content ideas means giving birth to kings.
"Compile A list of Great Content Ideas (50 Minimum)
As a beginning blogger, there are many cups to fill. But the most vital one is coming up with content ideas strategically. Your first batch of content will define your blog's intent and will create a portfolio for you.
Content is king, but Content ideas means giving birth to kings.
This is the full breakdown of the strategy:
1. Evaluate your blog niche
You must evaluate your blogging niche and identify the pressing problems people need solutions to. Itemize as many as possible problems, be more specific - don't go too broad.
2. List Content Ideas
Since you were able to identify problems that need solutions, it's time to generate a long list of content ideas to combat those problems. Leverage forums and do keyword research to filter your list to the most relevant one. Keyword research will help you identify what content your blog can rank for.
3. Categorize your Ideas
I recommend you pile up 50 content ideas and do keyword research for them. Now, segment your thoughts. What content ideas are you writing on first? What content are you publishing first?
You need to arrange them chronologically; it will help build connections between your contents.
4. Write Amazing Content
Now, start writing fantastic content. Follow the list you created. Since it's arranged chronologically, it means you will be writing content base on their level of importance.
The above strategy will help ease your stress as an upcoming blogger. Preparation is the key to success."
Joe Bailey, Business Development Consultant at My Trading Skills:
"Your focus should be on evergreen content: this is content that never grows old, and should be answers to questions that are on people's minds all of the time. This will help bring in traffic to your site every season
Stay relevant: observe the times, and critically analyze the needs of your target audience. Use the insights gathered to create relevant and useful content that your readers will derive value from. Doing this regularly will keep you relevant in the eyes and minds of your target audience.
Bottom Line: As you begin your journey into blogging, keep in mind two essential things: creating evergreen content, and crafting content that is useful, and relevant to your target audience."
Alex Evans, founder of Pharmacy Compliance Specialists, LLC
You must evaluate your blogging niche and identify the pressing problems people need solutions to. Itemize as many as possible problems, be more specific - don't go too broad.
2. List Content Ideas
Since you were able to identify problems that need solutions, it's time to generate a long list of content ideas to combat those problems. Leverage forums and do keyword research to filter your list to the most relevant one. Keyword research will help you identify what content your blog can rank for.
3. Categorize your Ideas
I recommend you pile up 50 content ideas and do keyword research for them. Now, segment your thoughts. What content ideas are you writing on first? What content are you publishing first?
You need to arrange them chronologically; it will help build connections between your contents.
4. Write Amazing Content
Now, start writing fantastic content. Follow the list you created. Since it's arranged chronologically, it means you will be writing content base on their level of importance.
The above strategy will help ease your stress as an upcoming blogger. Preparation is the key to success."
Joe Bailey, Business Development Consultant at My Trading Skills:
"Your focus should be on evergreen content: this is content that never grows old, and should be answers to questions that are on people's minds all of the time. This will help bring in traffic to your site every season
Stay relevant: observe the times, and critically analyze the needs of your target audience. Use the insights gathered to create relevant and useful content that your readers will derive value from. Doing this regularly will keep you relevant in the eyes and minds of your target audience.
Bottom Line: As you begin your journey into blogging, keep in mind two essential things: creating evergreen content, and crafting content that is useful, and relevant to your target audience."
Alex Evans, founder of Pharmacy Compliance Specialists, LLC
- "Forget about SEO:
EO I'm sure can be great when you are established and looking to maximize your site, but when you are writing articles focus on producing helpful, high-quality pieces. Even if you have an SEO strategy that brings people to your site, you won't get them to stay if you aren't helping them in some way. It can be helpful in other areas (building backlinks, for example), but in producing content it can bog you down. - State your points clearly, use sparse text, and use sub-headers and headers:
Your content should be 'skimmable.' People aren't going to sit there on your site and read a wall of text, so you need to make clear points quickly and use bolding, headers and sub-headers, italics, etc. to get the primary points across. Think of the 5-paragraph essay you wrote in high school. You started with your thesis, and the next three paragraphs supported that thesis. Your sub-headers should all be those sections, supporting your ultimate thesis. - Lists do well in online content: If you don't know what to name your article, try a list: Top 7 things I like about Florida, 5 ways to reduce stress, etc."
Kris Hughes, Senior Content Creator at Gembah
"There are two things to remember when building a blog from the ground up.
Posting content on your own blog should be the least of your priorities. Sounds crazy, right? It true. The only content you should publish on your own blog in the first 60-90 days of its life is your 4-5 cornerstone pieces. These cornerstones are about the main elements of the value proposition your blog will provide readers in time. If you're teaching about gardening, find the four critical aspects of gardening you want to cover and write cornerstone articles around each of those that are in-depth, well-researched, SEO friendly, and at least 2,500-3,000 words. Then stop creating content for your blog. Instead, turn your focus outward.
