How to Create a Long Term Blog Content Strategy

The rate at which blogs are abandoned is quite alarming. One of the reasons why these blogs have failed is because of their poor content strategies. Strategies employed catered for the short-term and not the long term. To pass the test of time, there is a need to put in a blog content strategy that will run in the long term.

Gone are the days when marketers write a shabby piece of content and still get ranked high in search engines. The game has changed. If you must succeed as a content marketer, you must approach it with the long –term mindset. The days of raising content as you go as passed.

Although many of us wish content marketing should revolve around short pieces of writing. But this is not so; the process is well involving. Of a truth, only marketers who are ready for this long and complex way of doing things should look forward to succeeding.

The following will be our priority in this article

1. What is Content Strategy
2. The importance of long term blog content strategy.
3. How to create long-term blog content Strategy
4. Introduce an effective Keyword research tool with a free option.

What is Content Strategy?

According to HubSpot, a content strategy deals with the management of created value which can be in the form of visuals or text.

It engulfs the planning, creation, delivery and overall marketing of your contenting. It is a show of your values and your strategy. Although content creation is an activity that goes on day-in-day-out, it needs to be properly planned and organized.

A good content strategy will identify the targeted audience. Talking about the target audience, your audience does not need to be one set of readers. Your content can have more than a set of readers. It is just like any other form of business with a diversified audience.

A good content strategy is not about sales but support. Your content strategy must be a focus on support for people. It should be focused on creating enlightenment for prospects who are enquiring on your product. And also support for your existing clients. It should be able to identify you in the crowd. It should point to what makes you unique. It should be a differentiating factor between you and your competitors

Lastly, it should point to your channel of publication. There are several channels for publication, from social bookmarks like Pinterest, social media platforms like Facebook and Search engines like Google. Your Content strategy must point to where you intend to meet with your audience.

Importance of long term blog Content Strategy

1) Increase ability to engage readers

The only way to get people’s attention is by solving their problems. It will come from providing content that captivates their interest and addresses their issues. Such content must be detailed enough, both in terms of structure and form.

In regards to structure, such content must be encompassing, address specific subject matters in detail. While in terms of forms, they are usually long-form content. Content containing less than, 1000 words will be a summary. While content containing not less than 2,000 words are seeing to have more of what you want.

According to Niel Patel, creating long-form content will help you establish your expertise in your field. It is an overall reflection of your authority and will help increase your visibility online.

2) Help generate a Cornerstone Piece.

Cornerstone content is essential for successful marketing. It differs from short term content strategy, where attention is on ranking for a particular keyword and generating leads in the fastest time possible. Long term content strategy focuses on getting readers engaged and entertained at all time, to achieve this you must have a cornerstone or a pillar content

Your cornerstone content may not generate large audience attention items of clicks and likes at the beginning. But one unique thing about these types of content is that they remain relevant in for a long time.

It is like paying it forward for your business, an investment that continues to generate income in the long run.

3) They Don’t engage Hard Sell.

Nobody wants to be sold products to at gunpoint. As customers, we do not like it when products are push to us as a do or die affair. Hard selling is all about convincing a customer with all forms of gimmicks to buy your product, even if it will not add value to him or her.

It is the unique characteristics of short term strategies. But worth mentioning is concurrent sales is difficult in this model. It is not on trust and authority.

The long term content is of a different form. It is not targeted at making sales on the immediate. Rather, the focus is on developing a relationship. Your initial target is solving a problem and ensure that you continue to meet the needs of your client.

4) It is Self-Promoting

Content promotion is important in all marketing endeavour. While the short term content strategy needs aggressive promotion. Many times is expensive with a low return on investment. Long term content strategy is self-promoting.

All you need to do is produce valuable content. The content will promote itself; your audience will share it with the friends and family. Search engines will also rank your content on relevant pages. Surprisingly, they will rank over a long period when compared with content based on short term content strategy.

5) Naturally, Rank on Search Engine

If you want to enjoy the dividend of SEO, engage in long term content strategy. Long term content strategy is on high-quality content. As such, ranking on Search Engines is easily achieved. It is not easily achieved with short term content strategy. Marketers in this scope engage in various promotional strategy and tactics.

When it comes to keyword targeting, short term content strategy is focused on a particular keyword, but with long term content strategy, being ranked for various keywords is easily achieved. Thus it is obvious that as you increase your content in long term content strategy, your search engine optimization status also improves.

