If you want your website or online business to succeed, you must create a blog strategy. Blogs are essential to websites and e-commerce stores because you can use them to promote your products or services. You can also use a blog to share information and attract more visitors to your site.

To get your blog up and running, you’ll need web hosting. However, a detailed blog strategy will help you achieve your engagement, traffic, and conversion goals. But how do you create one? This article covers all you need to know about how vital a blog strategy is and how to develop one.

Key Highlights

• A blogging strategy helps bloggers to achieve their content and monetization goals by providing direction, increasing efficiency and engagement, and targeting the right audience
• When creating a blog strategy, you must first identify your target audience using market research, buyer persona, social media analytics, etc.
• Defining your content goals and objectives helps you stay focused and get clarity on the type of blog content you want to create
• When creating a content calendar, brainstorm ideas, prioritize content based on importance, assign responsibilities, and track your progress
• You can promote your blog using various means like guest posts and social media, but ensure you track and measure the blog’s performance

What Is a Blog Strategy?

A blogging strategy is a plan and approach used to achieve your goals and objectives as a blogger. A blog strategy covers the topics you plan to discuss, your monetization plan, blogging tools, etc.

It also contains your target audience, content plan, promotion plan, analytics, and the metrics for measuring success and growth. You must also state how often you plan to post and conduct keyword research. A blog strategy is essential for several reasons, and the next section covers it extensively.

Why Is It Important for a Blogger to Have a Blogging Strategy?

Any blogger who wants to achieve their goals and objectives must have a blogging strategy. The following are reasons a blog content strategy is essential:

1. It Provides Direction

A blog strategy gives you direction. You can define your mission, know your vision, and set clear timelines for achieving your goals. By having a clear direction, you will have better focus and avoid wasting time figuring out what to do with your blog.

2. It Improves Efficiency

A blogging strategy helps improve your efficiency. For instance, you stay better organized since your blog strategy includes a content calendar. You can increase efficiency with a blog strategy by ensuring it contains ways to optimize your post for SEO and using social media to promote the blog.

3. It Helps to Target the Right Audience

Your blog targets a particular group of people. If your website is for health products, your target audience would be people interested in buying health products or learning healthy living tips. As such, your blogging strategy should state the demographic you want to engage.

You can identify your target audience with a blogging strategy by doing the following:

• Use Google Analytics to develop demographic details about your audience and their interests
• Create a reader persona using your ideal reader
• Use social media analytics to generate information about your audience’s age, gender, location, and interest
• Check your website performance to identify the pages, products, or services more popular with your current and target audience

4. It Increases Engagement

To increase engagement with your audience, you must be intentional and strategic with your blog post. Therefore, when creating your blog strategy, add content that will provide value to your readers and foster educational discussions. The dialogue can be about product use or trending issues in your industry.

Your blog strategy should help you take engagement beyond related posts. Here are tips on how to increase engagement with a blogging strategy:

• Write about your target audience’s interests
• Include new information in your blog post that is missing in other blogs in your niche
• Use visual images and videos to make the content more engaging
• Provide essential data and statistics to support your arguments
• Make it easy for readers to comment
• Ask readers to leave comments or share your blog on social media

5. It Provides a Means of Measurement

Finally, a blogging strategy is a means of measuring how well your blog is doing. Since it contains your goals and objectives, you can tick each one off when you achieve them. You can also track the metrics in the blog strategy, like site traffic, engagement, leads and customers, conversion rate, and search engine rankings.

Phase 1: Identifying Your Target Audience

The first step in creating a blog strategy is identifying your target audience. This involves researching and understanding your target audience’s behavior, characteristics, and preferences. This knowledge helps you create content that your audience likes.

You can identify your target audience through market research, surveys, interviews, etc. But first, why is it essential to identify your target audience?

1. Importance of Identifying Your Target Audience

Your audience is the people who will read your blog content. Therefore, you must know and define who they are so that you can create content that resonates with them. This is crucial because if your audience doesn’t like the content of your blog posts, your blog will be unsuccessful.

