How to create a successful blog strategy

Regardless of what industry you specialise in, blogging can help your business be successful. Thanks to sharing written content online, you can improve your brand awareness, engage with customers more, and even increase your revenue. But, for your blog to do well, you need to know how to tailor content for your target audience. And the key to that is a well thought-through blog strategy.

Sharing any type of content on your blog will not automatically make customers want to read it and share it. You need to make sure that the content you put up is valuable to them. You need to make sure that there is a reason behind the existence of your blog.

Here we explain how you can create a successful blog strategy that will make it easier for you to offer high quality blog content that will boost your brand’s reputation.

Step by step guide to developing blogging strategy

If you want to develop a blogging strategy but do not know where to start, follow these simple steps:

1. Choose the right topic

The first step in developing your blogging strategy is thinking about the topic that your blog will revolve around. You need to make sure that things you write about are important to your target audience. It is important that your blog covers topics that relate to your business and your field of expertise.

2. Choose a domain

Once you have an idea for the blog, you need to register and host it. There are many host websites available online so you have to do research, compare pricing plans, and choose a platform that you think is the best. When registering your blog, you also have to pick a catchy and not too complicated domain name so the text in a URL that will identify your blog in the browser.

3. Think of a design

The next step is to design your blog so that it looks appealing to those who open the website. You need to make sure that text posts are easy to read and that there are some graphics and colours that make the blog more interesting. You can usually choose one from many blog template options and customise it. So, thanks to online tools and blog hosting platforms, designing your blog is easy if you know nothing about building websites.

4. Think about managing your blog

Once you have the foundations ready, you need to think about how you will run your blog. Things that you need to think about include:

• Who will write blog posts?
• What keywords will you use?
• How will you optimise SEO?
• How often will you share blog posts?
• How will you advertise your blog?

While you can do these things yourself, it might be helpful to hire people, for example, content writers who can help you build and manage your blog.

5. Write valuable content

Finally, when you have the blogging strategy ready, you can start writing and sharing content that your customers might find valuable. Make sure to diversify the content to keep the readers engaged. You can use various analytics tools to track the number of people visiting your website and interacting with your content. Based on that you can alter your blogging strategy and see which things work well and which don’t. You also have to regularly do keyword research to see which keywords are trending and which topics might be worth covering. Similarly, make sure to perform appropriate SEO and secure backlinks to your blog to make sure visitors can find it in search engines easily.

What is a heatmap in digital marketing?

In general terms, a heatmap is a form of visualising data. Heatmaps are used in many different fields and contexts. In digital marketing, they can be used to analyse user behaviour and get insights into how well a website is performing. Here you can find out everything you need to know about using heatmaps in online marketing.

What is a heatmap?

Let’s start with the basics – what actually is a heatmap?

A heatmap is a type of presenting data in a way that different values are represented by colours. Simple heatmaps can offer just a summary of certain information while more complex ones allow users to better understand large data sets. Heatmaps are great for those who like to have a visual representation of research findings rather than just numbers or text.

What about heatmaps in digital marketing?

In digital marketing, heatmaps are visual presentations of data that allow users to see where and how visitors interact with a certain webpage. The way heatmaps in digital marketing work is that the brighter or hotter the area is, the more interactions it receives. Areas of the webpage that are covered in cold colours such as blue are the areas that get the least activity.

Typically, areas that are the brightest and the hottest indicate that these are the parts of the webpage that visitors see first and interact with first. The parts of the webpage that are represented by cold colours are the areas that stay in the background and that visitors might not see immediately when they open the page.

What can be visualised in digital marketing heatmaps?

Heatmaps can be used to present all kinds of data. In digital marketing, the main things that can be visualised using heatmaps are:

• Clicks on ads or products featured on the webpage
• Mouse movements on the website
• Scrolls showing how far down a page a user scrolls
• Eye movements
• Content that people engage with in the mobile form of the website.

These are just the main things, however. If there is a specific type of webpage-related activity you would like to analyse, you can try using a heatmap to do it too! They can be customised and are very versatile.

What are the benefits of heatmapping?

So, you think heatmapping in digital marketing sounds interesting but you are not sure whether it actually has any benefits for your business? Have a look at the list of advantages of using heatmaps:

• You know which part of the website to focus on – by getting an insight into which parts of the webpage customers draw the most attention to, you know which aspects of the website you should develop
• You know what to get rid of – if you realise that there are certain parts of the webpage that your visitors never interact with, you can get rid of them and make the layout clearer
• You get valuable metrics that can help you improve ads and marketing in the future and avoid wasting time and money focusing on things that do not matter
• It is easier to understand how your website is performing thanks to the visual representation of data.

Heatmaps can seem complex, especially if you see one without knowing anything about them. But, in reality, using and analysing heatmaps is easy and can help you improve your website! Once you try using heatmaps in digital marketing, you will never want to stop using them.