November 25, 2020 •DJ Team
The digital marketing arena can be aggressive and at times difficult to traverse. It's easy to spend hours researching your audiences, noting high-demand blog topics, and gathering data to make improvements to your content strategy. When it comes to blogs, however, there are a few time-tested tips and tricks when pursuing search engine traffic to understand what makes the best blogs stand out from the rest.
Before you can determine what makes the best content marketing blogs, however, a good grasp of what makes a blog successful can eliminate a lot of trial-and-error marketing strategies.
What Is a Good Blog?
A good blog can be a number of different things, but when analyzing the strength of a single content marketing blog post you should consider two main factors:
- Did it drive traffic and produce more leads?
- Did consumers respond well to it?
Driving Traffic and Producing Leads
Traffic is the absolute main goal for a content marketing strategy, at least in the short-term. If you’re seeing more visits to your website from your blogs, then you’re already in good shape. However, really gauging how successful it was to your company’s overarching strategies to engage with potential clients and capture sales will mean analyzing what steps these visitors are taking after they’ve read the content. Are they clicking around on your website? Viewing product/service information pages? Did they submit a form or sign-up for a free trial? Traffic that doesn’t convert to leads or sales isn’t worth much.
Create content that ranks with DemandJump content outlines - try it free!
Consumer Response
This is more than just acknowledging active journeys on your website. To understand how well your content marketing blogs are resonating with your audiences, take to social media platforms to understand how your content is being shared and commented on. If you share your blog content through email campaigns, assess their performance—open rates, CTA click throughs, forwards. High engagement will likely be an early sign that the content is successful. Another key indicator that your content is being well received is the Average Time on Page metric in analytics reports. Think about how long it might take the average reader to fully consume a blog you’ve published, then compare that to the average amount of time your visitors spend on that blog. The higher that number, the greater number of visitors are hanging on your every word.
Blogs that can accomplish both of these important goals should be noted, tossed into the “Success Bucket” and analyzed when creating new and improved blog strategies.
What Are the Most Successful Blog Topics?
If we can base success of your blogs on traffic, lead captures and consumer response, then how do we create a growing list of content that will work in favor of a successful blog campaign?
Look at What’s Trending
Whether your pulse on competitor content marketing blogs surfaces any common topics, or your social sharing platforms are buzzing with industry news, it’s a safe bet that if everyone else is talking about it, then you should as well.
Solve Problems
Any and all blog content should provide practical value. You want your readers to walk away from your blog having learned a new lesson, thinking critically about what you have to say, or even looking at your company as a possible solution to their problems.
Answer Questions
If your customers and prospects are asking questions, then you’ve got a great repository of content marketing blog topics already. What common questions do you get? If you get them from those you’re engaging with already, then you’re sure to find others asking the same questions online. You may even have a pre-baked answer ready for those frequently asked questions—put them in a blog (or several).
Check Your Success Bucket
Don’t forget about the past successes you’ve had. Reach into that pile of verified blog content for inspiration. Maybe you now have even sounder advice to tack onto an old blog, or more tips to throw at your audience looking to better their marketing measures. Not every blog needs to be brand new content. In fact, sometimes the best thing you can do is recycle old content by putting a fresh spin on it and setting it loose to reclaim its former glory.
Let Us Do the Research for Your Content Strategy
Effective content marketing blog campaigns often hinge of proper planning and research, which can quickly consume more time than you ever planned for. It’s really no surprise that this is often the biggest hurdle that content marketers face as they plan out their next content marketing campaign. This is why DemandJump exists—to provide a better, streamlined process for gathering and analyzing data and choosing the best high demand blog topics for any campaign. Join our free trial and get instant consumer insights.