Building domain authority is your biggest priority. Without domain authority, there is no chance at organic search traffic. Without organic search traffic, you won't be able to drive your readers toward the desired action.
To build domain authority, you should aggressively pursue opportunities to acquire guest blogs on websites in your niche with a domain authority of 35-60. Why 35-60? Anything less than 35 won't pack much of a punch for the work you put into creating the blog, and anything higher than 60 is a bit much to tackle for a new blog.
As you start to land these posts and include backlinks to your site within them, your domain authority will begin to increase. As your DA increases, you can pitch higher-profile blogs for guest blogging opportunities, and your traffic will start to grow incrementally. When traffic starts to increase, you turn your attention back to your own blog."
Sarah Cook, founder of Sustainablecooks:
"There are two things to remember when building a blog from the ground up.
Posting content on your own blog should be the least of your priorities. Sounds crazy, right? It true. The only content you should publish on your own blog in the first 60-90 days of its life is your 4-5 cornerstone pieces. These cornerstones are about the main elements of the value proposition your blog will provide readers in time. If you're teaching about gardening, find the four critical aspects of gardening you want to cover and write cornerstone articles around each of those that are in-depth, well-researched, SEO friendly, and at least 2,500-3,000 words. Then stop creating content for your blog. Instead, turn your focus outward.
Building domain authority is your biggest priority. Without domain authority, there is no chance at organic search traffic. Without organic search traffic, you won't be able to drive your readers toward the desired action.
To build domain authority, you should aggressively pursue opportunities to acquire guest blogs on websites in your niche with a domain authority of 35-60. Why 35-60? Anything less than 35 won't pack much of a punch for the work you put into creating the blog, and anything higher than 60 is a bit much to tackle for a new blog.
As you start to land these posts and include backlinks to your site within them, your domain authority will begin to increase. As your DA increases, you can pitch higher-profile blogs for guest blogging opportunities, and your traffic will start to grow incrementally. When traffic starts to increase, you turn your attention back to your own blog."
Sarah Cook, founder of Sustainablecooks:
"My tip is that you don't have to niche down right away (or ever), but at least have an ideal reader in mind. Who do you want to serve? Who will you help with your blog? As long as you keep that in mind, your content will always be relevant for your audience."
Noman, founder of WP Adventure:
"The most effective advice I'd have for new bloggers is to spend some time reviewing the top-rated articles and look for the content gap. Try to find information that isn't covered in those content and create one using the information you have. If you manage to do that and write a great piece of content eventually, it'll be easier for others to link back to, and also rewarded by Google in the SERP."
Andrew Taylor, Director at Net Lawman:
"If you're looking at blogging on your won, and not paying content producers to write content for you, then you need to recognise that this is a big project to take on.
You need to be writing 1500-2000 words daily, in order for your blog to really take off as you expect it to. The only way that you are going to begin to get momentum and attract viewers is to be consistently posting valuable content.
I suggest that you take the time before you begin blogging to write up a plan of all of the content that you would be interested and willing to produce. Develop a list of ideas at least 50 topics long and keep the topic ideas as simple as possible. That was you can get momentum in your writing and not slow down as you search for content ideas."
Alexandra Zamolo, Head of Content Marketing at Beekeeper:
"The most effective advice I'd have for new bloggers is to spend some time reviewing the top-rated articles and look for the content gap. Try to find information that isn't covered in those content and create one using the information you have. If you manage to do that and write a great piece of content eventually, it'll be easier for others to link back to, and also rewarded by Google in the SERP."
Andrew Taylor, Director at Net Lawman:
"If you're looking at blogging on your won, and not paying content producers to write content for you, then you need to recognise that this is a big project to take on.
You need to be writing 1500-2000 words daily, in order for your blog to really take off as you expect it to. The only way that you are going to begin to get momentum and attract viewers is to be consistently posting valuable content.
I suggest that you take the time before you begin blogging to write up a plan of all of the content that you would be interested and willing to produce. Develop a list of ideas at least 50 topics long and keep the topic ideas as simple as possible. That was you can get momentum in your writing and not slow down as you search for content ideas."
Alexandra Zamolo, Head of Content Marketing at Beekeeper:
"Content for your blog must grab the reader's attention, and besides creatively written text, one important thing to focus on is your images. A recent study showed that 80% of all people remember images more than they'll retain the context of written text. When paired together, you can provide an appealing blog post, complete with unique content and vibrant, memorable images."