The following are other reasons you should identify your target audience:

• Create Relevant Content

Your blog is only as relevant as the content you deliver. You cannot keep readers interested in your blog if you do not produce valuable content. So, again, by knowing your audience, you can create content that will provide value to them. Therefore, if your audience is dog lovers, your content should focus on dogs, like different breeds, tips on raising a dog, etc.

• Tailor Your Promotions

As mentioned, your content is not for everyone. As such, a particular demographic of people will visit your website. Therefore, knowing who they are will help you tailor your promotions to them.

Using the dog lovers’ audience as an example, if you run a cat blog, you can’t promote it to dog lovers. It will be counter-productive. You can promote your content to your audience using social media platforms, email marketing, and other online channels.

• Build a Loyal Audience

Another reason to identify your audience is that it helps build loyalty. Since you provide them with quality content, they will see you as an authority, which allows them to trust your information.

Also, connecting with your audience helps to build a community. So, ask readers to comment on your blog posts and engage them in the comment section.

• Differentiates You From Competitors’

If you know your audience, you can separate yourself from competitors. The separation happens when you create valuable content. Once your audience knows what to expect from you and the quality of the information they will get from your blog, you will stand out from your competitors.

2. Different Methods of Identifying Your Target Audience

The following are the various methods of identifying your target audience:

• Analyze Your Existing Customers

Studying your existing customers helps you identify your audience. When researching customers, focus on their pain points and the type of information they want. Also, understand why they chose your product, service, or website over the competition.

• Conduct Market Research

Market research gives insight into your target audience’s motivations and needs. When conducting market research, use these tips:

• Identify your goal and audience persona
• Choose the people to research
• Write down the questions to ask the participants
• List your competitors
• Write down what you discovered

• Use Social Media Analytics

Social media analytics allows you to gather and find data on your target audience. You can get data from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. With social media analytics, you can identify your audience’s pain points and get feedback, which helps you understand their preferences and behaviors.

• Study Your Competitors

Your competitors are blogs or online businesses providing the same content or product, or services. By studying your competitors, you will gain insight into the type of people that visit their blogs and buy their products. To analyze competitors and identify your target audience, visit their blogs and social media accounts and find out the target of their marketing campaigns.

• Use Google Analytics

You can use Google Analytics to find your target audience. When you log into your Google Analytics account, go to Audience. It will show the people visiting your website or buying your products or services. You can also see visitors’ demographics and devices used to access your site and segment them based on the information provided.

• Use Customer Feedback

Finally, you can use customer feedback to identify your target audience. Conduct feedback surveys and ask questions related to your blog. Ask about the type of content they would like to see and how often they want the information.

Phase 2: Defining Your Goals and Objectives

After identifying your target audience, the next step is defining your goals and objectives. Doing this helps you get clarity on what direction your content should take. However, ensure your goals are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound).

How to Define Your Blog Goals and Objectives?

Having clearly defined goals and objectives is significant to having a successful blog. Here are tips for defining your blog goals and objectives.

1. Based on Your Audience

Once you know your target audience, you can establish your goals and objectives on their pain points and the type of content they want. Then set your goals in line with their needs and preferences.

2. Purpose of Your Blog

What is the purpose of your blog? What do you want to achieve with it? It could be to create awareness about your product and services or teach people how to use them. Whatever the blog’s purpose, your goals and objectives should align with it.

3. Set Specific, Measurable Goals

Setting SMART goals helps you clarify your ideas and focus your efforts and resources on what you want to achieve. Here’s how to set SMART goals:

• Be specific about what you want to achieve, e.g., creating awareness about your products
• Determine the action(s) you will use to measure the goal
• Examine what you wrote to see if it is achievable
• Ask yourself if the goal is relevant to what you want to achieve
• State the timeframe for achieving the goal

4. Choose Relevant Metrics

The metrics you choose help you measure the success of your goals and objectives. You can use pageview, conversion, or engagement rates to track the progress of your goals. For example, you can set 50 views per blog post and 20 comments as a metric for progress. The former shows you the number of page views, while the latter shows the engagement rates.

