Are you a small business owner in Nashville – or anywhere, for that matter – who is looking to start blogging but doesn’t know where to begin? Or maybe you’ve been blogging for a while but feel like your posts are falling flat. In either case, the content solutions in this blog post are meant for you. We’re going to teach you how to write effective blog directives that will help you achieve your desired results. So let’s get started!
Which businesses benefit most from comprehensive blog directives?
A blog directive is a set of instructions regarding the creation of a blog post that a business owner or content marketer draws up and gives to a content writer. The writer takes these directions and writes a blog post with them in mind so that the result is a well-researched content piece that uses the best keywords the right number of times and is thus more likely to rank in organic search results. This is a very important part of small business marketing strategies.
All businesses can benefit from better content writing, but most large businesses already have processes and resources to help support their online content. Most of the following types of businesses with contractors or part-time workers to write their content; so, teeing writers up for success is essential to make sure they write from your company’s voice and include all the necessary components.
Small Businesses
As a small business owner in Nashville or any other city, you are likely always busy. You might not have the time to sit down and write a blog post every week. However, content marketing is essential for driving traffic to your website and converting leads into customers. One solution is to hire a blog marketing company to help you through your content marketing opportunities.
Another solution is to write clear blog directives that the blog marketing company can use to produce content on your behalf. By taking the time to write clear and concise blog directives, you can be sure that the content produced by the content marketing agency aligns with your business goals and objectives. This will save you time in the long run and help you achieve your content marketing goals.
Startups
Your content marketing strategy is only as good as your content. That’s why, if you’re focused on getting funding for your startup, you need to make sure that your content is high-quality and engaging. One way to do this is by writing clear blog directives. By outlining what you want your content to achieve, you can ensure that your team is on the same page and produces content that meets your goals.
Additionally, clear blog directives can help you save time and money by avoiding costly mistakes like having a post written from the wrong angle or including the wrong keywords. By planning out your content in advance, you can communicate effectively with your team from the start and avoid the need for expensive revisions down the road. Therefore, writing clear blog directives is an essential part of all small business marketing strategies for startups in Nashville and beyond.
Influencers
If you’re an influencer who needs to quickly push out a lot of content to keep your fans engaged, writing clear blog directives can help a ton. By mapping out what you want to say in each blog post, you can save yourself a lot of time and effort down the line.
Clear blog directives will enable your content writer to provide the content you want more quickly and with less back-and-forth, and it’ll help you stay focused and on track if you’re actually writing the post yourself. Not only that, but you can eventually roll out a full-fledged content calendar that can help get your content teed up for you months in advance. So if you’re looking for content marketing solutions that can save you time and keep your fans happy, writing clear blog directives is an excellent option.
Marketing Agencies
As a Nashville blog marketing company, we are always looking for ways to improve our process and ensure that our clients get the best possible results. By taking the time to clearly outline what we want from a blog post, we can save a lot of time in the editing and revision process and pump out more content from your current workforce while providing an opportunity to bring in more revenue for the same operating expenses.
In addition, writing clear blog directives helps make sure that all of our clients’ needs are covered. We can tailor each post to meet each client’s specific goals and objectives, which helps to maximize the impact of our blog market solutions.
Overall, writing clear blog directives is an essential part of successful small business marketing strategies because it helps ensure a standard level of service is delivered to each and every client you work with. So whether it’s SEO content marketing, landing page development, or writing tag lines, you having a systematic approach to every piece of content you produce will create better outcomes for your clients.
The Take the Stairs blog directives process
Start with a topic and CTA. Once you know what your post will be about and what you want readers to do as a result of reading the piece, you’ll need to do some research to decide on some of the finer details. With a bit of work upfront, you’ll be able to provide your content writer with all they need to write an SEO-optimized piece.
Choose a topic and focus keyword
If you’re like most businesses, you know that content marketing is important. But with so many options out there, it can be tough to decide on the best content marketing solution for your business. And if you’re not careful, you could waste a lot of time and money on content that doesn’t do anything to help your bottom line.
That’s why it’s essential to start by choosing the right topic and focus keyword for your content piece. Spend some time brainstorming ideas and researching to find a topic that will resonate with your audience and help you achieve your business goals. Once you’ve found a good topic, select a focus keyword that you can use throughout your content to make it more effective. By taking the time to choose the right topic and focus keyword upfront, you’ll set yourself up for success with your content marketing campaign.
Review organic search rankings
If you’re like most content marketers, you’re always on the lookout for new topics to write about. But sometimes it can be tough to come up with fresh and relevant ideas that appeal to your audience. A great way to jumpstart your content ideation process is to review the organic search rankings of similar topics. By viewing what content is already ranking well, you can get a sense of what’s working in your industry and adjust your strategy based on the difficulty of ranking for your target keywords.
For example, are there numerous companies competing for the same keywords? If so, you’ll face some severe volatility in your rankings. Instead, look at the competition for various keywords and keyword phrases and choose those that are less competitive and more likely to result in your content ranking on SERP (the search engine results page). Choosing keywords before ordering content can also help you address a topic from a different angle or tackle a subtopic that other articles are missing – making your content more valuable.
Also, you don’t want to simply copy what’s already out there. That’s not only unethical, but it’s also a surefire way to lose the attention of your audience. Instead, use the topics that rank well as inspiration for your own blog post directives. With a little creativity, you can come up with content that is both informative and engaging – and that will help you attract more organic traffic to your site. If you need some more help understanding this concept thoroughly, our blog marketing company could help.
