Despite peak buzz twenty years ago (per the image above), blogs have continued to demonstrate value to brands, particularly in creating impact in the realm of search engine optimization (SEO). When coupled with strategic keyword research and competent copywriting and optimization, blog posts have tremendous potential as an anchor to a brand’s content marketing strategy. This article outlines best practices that will empower your blog and related content strategies that enhance your brand’s visibility, credibility, and revenue.

Content marketing leverages various digital assets such as texts, images, audios, and videos to captivate and retain a (theoretically) well-defined audience. Rather than intrusive advertising, content marketing focuses on delivering value to consumers through entertaining and/or informative content. The highest life-form of content online is video, which continues to grow in popularity and impact. According to Allied Market Research, the global content marketing market size was valued at $413.2 billion in 2022 and is projected to reach $2 trillion by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 16.9% from 2023 to 2032. As a growing discipline, content marketing has become an essential component of digital sales and marketing programs.

Content Marketing Best Practices
With the growing adoption of generative artificial intelligence (GAI), it is tempting to lean heavily on platforms like ChatGPT to rapidly create content for your website or blog. Unfortunately, the temptation can be problematic, as Google recently updated their ranking system to penalize low quality (including GAI-based content). The March update aimed to reduce low-quality, unoriginal content in search results by 40 percent and this is likely only one of many steps search engines will take to mitigate abuse of GAI to generate content. The best way to stand out in a post-GAI world is to create unique, compelling content with the help of thought leaders and talented copywriters. Below are ten best practices to maximize the impact of your content strategy, with a focus on your blog.

Understand Your Audience
Clearly define who your target audience is so you can tailor content accordingly. Identify their interests, problems, and needs. Research your target audience, competitors, and related topics to inform your content. Platforms like SparkToro can shed additional light on existing or new audiences on which to focus future content. When it comes to driving brand awareness and preference for your products or services via blog content, I recommend prioritizing products or services with the greatest margin, highest volume, or largest growth potential first.

Define Goals and Set the Proper Tone
Before launching a blog, it is essential to understand your business, sales, and marketing goals, then distilling a content strategy accordingly. Common objectives for blog content strategy include an increase visibility and brand awareness in organic search for desirable phrases, increasing website traffic from blog posts and generating incremental qualified leads and/or new customers. Your brand values, and company culture should determine the voice of your blog and maintain consistency over time, regardless of the number of contributors.

Create an Editorial Calendar
To maximize efficiency and consistency over time, create a content calendar. Key elements to include in the content calendar include blog post topic, title, target audience, core keyword(s), content highlights, call-to-action, author, and deadline. Set a posting schedule, ranging from one to four times a month. To increase impact, expand your calendar to include optimization elements (title tag, meta description, and schema markup) as well as a social promotion schedule to track posts and related traffic.

Conduct Keyword Research
Conduct thorough keyword research using tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, SEMrush, and GAI platforms like ChatGPT to identify relevant keywords with high search volume and low competition. Incorporate relevant keywords organically into your content naturally, avoiding over-use which can create red flags for search engines (and humans). Utilize keyword research (especially GoogleTrends and BuzzSumo) to identify new or trending topics for forward-looking posts. This is easier if you have one or more thought leaders on your staff to provide insights and context.

Craft a Captivating Headline, Introduction and CTA
Ranking a blog post is only half the battle, the challenge is getting someone to click and read it. Crafting a catchy and intriguing headline helps grab attention and viewers. Use target keywords, coupled with “power words” and make it clear what the post is about and create a sense of intrigue. Begin the blog post with a compelling “hook” to capture readers’ interest and compel them to continue reading. Clearly state the purpose or benefits of reading the post early in the post, then deliver on the promise with actionable insights. Do not forget to include at least one call-to-action (CTA) within the blog post (i.e., contact us for an estimate or visit a product page). Additionally, ask for comments, shares, or subscriptions to boost reader engagement.

Focus on Quality Content (over Quantity)
Focus on creating high-quality content that solves problems, educates, informs, entertains, or inspires your readers. Writing should be clear, concise and include supporting visuals like images and videos (Google appreciates embedded media assets). Provide valuable and well-researched information and cite sources. Break content into digestible sections with subheadings. Use a conversational tone to connect with readers that resonates and demonstrates an understanding of your industry and customers. Do not cut corners with stock footage or silly clip-art. To differentiate from competition, consider using infographics, animated GIFs, and vertical videos.

Incorporate Best-Practice Formatting
Use clear headings, subheadings, and short paragraphs for light reading. Include bullet points and numbered lists to break up the body copy. This format is also favored by Google for use in the knowledge graph as rich snippets. Use an easy-to-read font and size to respect older readers. For additional SEO value and usability, link text in the blog post to relevant pages within your website, as well as external sources (which should open in new tabs), to improve website authority. Cross-link related posts within your blog and product pages, as Google values internal links to understand relationships and humans appreciate the convenience of linking to related content.

