Here are two methods to make sure your blog posts hit the mark!
About this time each year, many firms are looking at their newly minted marketing plan and getting excited about the upcoming possibilities. Then, they look at the plan’s timeline and it reads, “Write the January blog post.” Instantly, that excitement turns to fear.
“Oh crap… what do I write about?” Don’t laugh, we’ve all been there!
But that’s one of the best things about blogging… you can write about virtually anything you want. If you’re looking for a few ideas, check out this post I wrote about ‘blog topics’ a couple of years ago: https://bit.ly/2iAlHVm.
But rather than pick from a list and just make up a topic, why not write what your clients and prospective clients want to read? And no, you don’t have to be a fortune-teller to figure it out. It’s all about understanding what topics resonated with your readers in the past and writing blog posts that are related to them.
For example, if you know that a percentage of your target market has interest in ‘online qualitative research,’ then write articles about that. It’s a broad enough topic that you could easily come up with 8-10 different – but related – blog posts… the technology, the applications, use cases, comparison to traditional methods and so on. When you do this, not only are you providing content that your audience will actually read… with all of that content, you’re also cementing your position as an expert in that area.
Finding out what they like is pretty easy… and there are two ways to do it.
With Google Analytics
Assuming you have a few blog posts under your belt, start by finding out which of those were the most popular. Note: If you’re just starting your blog, you can apply this method in about 6 months.
Step 1: Log in to your Google Analytics account
Step 2: In the upper right corner, select a 6-month window of time to cast a wide net
Step 3: On the left-hand menu, click on: Behavior > Site Content > Content Drilldown
Step 4: On the chart of topics, click on the blog page; this will take you to all of your individually listed blog posts
Step 5: Scroll through the top 20-30 posts with the most Page Views. These are the hot topics.
On this list, it’s also likely that you’ll find several posts with similar themes. Pay very close attention to those common topics – they’re ‘gold’ when thinking about future blog content.
With LinkedIn
The second method has to do with your social media marketing. Like counting blog views, scroll through your LinkedIn posts over the past several months and see which one have the most view, likes and comments. To get there:
Step 1: Log in to your LinkedIn profile
Step 2: Scroll down to Activity; click on ‘See all activity’
Step 3: In the small toolbar at the top, click on ‘Posts’
Step 4: Once in the feed, scroll down and start tracking topics and counts.
One of the real benefits of tracking interest via social media – unlike the Google Analytics method above – is that it will show you topics of high interest that you might not have written about yet… but should.
Conclusion
Blogs provide a lot of benefits, but one that isn’t often discussed is that it gives potential buyers a reason to keep coming back to your website to read your latest posts. And once they’re on your site, you never know what’s going to happen. But in order to “keep ‘em coming back,” you have to write about what they want to read… and that’s something you don’t want to guess at.
Good luck and good blogging.