Since one of my main specialties is Content marketing, here are my 2 cents. It’s actually a very complex topic, I’ll try to sum it up.
Writing content is a necessity. As everyone is probably aware. However, it needs to be structured. A strategy is needed. Not just a random pool of ideas (Don’t get me wrong, a random pool of ideas is an important part of the strategy).
TLDR: It’s unfortunately not as easy as “Let’s brainstorm the ideas and start writing”.
List of things that need to be done as a part of the content strategy process:
- A pool of ideas.
- Make the content organized. So you cover all the problems of the people and offer the solutions.
- You need to manage the copywriters a lot throughout the whole process.
- Before they start writing the content, provide them with an outline for the blog.
- Do the keyword research for each of the individual blog posts.
- Do the competitor analysis for each blog post.
Let’s drill down.
- Make a pool of ideas. This is the format I use. I’m a geek for Sheets/Excel. Sue me.
- Make the content organized. I personally use a Content Matrix framework. I divide it up between the themes. Once inside a theme, you drill it down and structure it to make sense. The framework I use is below.
And the concrete example.
Notice that each content piece has a problem listed that it solves and how it solves it. Not only that, but once you have the attention of the user with a broad topic from the Awareness phase. Could be something like “What is DeFi”. After that you lead the reader down the funnel (or well, down the rabbit hole) with a more focused content. Such as “Comparison of Idle Finance and Yearn Finance” from the Consideration phase.
- Managing the copywriters throughout the whole process:
- when they express interest,
- when they send you an outline before actually writing,
- and most likely give them feedback once they finish up the first draft, as from my experience they need to make many corrections
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Before they start writing the content, provide them with an outline for the blog. Once they get it and accept it, they are giving you back an outline of their own. Which you then approve. Only then can they start writing. Here’s an example of an outline I made and used successfully for years. Mind you, the subheadings should be based on user intent and keyword research.
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Do the keyword research for each of the blog posts. Why?
- To see the monthly search volumes for each of the terms
- what the user intent is behind each keyword, to get the ideas
- to see what the users are actually searching for; there’s no point in writing a piece of content nobody is going to search for.
Here’s how it looks like when done. Mind you, when actually doing the research you end up with a shit ton of keywords that need to be sorted through (actually one of the keyword tools is called keywordshitter(DOT)com), but what works better are paid tools such as SEMRush, MOZ, Ahrefs… I personally use Ahrefs as it gives great bang for the buck (pretty similar to the others but has a superior backlink analysis tool)
It’s usually in the form of a cluster (kind of like a mini-theme). So all the related keywords. Also be careful not to make the same keywords the focus of multiple blog posts. As Google regards to this as duplicate content. So instead of ending up with one blog posts on the spot #4 of SERP, you’ll end up with 2 blog posts on spots #44 and #59.
- Do the competitor analysis for each blog post. Why?
- To know which topic would it be too hard to rank for
- To get content ideas
- To get backlink opportunities
- To replicate and improve upon what they’re doing
To touch on some of the points mentioned in all the comments in this thread so far:
It’s not wise to limit yourself in any way. Some articles are supposed to be longer than 2.000 words. Some articles will perform well only if they’re 500 words (ex. cooking recipes), some will perform well only if they’re 3.500+ words (long form content ex. a guide to Keto diet). How do you know how long the specific blog post should be? You do the research. The point #6 mentioned above. A rule of thumb is that it should be better than the competitors currently ranking for that cluster of keywords (better usually means longer, but not necessarily; the key here is that it needs to provide additional value).
Agreed on the visuals: charts and original photos perform great. You should also “break up” the text up with some additional elements or images at least each 500 words.
In fact, here’s a list of instructions I made that I send to the copywriters I work with.
Not always. It should correlate to the stage of the customer’s journey. Yes for the Awareness stage, probably not for the Decision stage. Anyway, if done properly, the whole content hub should be interlinked and all subpages should be easily accessible
All the issues solved if length of the content is justified by the competitor analysis (by making a specific length a requirement), and the difficulty level is solved with the User journey stage distribution (Awareness-Consideration-Decision-Delight customer)
Brainstorm ideas + thorough research
There’s so much more in regards to the strategy and the operational part one you actually get into it. I tried to sum it up as best as I could.