Optimize for Organic Search (SEO)
Before publishing the blog post, be sure to optimize the title tag and meta description for rank and click-throughs, respectively. Ensure proper use of headers (H1, H2, H3) for structure. This is made easier with the Yoast plugin for WordPress, for example. When optimizing the post, use compelling images, snippets, and relevant hash tags to improve visibility when shared via social media. Do not forget to leverage schema markup to maximize rankings and inclusion in rich snippets.

Promote Regularly
Actively promote your blog posts on your home page, via email newsletters and online communities. Leverage social media by sharing blog posts and engaging others within your industry niche. Participate actively in discussion forums (i.e., Quora and Reddit) related to your industry to gain visibility by including a link to your blog post, when appropriate. Consider repurposing content into different formats like turning blog posts into videos and related visuals and vice versa. Remind blog readers to subscribe to the blog feed and/or monthly newsletter to build a reader-base. The blog itself should also be promoted throughout the web, particularly to industry websites, forums, and publications to gain bookmarks and subscribers. To gain traction quickly, consider developing an ad campaign on Google and Meta to drive traffic, readers, and subscribers.

Analyze and Optimize
To maximize the impact of your content marketing efforts, measure and optimize current and future assets. Depending on your content marketing objectives, regularly track and act on insights monthly. Utilize Google Search Console to identify top ranking blog posts in search engines and Google Analytics to identify top performing blog pages (including traffic, time-on-site and conversions). Do not forget to analyze GA4’s keyword data to identify trending topics currently driving visitors to inform and refine future content. Also read comments and track shares or subscriber growth, as available.

By following these steps, you can create a compelling and highly visible blog post that resonates with your audience and attracts new readers. Remember, consistency and quality are key to building a successful content marketing strategy, with your blog as the foundation.

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Lauren’s theme was making content marketing magic and she showed how she had asked AI to take her profile picture and make her into a content sorceress. A quick way someone could leverage the themes in their own brands.

Brand Pillars along with Brand Voice and Key Audience were the potion to take one good idea (or in her case one podcast) and create a tree of ever-expanding content ideas. Start with the pillar, define the audience, then add topics using AI. Each topic can then have several angles, and each of those angles can be delivered in different formats.

Be very specific in defining AI’s task, “you will help me generate x amount of content ideas…” and providing it all the necessary context.  It’s important to provide feedback during your conversations. Each AI conversation is independent, and it does not learn from the previous conversation, so you want to have less conversations with more prompts within the conversation.

To differentiate your content from everyone else using AI, be very specific in how you define audience, voice, and tone. Try asking AI to create content in the voice and tone of three very different well known celebrities for ideas in creating your own.

Lauren closed with the importance of teaching your teams to delegate routine tasks to AI. And how AI should not make team members nervous, but help them leverage their strengths and cover areas they might be weaker in.

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Advanced Facebook & Instagram Advertising in 2019 & Beyond
Taught by Tim Halloran of Aimclear fame, this all-day masterclass workshop provided a deep dive into the Facebook/Instagram adverting platform. Out of respect for those paying extra for these deep-dive workshops, I’m only going to share a few select nuggets. The first is to remember that audiences are discreetly different, but often overlap. To reduce duplication of efforts, consider merging audiences if the overlap is greater than 35%. Not being a Facebook advertising expert like my teammates at Anvil, I found this session to be very technical, but beneficial to those managing campaigns daily.

The Power of Purpose
Mike Dupree from Twitter talked about the needs and benefits of brand purpose in terms of connecting with customers. Social activism is on the rise, especially amongst younger generations. Another opportunity Dupree outlined is for brands to be an “island of safety” during turbulent times. Fun fact: 75 percent of consumers expect brands to take a stance on political or social issues and 30 percent are buying or boycotting based on that stance. He then outlined key steps for leveraging purpose: 1) brand permission (do we have a right to be here?) 2) take a stand without taking sides 3) demonstration > communication 4) organizational decision. He cited a few brands demonstrating purpose through advertising (Nike’s Just Do It), REI closing the stores for Black Friday with the #optoutside campaign, HBO with the Rock The Vote campaign and the Countrytime Lemonade Legal Ade campaign.