5. Create Editorial Calendar

An editorial calendar is a visual workflow that helps you schedule your work daily, weekly, or monthly. You can track each goal and objective by creating a content calendar and ticking it off after achieving it. Also, use a content management system to ensure your content plan aligns with your goals and objectives.

6. Monitor and Analyze Your Results

When you monitor and analyze the results of your blog goals and objectives, you will identify areas you need to improve. You can use several analytic tools to measure your goals’ success, like Google Analytics and INFORMS.

To measure the success of your goals using analytics tools, describe your goals and set them up in the analytical software. Then build audiences using those that accomplish a primary or secondary goal.

Phase 3: Content Planning

The third step in creating a blog strategy is content planning. In content planning, you define the topics you want to cover, the format, and the schedule. Also, you have to brainstorm ideas for the blog posts, conduct keyword research, and create an editorial calendar.

What Are the Different Types of Content to Include in Your Bag?

The following are types of content to include in your blog:

Educational Content: Education content provides value by teaching an audience something new. You can share tips, guides, and tutorials or write how-to articles.

News and Industry Updates: Keep your audience updated by sharing the latest news and development in your industry.

Entertaining Content: This type of content includes humorous stories and anecdotes that keep your audience entertained and engaged.

Product Reviews: You can also review products and services relevant to your audience to help them make informed choices.

Guest Posts: You don’t have to write all the content on your blog yourself. Allow guest bloggers to contribute, as it brings a fresh perspective and expertise to your blog.

Interviews: Interview industry leaders in your niche or influencers  to provide your audience with valuable insights into topics they are interested in.

Infographics and Visual Content: Infographics and visual content allow you to convey complex information in a simplified way.

How to Plan Your Content Calendar

Here’s how to plan your content calendar:

1. Define Clear and Precise Goals

What do you want to achieve with your content? Once you have the answer, set specific, measurable goals.

2. Brainstorm Content Ideas

The next thing to do when creating an editorial content calendar is brainstorming content ideas. List topics and ideas, and ensure they align with your goals and target audience.

3. Prioritize Your Content

Establish the content ideas that are more vital to your audience and will greatly influence achieving your goals.

4. Create a Content Schedule

Plan for when to publish and promote future blog posts. Ensure you pay attention to seasonal trends and industry events.

5. Assign Responsibilities

Assemble a content team and assign who will write blog posts and who will handle promotions.

6. Track Your Progress

Once you start publishing content, track the performance regularly using blog analytical tools. Then make adjustments to your blog content strategy as needed.

Phase 4: Promoting Your Blog

After creating a content strategy, posting, and developing your blog, the next step is promotion. There are different ways to promote your blog, from social media campaigns, email marketing, and SEO blog strategy to paid ads.

Importance of a Blog Promotion Strategy

The following are reasons to promote your blog:

1. Increases Visibility

Promoting your blog increases its visibility and reach, allowing you to attract new readers.

2. Drives Traffic

Promotion also drives your blog traffic, which helps generate leads and increase engagement.

3. Builds Brand Awareness

Promoting your blog non-sop creates awareness and helps establish your blog as a trusted source for industry news and updates.

4. Enhances SEO

When you promote your blog, you increase your ranking on search engines, which drives organic traffic to your website.

5. Build Relationships

You can engage with your audience through promotions, helping you build relationships and a loyal following.

6. Increases Social Proof

Constantly promoting your blog improves social proof and builds credibility.

How to Promote Your Blog

Blog content promotion is not difficult or time-consuming. Below are some tips on how to effectively promote your blog.

1. Repurpose Your Content

You can repurpose your content into different formats, e.g., turning your blog posts into infographics, podcasts, or videos. This helps you reach a new audience that prefers visuals to written content. It also increases your online presence and expands your reach.

2. Create a UTM Link

UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module. When you create a UTM link, you can link your blog to Google Analytics, which helps you track its effectiveness. Here’s how to create a UTM link:

• Open Google’s campaign URL builder
• Fill in each link attribute in the form provided
• Use the link in your promotion material
• Track your campaign and measure your success

3. Guest Post

You can guest post on other blogs to promote yours. Write to bloggers in your niche and share what you want to write about on their sites. You can also comment under their blog posts, informing them of your desire to guest post. Guest posting helps you build quality backlinks and boost referral traffic to your blog.

