On the surface, it might feel like adding a blog to your business website is a simple enough idea.
After all… You just have to write about a few topics that make sense for your niche, post them, and hope for the best, right?
Effective blog management means having full control of the type of content you post, when you post it, and the way it fits into your overall content marketing strategy.
In this guide, we’ll go over what blog management is and why it is so important. Plus, we’ll offer a few of our best tips for getting it right.
Blog management is the process of ensuring that your content marketing is in line with your bigger marketing strategy.
It includes elements like finding new and exciting topics to cover and doing keyword research to discover the best search words to include in each piece.
However, it also includes elements like getting to know your target audience, brainstorming the value that each post provides, and selecting the right promotion tools to bring in readers.
While it is somewhat of a broad scope, blog management is a crucial part of the whole process. It’s essentially the road map that keeps everything on track.
Now that you have a good idea of what blog management entails, let’s look at why it is important to your content marketing strategy.
Having a strong blog management process enables you to:
When you know what needs to be done at each step in the content creation process, you’ll know exactly what to assign to the various members of your team.
Planned content is more cohesive and offers better value for your overall audience.
Creating content in advance and sticking to a schedule allows you to keep a more consistent flow, which helps readers understand when they need to come back for the next installment.
Google prefers websites that are updated on a fairly regular basis. When you’re expertly managing your blog, this is easier to accomplish.
Of course, that’s just a few of the various benefits that come with effective blog management.
Simply put, the more organized your efforts, the easier it is to continue posting to your blog for the long term.
Like any other aspect of digital marketing, there are certain best practices that you should try to stick to when it comes to blog management.
While these certainly are a few of the most important areas to pay attention to, this list is certainly not exhaustive.
Here are a few expert tips on how to effectively manage your blog.
The first step in any blog management plan is to know your audience.
In fact, you could probably relate this to any digital marketing strategy in general — it’s that important.
When it comes to determining who you’re writing for, you’ll want to take the time to really get to know what they prefer in terms of likes, dislikes, and content.
One way to do this is by creating individual buyer personas that give you a bit of background on how certain types of individuals react to the information you’re posting to your website.
You can also ask your current audience what they enjoy most about your blog by doing a survey or just flat out inquiring with those who embody the group you’re most interested in resonating with.
You want to find out who you’re writing blog posts for and try to match their needs as accurately as possible.
When you have a blog, it can be easy to try to cram as much information as you can about a wide variety of topics to try to increase your overall organic traffic.
The problem with this is that posting about too many things that stray from your target niche can overwhelm your audience with stuff they might not care about.
Thus, it is always a good idea to develop a laser focus on your niche.
What do we mean by this? Only blog about things that relate to that industry or topic.
For example, a personal injury attorney probably wouldn’t want to post content about how to repair a refrigerator.
However, the audience of a DIY blog would love this — more than they would want to hear about how to file a bodily injury claim after a car accident.
So, keep your topics on point and stay as close to your intended topic as possible.
There’s a lot of content out there these days, which means your audience has a choice as to where they get their information from.
If you’re only writing short posts that have very little informative value, then they’re likely to go elsewhere.
Likewise, longer content that is hard to read or filled with typos and grammar errors is apt to annoy people.
That means you need to only post quality content that offers informative value and fulfills a need for your audience.
Skip the fluff and keep each post as on point as you possibly can. Use different services like Grammarly or Essay Writing Service.
What if the topic is a little deeper and the post is getting to be too long? Consider breaking it up into multiple content pieces, effectively creating a small series.
Not only is this better for your audience, but it also gives you multiple pages in which you can rank in the SERPs, too.
Perhaps the biggest downfall of most blogs is that they simply stop posting.
Maybe they began with a strong intent to always add new content three days per week.
But then a member of the team was out ill or it was the holidays. Or a certain topic just took longer to write.
Once there is a gap, it can be incredibly difficult to try to get back on track, which then leads to delays, less content, and a reduced audience.
Instead, it is better to keep a solid editorial schedule.
This means literally getting out a calendar and deciding which days in the next month or quarter your team plans to post, deciding on topics or keywords, and sticking to that publication date, no matter what.
It is also an ideal way to keep your team in the loop about various deadlines and when posts are expected for completion.
Remember, the more everything is organized and everyone is on the same page, the easier it is to remain consistent.
When organizing your approach, it is also a wise idea to use a blog management tool.
While there are plenty of them on the market, our favorite is Studio.
What is this?
Studio helps agencies and marketing teams manage their projects and campaigns by streamlining tasks, encouraging collaboration, and providing insightful reports.
It can be used to control projects for an internal team or orchestrate the activities of external teams, in one central location, effectively eliminating hard-to-follow email threads.
From a blogging perspective, it is a great way to always see where each post is in the content creation process and determine what is necessary to push it to the completion finish line.
If you utilize freelancers or remote employees for your content creation, it is an exceptionally helpful way to keep everything on track.
Another tip when it comes to blog management is to always provide value.
While this goes hand-in-hand with always creating quality content, this tip dives a little deeper.
Simply put, you should find the main point that solves a specific pain point for your readers within each blog post.
By narrowing down the reason why someone would find that piece of content useful, you can then decide the best way to get it in front of them.
For example, maybe that’s a paid ad on social media or simply an email sent to your list with basics on why this post is helpful.
Either way, the main goal of your entire blog should be to give your target audience the engaging and informative content they’re looking for.
There’s an old saying in the digital marketing world that content breeds new content.
This is certainly true when it comes to blogging.
Each new post should give you at least one new idea for a follow-up piece of content. In some cases, you might even touch on a topic that leads to six or seven other posts, too.
After your team writes a new post, it is important to look back and decide if there are areas where you can clarify a certain topic or provide additional important information.
Then add these items to your content calendar.
Once the new posts go live, you can link to them from the original blog content, which can help with search optimization.
Some digital marketers refer to this as content siloing, but it is really up to you if you want to use a more formal content structure like a silo or just go from one topic to the next organically.
A big part of blog management is knowing what keywords to target within your posts.
While this probably sounds like a no-brainer to someone well versed in how content marketing and SEO work, it is an area where a lot of new bloggers struggle.
So, why do you need keyword research?
Well, it is important to understand what people are actually searching for online.
When you can figure out the actual terms and phrases they’re using to find the information they’re looking for, you can start to aim to be that resource by including those terms in your copy.
However, it is important to then determine the amount of traffic each keyword is getting and who the competition is on Google or Bing for those terms.
Keyword research is essentially the tool that you can use to ensure your content gets in front of the right audience looking for answers to the topic you’re writing about.
Another important aspect of blog management to remember is to avoid content cannibalism.
What this means is competing with yourself for the same search position on Google.
This is usually only a problem after you’ve grown your blog to include a large number of posts, but it can still happen at any time.
Instead, make sure you’re only creating content around topics that you haven’t covered yet.
If there’s something that’s changed or you need to update the information, then go back and add to the existing post instead of making a new one.
In addition, it is always a good idea to look at your existing blog to find topics that could be combined for better effectiveness.
If necessary, eliminate one and redirect it to the other that you’ve updated.
While most people believe that blogging is easy, the truth is that there are quite a few steps necessary to reach success.
However, the blog management tips we’ve included in this post are a great way to stay on track along the way.
If you’re still unsure about your blogging process, we can help.
This lead capture checklist covers a wide variety of aspects to help you streamline your content creation needs. Check it out!