Set the word count
If you’re serious about content marketing, you need to be strategic about the word count of your content pieces. You can start to approach this by Googling the “focus keyword” for your article to check the word counts of your competitor’s articles.
The goal is to write more than them, but not just fill your article with fluff words. Aim to add more value and detail than your competitors. For example, the skyscraper technique – which is a process used to generate high-quality lengths and traffic to your site – is a great way to help your content stand out from the rest.
While writing more words doesn’t automatically guarantee higher rankings, it does give your content a better chance to be more keyword-relevant. It’s worth taking the time to create valuable content to set your small business up for success.
Set SEO criteria
When it comes to content marketing, there are a lot of different variables to consider. But if you’re serious about driving traffic and generating leads, you need to make sure your SEO game is on point. And that starts with setting the right criteria for your blog content.
Keywords
First and foremost, your content needs to be keyword-rich. That means targeting the right keywords and using them throughout your post in a way that makes sense and flows smoothly. Don’t stuff your keywords in there just for the sake of it – that will only hurt your SEO. But if you can organically integrate them into your content, you’re on the right track. We recommend writing your focus keyword 3-5 times per 750 words to stay in a keyword density sweet spot.
Focus location
If your business has a brick-and-mortar storefront or focuses on services to a specific area, you should use that focus location in your content like another keyword. This will help your site come up when someone searches for “X services near me” near your target location or types your target location into the search bar. We recommend using the focus location 2-5 times per 750 words to help your piece rank for a location.
Headers
The header architecture is the next SEO criteria to make sure you get it right. Each section in the header must be broken up into H2s to organize and order the content for the reader. H3s and H4s also help to break up longer H2s into smaller sections. Also, be sure to include the keyword in as many headers as possible – two at minimum.
Interlinking
Are there existing posts on your site that this new content piece could link to? A new writer may not be familiar with your site yet, so it’s helpful to recommend a few relevant posts that the writer should link to within the new content piece. We recommend inserting 2 or more internal links per 750 words for SEO.
Engagement
Including “share buttons” on your site will make it easy for readers who found your content interesting or valuable to easily share it to their social media with the click of a button. This can bring other readers and potential customers or clients to your site without any ad spend, so this is definitely a step worth doing. Make sure to include a note to your content uploader – whether that’s yourself, the writer, or another individual – to add share buttons to the content piece before publishing.
In addition, you also need to create engaging and informative content. Just because a post is optimized for SEO doesn’t mean it can’t also be interesting and valuable to your readers. In fact, those are two of the most important criteria for any piece of content – regardless of whether it’s for your blog or another platform.
So if you want to make sure your blog content is up to snuff from an SEO perspective, make sure you’re setting the right criteria. Keywords and engagement are a great place to start.
Provide content direction
Once you have all the above info organized into a directive for your content writer, there are a few more things to include that will add a little additional direction. Remember that, when it comes to content marketing, the more direction you give your content writer to optimize the piece from the start, the more effective the content can be.
Elements to include
If you want your writer to include or refer to specific images or other graphic elements, make a note in the content directive. You can even include links to examples of the graphics style you have in mind. That way, everything is there in one place for the writer can quickly reference while producing the piece.
Outlines
Your content writer can’t read your mind and may go in a different direction with the piece than you want them to based on their own experience if you don’t supply an outline. Taking a few minutes to outline a piece can give your writer the direction they need to write the content and avoid countless rewrites.
Sources
If you found a similar post to what you want your writer to produce while doing your research, drop the link in the blog post directive so the writer can refer to it for ideas and direction while writing your content. Additionally, if there’s a great source that goes into more depth on a subtopic of your content piece, you can include that for the writer’s own research or for the writer to include in the post for readers.
Audience (personas)
Make sure your writer knows a bit about the audience they’re writing for. Describe the audience or provide a persona profile to guide your writer on the voice and tone appropriate for this piece based on who you want to read it and the key messages you want to get across.
Content guidelines
The problem with one-way communication is the illusion that – once it’s initiated – the writer automatically knows all of the specific rules your business has for creating content. Different businesses have different writing styles; don’t be afraid to be detailed about the overall dos and don’ts – especially if the writer needs to be aware of regulatory guidelines or constraints. For example, some businesses – such as those in the legal, financial, real estate, or health care industries – are legally bound to abide by specific rules such as not using certain words that a new writer may not be familiar with.
Provide website upload directives
Whether the uploader is you, the writer, or another individual, include documentation of the content upload guidelines for whoever will upload the content to your website – usually an internal webmaster, external web development agency, or blog marketing company. Things like the date the content should be posted, the categories it should be placed in, and a meta description including the main keyword are important elements to provide to the content uploader to help them get it right the first time.
Learn how to write blog directives from a blog marketing company
If you want to produce content that is high quality, engaging, and will help your business in the long run, consider using blog directives. A blog directive is simply a set of guidelines for your writer to follow when creating content for your website or blog. This can save you time and ensure that all of your content is on-brand and consistent with your messaging.
At Take the Stairs, our blog marketing company can help you with content solutions like creating effective, informative content directives for your writers, resulting in better cblog marketing for your business. Contact our Nashville office today to learn more about what we can do for you.