B2B Account-Based Marketing: Align Your Digital Marketing for Sales Success
Bob Tripathi talked about account-based marketing (ABM) best practices. He discussed the B2B Lifecycle, emphasizing the need for alignment across the organization (agreed). This is particularly important due to the complexity of the technology and need for integration across teams within the organization. Through a host of visuals, Tripathi outlined key steps in the planning process when building an ABM program. He emphasized the importance of partnership between sales and marketing, knowing that can be challenging. In his example, Tripathi illustrates a sales funnel with a 10% conversion rate from initial awareness of target account to closed deal. This is a very reasonable estimate, based on our experience, if implemented properly. Tip: ensure decision-makers, approvers and influencers are included in the contact database or target marketing efforts. Tripathi outlined key responsibilities by department. Marketing owns content, nurturing emails, lead capture and scoring. Sales owns meetings with marketing and/or sales qualified leads (MQL/SQL), building relationships and closing deals. Tripathi then went through the steps of building an ABM campaign in detail, starting with developing a target account list and contact database. This step requires close collaboration with the sales team, who should know exactly who they want to target. He recommends starting small, with 2 verticals and a handful of target accounts as proof of concept. With each target account having an average of 5 contacts, the database grows quickly. Get buy-in from senior management with early wins to provide more support for a broader rollout. The next step is mapping out content type by objective (product or service) and persona. Each persona should have a unique and relevant experience based on role and pain points. Once the content is mapped to each prospect journey, the next step is creating the content assets. Tripathi reminded the audience that print direct mail works. In terms of outreach via advertising, he mentioned Facebook Business, Twitter Business as well as standard players like Google and LinkedIn more commonly associated with B2B targeting. He gave a shout out to LinkedIn InMail at $.30 per send. Ensure your platform tracks all forms of activity and touchpoints along the journey. Lead scoring should be thought out carefully, to minimize false positives while generating a meaningful number of leads. Lastly, Tripathi recommends forecasting your lead funnel for planning purposes.

Three Keys to Mastering B2B Email Like a Jazz Musician
Cliff Seal from Salesforce compared famous jazz musicians with smart email marketing. He cited research, including one study where emails generated 5x higher unique open when personalizing subject line vs. just the first name. Cliff suggested running one statistically significant test every month, focusing more in generating data more than looking for a clear winner. He also cited a stat: 89 percent of B2B buyers expect companies to understand their business needs and expectations, which is very unrealistic, especially when lacking enough data. The workaround is by starting with available data, then segment, tailor and repeat. Cliff reminded the audience to customize emails in real-time based on behavior to maximize performance.

Website Migration: What to Do Pre, During and Post
Samantha Kermode discussed effective migration strategies. She opened with a pre-site migration audit, looking at tags, site speed, images and content freshness. Samantha highly recommends adding the current features, including schema markup, Twitter cards, Facebook Open Graph, Hreflang, plugins and Google AMP. I would add next gen image formats to that list. She also reminded the audience NOT to forget to use “noindex” in your robots.txt properly (hiding the new site before it’s live and removing the restriction when it is live. I’ve personally seen many larger brands lose rankings when failing to remove the “noindex” tag. Make sure to test the site (ScreamingFrog is good) to identify broken links, particularly 404s. Samantha also recommends capturing the inbound links with 301 redirects to maintain domain authority. She recommends the tool httpstatus. Additionally, a new XML site map will tell Google what pages matter and where to go to index them. During Launch mode, Samantha recommends monitoring XML sitemap, robots.txt, 301 redirects and rankings. With Post launch, continue with the previously mentioned activity, with additional efforts around reclaiming backlinks (especially with high domain authority) and optimizing conversion rates.

Extend Your Reach through Content & Influence Marketing
Juanika Cuthbertson of Ladypreneur Academy outlined best practices for content and influencer marketing. Juanika opened with the idea of creating consistency and intentionality around your brand. Specifically, she wanted the audience to think about brand voice, as that provides an essential foundation for content and influencer marketing. Juanika shared examples of brand voice in social and advertising, including Wendy’s, Pampers and jetBlue. She outlined which types of content work best for each stage of the customer journey, from awareness to purchase decision. Think about which platforms, media format and content types resonate for each stage and get it out there.

How to Become a Thought Leader on LinkedIn
Ty Heath from LinkedIn talked about my favorite topic: thought leadership. As a top B2B digital marketing influencer (according to BuzzSumo, not my Mother) with over 17,000 LinkedIn connections, I have a personal interest in this session. Ty talked about the importance of thought leadership across the spectrum, beyond traditional sales and marketing: employee and customer engagement as well as general inspiration. I disagree with Ty that sharing (other source) content on social is not thought leadership: I believe there is value in being a filter for others that don’t have the time to read every article and blog post on the Internet relating to your area of expertise. In a world of declining trust in corporations, thought leadership provides a unique opportunity to build trust with prospects and customers. According to recent research, social engagement by C-level executives increases reach and engagement by 5X. Ty outlined four steps for thought leadership on LinkedIn. 1. Create compelling content 2. Define your approach 3. Engage and nurture your audience 4. Measure and optimize. She briefly outlined a methodology LinkedIn uses for its own thought leadership: SCORE. S: Structure (content should follow a traditional story arc, yet maintain simplicity for better engagement and recall); C: Contrarian (makes it interesting and allows you to stand out); O: Ownable (make it distinctive and relevant to your brand); R: Replication (makes it valuable, like blockbuster model Disney utilizes); E: Expertise (making it profitable – as it appeals across the broadest spectrum of decision makers and influencers). Most of the session validated my thoughts on leveraging LinkedIn, outlined in this article: How to Ramp up Revenue in One Week or Less.

Digital Summit Charlotte was packed with insightful nuggets provided by expert speakers. I recommend attending a future event in a city near you. If you’re interested in learning more about podcasting, which was my topic, you can read my article on the topic: How to Extend Your Brand by Building a Podcast Strategy.

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