Anh Trinh, Managing Editor of GeekWithLaptop:
"Focus on Traffic:
As a new blogger, you should focus more on getting people to see your site. To do that you have to make sure that your content is relevant and that it targets a particular niche. Once you have your content figured out, you need to target keywords to ensure that your articles show up on search engines.
Create headlines that make users want to click:
I’m sure you’re familiar with clickbait and how people hate it but still click on it. It has to do with the headlines that spark people’s attention. What people don’t like about clickbait is that the content is dull and boring, it just doesn’t match the headline!
Well, you can attract readers to your blog by doing the same thing. Start creating headlines that will attract curious readers. Just make sure that it’s not clickbait and that the content is good.
Organize your content accordingly:
One of the most effective SEO tricks that any beginner can do is to organize your content. Google automatically rates your blog’s articles based on how organized and readable they are. And you can make readable content by using proper tags (H1, H2, H3), using bullet points, linking to relevant sites, and creating short but meaningful paragraphs."
Adam Lumb, Site Manager at Cashcow:
"I can highly recommend using Google Trends to help shape your content strategy. This tool gives you a good idea of when a keyword will be popular over the course of a year. Upcoming bloggers can take advantage of this by targeting these seasonal keywords which generally have less competition.
For example, we recently published an article about Easter promotions based on data from Google Trends. We were able to find relevant keywords that our content could target from the tool itself. However, we were also able to see exactly when people had started searching for these keywords in 2019 – which was a little earlier than expected (around 3 weeks before Easter itself). Therefore, we published the article a month in advance which resulted in a big boost of traffic which we would have probably missed otherwise.
You can also find search terms using Google Trends that are popular right now. You can then target this trend while focusing on your niche in a fun/interesting/informative way."
Petros Kantzos, Owner at France Travel Blog:
" The best content ideas come from simple google searches and autofill data from Google's search bar. Don't forget that the autofill data come from people that search this topic so there is definitely demand for the keyword and depending on the results that will come up under your query, it can be an easy or a difficult keyword to dominate."
Cyrus Yung Director of Ascelade Pte Ltd:
"My advice to upcoming bloggers is to write topics that people are searching online for. New bloggers just though that simply by writing content, someone would find and read their content after they hit the publish button.
If no one is searching for the topic, it would mean that you have no one reading your content from the search engines.
Second piece of advice is to write content that are low in competition. When you search for that particular topic on search engines, if you see 2 or more low authority sites ranking on the top 10 results, you will have a shot to generate search traffic.
Thirdly is to invest in a 3rd party software to help you in keyword research and spy on backlinks from sites that are ranking for the topic you are writing. This will help you tremendously in targeting low competition yet relevant search traffic."
Marco Sison, Nomadic FIRE:
"One thing I wish I knew when I started blogging is that the key to blogging success is consistency. There are ~2.3 million new blog posts published each day. Getting noticed under that mountain of information is isn't the hardest part.
The hardest part is the perseverance to keep publishing even when it feels like no one is reading. There is nothing more demoralizing than to spend days and days researching, interviewing, reading, writing, proofreading, rewriting, and posting only to get a handful of readers per day. Even when it feels like no one is reading, you need to keep grinding.
Consistency is key. Establish a publishing schedule and stick to it. Google likes content that is regularly updated. Your readers appreciate knowing they can come to your site every Monday and find new content. Keep at it. Even when it feels like no one cares, publish like clockwork, and eventually, the readers come."
Nirmal Kumar, OnlineRockersHub:
"First Things First: Write for your audience and not for search engines. This is the very common mistake that many bloggers do. They try to add more and more keywords and forget about the audience who are going to read it.
Long-form content: Writing long-form content is the future of content marketing. People tend to find more value in such articles and they perform well in search engines. And their engagement rate is high when compared to shorter posts.
Structure: Writing long-form content will become easy if you plan your article structure before writing. And not to forget your
professionalism in writing can be determined just by looking at the structure of the article. So, double-check the usage of headings and subheadings.
Legibility: Your content needs to be formatted well for the audience. Do not write long paragraphs, as it will make it difficult for your audience to read. Write shorter paragraphs with bulleted lists, bold, italicize to help your audience skim content easily.
You might come across these same tips very often. But when bloggers write posts regularly, they often forget these basics."
Michelle Ngome, Marketing Manager at Sutliff & Stout:
"One of the most important factors in creating a schedule and workflow that allows for consistency. Content creation and content marketing are two separate things that need to be outline whether solo or with a team. Also, I encourage a batch process. If a blogger can knock out four or five pieces of content in one day and release weekly that saves a lot of time in the long run."