6) Building a Loyal Audience

I have seen marketers strive to build a long list of audience or subscribers. The result is building a list of undedicated followers. Building a list of the audience who loves your concept and will follow after it when you release it is important.

To achieve this, you must engage in long term content strategy and generate valuable content. I must mention that very few people can engage in long term content strategy, as such, the opportunity is wide and the return is much more profiting.

How to Create Long-term Content Strategy

If you want to build a business that will continue to be productive in the long run, getting involved in long term content strategy is not optional. A proper understanding of how to set will save you time, money and effort. It will help you generate content that you will be proud of. Below is a detailed guide on a long term content strategy.

1) Set Your Goals

To succeed in this form of marketing, you must set achievable goals. There is a need to decide what you intend to achieve. It will be the focal point of everything you do on your blog. What is the main aim of your blog? Start with the very basic thing, is your blog for entertainment, education or a promotional website?

If your focus is on entertainment, then you are looking at creating humour, if it is educational then you are looking at how-to forms of content and also if it is promotional, then your main focus is on reviews. A good example is my blog, the aim of this blog is educational. It is a “how-to” blog.

Next is who will your target audience be, this goes along with the type of content you will be producing. If you have some pieces of content at the moment, you can check your stats and see who is consuming your content. Identifying your target audience in terms of every possible demographics is very important.

You can create a buyer personas, itemize features like age, location, and profession. It should help you have a clear picture of your audience. These demographics are not cast on stone, can cut across several groups. It should not be a concern to you.

A good thing this will help you achieve is to decide the type of content your audience will be will to consuming. Are you looking at producing long or short-form content?

What is of the essence here is the ability to create a goal and associate it with your audience interest.

2) Research Topics

Topic research is the next step after setting your achievable goals. You cannot rely on inspiration or creating topics on as you go basis. Else you will get stuck or feel there is no topic to write on. Your long term program must include content research for topics.

It may appear to be time-consuming on the immediate, but you can also be rest assured that it will save you time and energy in the long run. Your time spent planning and researching topics cannot be wasted. It is a productive event.

To find a topic for your blog, some tools can help, some are free while others are paid tools. Google trend is a good example of free tools, while Buzzsumo is a paid tool. Tools will not work well without you been strategic, always remember the main objective of your website when conducting research.

One good question you should ask when conducting research is of what value will this topic be to your audience?

Although this question is not easy to answer, a proper understanding of your audience will help answer the question. You can join various online communities. It will help you know what your audience is looking for.

Communities like Reddit will be very helpful. Join various subreddits but engage with caution. They frown at newcomers marketing. I got banned from my first subreddits, but now I have mastered the act.

Instagram and Twitter are great ways to engage your target audience, with Instagram reaching out to your audience with visuals will be very easy. Twitter will help you see what your competitors are doing and also engage your audience with the hashtags.

3) Create a Content Schedule.

Now you have properly defined your goals, also you have researched article topics in line with your goals. As such, it is time to get organized. You need to create a content schedule that will help you organize your activities.

A well-organized schedule will help you track events. It will help you time your content posting and other events, certain events and articles will do pretty well at a specific time.

Also, certain persons in your team will do well with some roles and may not always be available. You can schedule events based on their strength and availability. Each member of your team will know their roles and scheduled time for them to submit their jobs.

Also, a content schedule will help you plan a series of contents; you can ensure they are released at a specific period. So do your readers will have set time to watch out for your work. Ensure you change your type of content to avoid getting bored.

While some content will do very well, others may perform poorly. Make Google analytics your friend; it will let you know where your strength lies. With it, you will be able to point out content that is doing very well and others that are not.

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In conclusion, a well-organized website will do well in terms of engagement and conversion. A long term blog content strategy is not negotiable. It will put your website in focus on your goal and keep you on track with your content schedule.

Content Strategy and Keyword research

A sustainable content strategy must be focused on the audience. One simple way to help your audience find your content is a proper use of keywords. If keywords are properly used, your content will be easily found by both your target audience and search engine.

The essence of using strategic keywords which is creating an excellent user experience has not changed over the years. But the methods and tools for this great exercise have continued to change with change in search engine algorithm.

Amidst several tools for this exercise, one which have to continue to meet up to standard and remain affordable is Jaaxy.

Jaaxy is keyword research tools that have remained relevant over the years. On sign up, you can have a 30 search free. It cost 49USD for pro members but this cost can be averted by signing up as a member of the wealthy affiliate platform.