Know Your Why: The Power of Content Marketing

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been talking about the 5 Ws of creating your blog editorial calendar. I’ve spent a couple thousand words working on educating you about all the different parts to consider when you’re considering what to write about for your business blog.

But none of it is worth a hill of beans if you don’t have your WHY figured out.

I’ve talked a little before about knowing your big why for your business—and sharing it with your readers—but this why is a little different.

Every time you write a blog post, you should know where it fits into your overall content marketing strategy. (TWEET THAT!)

Content marketing isn’t the wave of the future; it’s happening right now.

Check out some of these statistics:

• B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those who do not blog.
  Blogs give websites 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links.
  
• Interesting content is one of the top 3 reasons people follow brands on social media.

Your blog is the nexus of your social media strategy—so you’ve got to be strategic about what you post.

Why are you writing this post?

Every time you sit down to write a blog post, you should be asking yourself, “Why am I writing this blog post?”

• What do you want your readers to take away from it?
• What do you want them to do once they’ve read it?
• What is your overall goal—to teach, to entertain, to sell?

You can use the mix formula and the AIDA formula to give you a place to start; knowing which category your post falls into as part of your overall mix (tips, entertainment, relationship building, selling) or as part of your sales strategy (attention-getting, interest-building, desire-generating, or action-prompting) will let you know how hard you should be promoting it, where, and to whom.

As you may have noticed, all five of the parts of the blog editorial calendar are intertwined; they play off of one another, build on each other, and depend on the others to make a cohesive whole.

And, of course, coming up with the calendar is just the beginning.  You still have to write the danged thing! But having a solid foundation makes the actual writing just that much simpler?

Got questions? I’d love to hear them. Leave a comment below and ask away.  This series has been chock full of information, and I’d love to hear what you need to have clarified.