4. Share Your Blog on Social Media

Use different social media platforms to share your blog posts and engage with your audience. Find out the social networks frequented by your audience and increase your activities on those platforms. Sharing regularly on social media will help you reach new people and get more traffic to your blog.

5. Build Links to Your Site

Linking building from relevant and high-authority websites helps increase your visibility and ranking on search engines. You can also build affiliate links to make money with affiliate marketing. Here are different ways of building quality backlinks:

• Create linkable assets
• Build backlinks from link roundups
• Guest post
• Create infographics and other visual assets
• Submit testimonials to other websites, etc.

Phase 5: Measuring and Analyzing Your Blog’s Performance

The last step in creating a blog strategy is measuring and analyzing your blog’s performance. Regularly tracking your blog’s metrics and measuring performance gives you insight into the extent of your blog’s success and allows you to make adjustments where needed.

Key Metrics to Track and Analyze

When you track and analyze metrics, you know what works and what doesn’t and make more data-driven decisions that improve your blog’s performance. Below are some key metrics to track.

1. Traffic

Tracking blog traffic gives you insight into audience behavior and helps you understand how they interact with your site. You can track blog traffic using Google Analytics by doing the following:

• Create a Google Analytics account
• Add Analytics tracking to your blog
• Sign in to Google Analytics, go to Behavior, choose Site Content, and then All Pages.
• Filter the result to view that of your blog’s

2. Engagement

Tracking metrics helps you understand audience behavior and interests. You can track bounce rates, conversion rates, time on the blog page, the number of social shares, etc. To track engagement, divide total engagement by the number of page views.

3. Conversions

By tracking conversions, you can determine where you get most of your audience. This helps you know where to channel your promotion efforts. You can calculate conversion rates by taking the number of conversions and dividing it by the total number of ad interactions that can be tracked to a conversion during the reviewed period.

4. Social Media Metrics

Social media metrics help you understand the performance and engagement of promotions on social networks. The metrics to track are followers, engagement rate, and click-through rates on various social platforms. Using the number of new followers as a metric, here’s how to calculate the growth rate on social platforms:

• Track your net followers on each social platform within the review period
• Divide the number by your total audience on each social platform
• Then multiply what you have by 100 to get the audience growth percentage

5. Backlinks

When you track backlinks, you get insight on how to improve your search engine ranking and website traffic. You can use tools like Ahrefs and Moz to track backlinks and monitor your link-building efforts. Here’s how to find and track backlinks with Moz:

• Go to file explorer
• Enter your competitor’s URL
• Go to the inbound links tab
• Export backlink data into .csv
• Compile backlink .csv results from competitors
• Sort backlinks by page authority
• Review all linking sites

6. Keywords

Tracking keyword metrics helps to improve SEO and drive targeted traffic. You can track and analyze keywords using Google Keyword Planner and SEMrush. Here’s how to use the Google Keyword Planner:

• Create an account or sign in to the Google Keyword Planner
• Choose your tool
• Filter and sort results
• Analyze the keyword ideas section
• Choose a keyword
• Get the exact keyword search volume data

7. Revenue

Finally, if you monetize your blog, you must track revenue to know how much you’re making. Revenue sources for bloggers are ads, affiliate marketing, and sponsored content. You can use Google Analytics to track the sales from your blog.

Conclusion

You need to create a winning blog strategy if you want your blog to be successful. Remember to identify your target audience, define your goals and objectives, create a content calendar, promote your blog, and measure performance. If you need more information on creating, managing, and hosting a blog, avail yourself of our extensive resources on HostAdvice.

Next Steps: What Now?

• Find the Ideal Blog Hosting Solution
• Should I Use WordPress or Another Popular Blogging Platform?
• Check out How to Start a Blog in a Few Simple Steps
• Which Blogging Site Should You Choose?
• Learn How To Promote a Blog and Increase Traffic

Further Reading – Useful Resources

• How to Start a Tech Blog: Tips and Tools You Need to Know
• How to Write a Blog Post