"Focus on Traffic:
As a new blogger, you should focus more on getting people to see your site. To do that you have to make sure that your content is relevant and that it targets a particular niche. Once you have your content figured out, you need to target keywords to ensure that your articles show up on search engines.
Create headlines that make users want to click:
I’m sure you’re familiar with clickbait and how people hate it but still click on it. It has to do with the headlines that spark people’s attention. What people don’t like about clickbait is that the content is dull and boring, it just doesn’t match the headline!
Well, you can attract readers to your blog by doing the same thing. Start creating headlines that will attract curious readers. Just make sure that it’s not clickbait and that the content is good.
Organize your content accordingly:
One of the most effective SEO tricks that any beginner can do is to organize your content. Google automatically rates your blog’s articles based on how organized and readable they are. And you can make readable content by using proper tags (H1, H2, H3), using bullet points, linking to relevant sites, and creating short but meaningful paragraphs."
Adam Lumb, Site Manager at Cashcow:
"I can highly recommend using Google Trends to help shape your content strategy. This tool gives you a good idea of when a keyword will be popular over the course of a year. Upcoming bloggers can take advantage of this by targeting these seasonal keywords which generally have less competition.
For example, we recently published an article about Easter promotions based on data from Google Trends. We were able to find relevant keywords that our content could target from the tool itself. However, we were also able to see exactly when people had started searching for these keywords in 2019 – which was a little earlier than expected (around 3 weeks before Easter itself). Therefore, we published the article a month in advance which resulted in a big boost of traffic which we would have probably missed otherwise.
You can also find search terms using Google Trends that are popular right now. You can then target this trend while focusing on your niche in a fun/interesting/informative way."
Petros Kantzos, Owner at France Travel Blog:
" The best content ideas come from simple google searches and autofill data from Google's search bar. Don't forget that the autofill data come from people that search this topic so there is definitely demand for the keyword and depending on the results that will come up under your query, it can be an easy or a difficult keyword to dominate."
Cyrus Yung Director of Ascelade Pte Ltd:
"My advice to upcoming bloggers is to write topics that people are searching online for. New bloggers just though that simply by writing content, someone would find and read their content after they hit the publish button.
If no one is searching for the topic, it would mean that you have no one reading your content from the search engines.
Second piece of advice is to write content that are low in competition. When you search for that particular topic on search engines, if you see 2 or more low authority sites ranking on the top 10 results, you will have a shot to generate search traffic.
Thirdly is to invest in a 3rd party software to help you in keyword research and spy on backlinks from sites that are ranking for the topic you are writing. This will help you tremendously in targeting low competition yet relevant search traffic."
Marco Sison, Nomadic FIRE:
"One thing I wish I knew when I started blogging is that the key to blogging success is consistency. There are ~2.3 million new blog posts published each day. Getting noticed under that mountain of information is isn't the hardest part.
The hardest part is the perseverance to keep publishing even when it feels like no one is reading. There is nothing more demoralizing than to spend days and days researching, interviewing, reading, writing, proofreading, rewriting, and posting only to get a handful of readers per day. Even when it feels like no one is reading, you need to keep grinding.
Consistency is key. Establish a publishing schedule and stick to it. Google likes content that is regularly updated. Your readers appreciate knowing they can come to your site every Monday and find new content. Keep at it. Even when it feels like no one cares, publish like clockwork, and eventually, the readers come."
Nirmal Kumar, OnlineRockersHub:
"First Things First: Write for your audience and not for search engines. This is the very common mistake that many bloggers do. They try to add more and more keywords and forget about the audience who are going to read it.
Long-form content: Writing long-form content is the future of content marketing. People tend to find more value in such articles and they perform well in search engines. And their engagement rate is high when compared to shorter posts.
Structure: Writing long-form content will become easy if you plan your article structure before writing. And not to forget your
professionalism in writing can be determined just by looking at the structure of the article. So, double-check the usage of headings and subheadings.
Legibility: Your content needs to be formatted well for the audience. Do not write long paragraphs, as it will make it difficult for your audience to read. Write shorter paragraphs with bulleted lists, bold, italicize to help your audience skim content easily.
You might come across these same tips very often. But when bloggers write posts regularly, they often forget these basics."
Michelle Ngome, Marketing Manager at Sutliff & Stout:
"One of the most important factors in creating a schedule and workflow that allows for consistency. Content creation and content marketing are two separate things that need to be outline whether solo or with a team. Also, I encourage a batch process. If a blogger can knock out four or five pieces of content in one day and release weekly that saves a lot of time in the long run."
These tips can be your checklist when you start a new blog!
Kickstart your new venture and let us know how it went.
All the best for your blog!