Where Does Blogging Fit Into Your Content Marketing Strategy?

If you’re in marketing, you know two of the largest buzzwords in recent years are “content marketing” and “blogging.” But how do you develop a content marketing strategy and where does blogging fit into that plan? Read on to find out.

Before you begin, it’s important to get the basics down first. Companies may define aspects of their content marketing strategy differently, but the concept is generally the same:

1. Set content marketing S.M.A.R.T. goals. Don’t dream about your goals, put a plan in place to achieve them. To ensure you stay on track, make your goals specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely.
2. Define your buyer personas. As defined by HubSpot, a buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based off research and data from your company’s current customers. The better you know your persona, the more successful you’ll be in your content marketing efforts.
3. Decide which type of content works best for your business. Based of your buyer persona(s), decide which content will resonate best with them like blogging, ebooks, white papers, podcasts, etc.
4. Create an editorial calendar. Once you have the type of content you want to create, it’s imperative you put a plan of attack in place to develop and promote this content. Scheduling plans out at least 90 days in advance will help to ensure you’re on track.
5. Market your marketing. What good is your amazing content if nobody knows about it? Get it into the hands of your buyer personas through social media, email, blog (SEO efforts), and so on.
6. Measure your results. The beauty of digital marketing is that it’s so easy to monitor your results. Keep an eye on your analytics and base your efforts moving forward on those results. See what works and what doesn’t and optimize from there.

So where does blogging fit into this content marketing strategy? You’ll find that no matter what your business is, blogging will work well for your company! Blogging should be used as an awareness-stage piece of content that educates your audience and answers questions and pain points they may have. Blogging contributes significantly to your content marketing strategy by providing the following benefits:

1. It helps to drive traffic to your website. Every time you write a new blog post you’re adding another indexed page to your site, which Google and other search engines love! It proves your website is active. Each page you add gives you another chance to be found in search results (which is how most people look for content these days).
2. Blogging can get you discovered on social media. If you create great content on your blog, people will want to share it via social media (you should share it on social as well to your personas). The more people share, the more visits you’ll get, and the more it will help your SEO results.
3. Blogging increases conversion. How you may ask? You can add lead-generating CTAs to your blog posts that direct to landing pages with relevant content and offers your visitors can convert on. The more blogs you have, the more people will see you CTAs, which increases the odds of conversion. More site visits and more leads? Blogging is a win-win.
4. Blogging establishes authority. If your answering common questions and solving your persona’s pain points in your blogs, people will start to look at you as a leader in the industry and will begin to trust your company. The more a person trusts your company, the more likely they’ll be to turn into a customer someday.

Blogging is a no-brainer when it comes to your content marketing strategy and fit’s into your plan from the beginning. No company is too small to not blog and no company is too large. How has blogging helped with your content marketing strategy?

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Get the Silver Surfers on Facebook: Experts say using social media can help prevent decline in elderly's health

• People aged 65-95 took part in the study by the University of Exeter
• The group felt more confident and sociable after using the internet
• Using Skype and email to contact relatives among their favourite usages
• Experts said the results could help stunt loneliness among the elderly

Older people should use Facebook and other social media websites to prevent their health declining, a study has found. 

Pensioners who spend time online do not feel as lonely as others their age, which could stunt deterioration of physical and mental health, according to the research. 

The results of the study, carried out among 65 to 95-year-old's by researchers at the University of Exeter, could help cope with the health problems of an increasingly ageing population, experts said.

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The study, carried out among pensioners aged 65 to 95, found using the internet improved the group's social skills and competence (file image)

Among ways to use the web to improve mental health was video calling and using social media via touch screen computers. 

A group of pensioners from 31 residential care homes across the UK were followed as part of the study funded by the EU. 

Those trained to use the technology felt more self-competent, were more sociable and showed improved cognitive abilities.

The project's leader, Dr Thomas Morton, said the findings highlighted how loneliness among the elderly can contribute to poor health. 

'Human beings are social animals, and it’s no surprise that we tend to do better when we have the capacity to connect with others.

'But what can be surprising is just how important social connections are to cognitive and physical health. 

'People who are socially isolated or who experience loneliness are more vulnerable to disease and decline.'

One participant said learning how to navigate her way through the internet had 'changed her life'. 

'Having this training changes people's lives and opens up their worlds, invigorates their minds and for lots of us gives us a completely different way of recognising our worth as we age,' said Margaret Keohone.  

'I was just slipping away into a slower way of life.' 

Emma Green, one of the carers from Somerset Care Ltd, one of the homes taking part in the survey, said: 'As the training programme developed with my participants their confidence grew and they were keen to tell me how family members had emailed back, Skyped or "liked" a comment or a picture on Facebook. 

'Seeing the smiles on my participant's faces when they Skyped a family member in the UK or abroad was such a special moment.'

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