Remember the good old days? When we could get away with article spinning, mass link submissions, and all that stuff. Times have changed, haven’t they? Well, somewhat. We’ve now got people shouting from the rooftops about how they can use AI to generate tons of content for blogging sites at a fraction of the cost.
Sigh.
I may have covered that here and here recently (slides embedded at the bottom of the post if you’re interested).
But be careful folks; all is not what it seems. Do you really think Google isn’t prepared for this? They already have more advanced technology than the OpenAI gubbins that you’ve seen splattered across the internet, but they may have chosen not to use it for the good of humanity (I’ll talk about how you can use it for good in another post).
Source: https://blog.google/technology/ai/lamda/ (and shout out to @JessicaMal_ for helping me to resurface this when my brain broke up into pieces)
Anyway, I digress.
Content – But Not What You Would Think About If You Listen To The Experts
All the talk of AI and people creating a deluge of crap across the internet got me thinking about something else. Something that has been recommended by Joe “Blogging” Blogs for years.
“You need to post at least three articles a week, or Google won’t like your site”
“More content is always better”
“If you aren’t posting to your blog ALL the time, then Google won’t come back too often”
And so on. For as long as I remember, I’ve seen, heard and read this disingenuous type of advice.
It’s just not true, folks. You don’t need to be bashing out whatever comes into your head. It isn’t helpful. And it’s costly to your business – and the environment.
But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t blog – and more importantly, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t think about why you blog. There is more to life than organic traffic, you know. But organic traffic is important as well.
“We’re all in this together,” as the old saying goes. Yet, it’s all too easy to forget when we sit behind our computer screens and write posts for hours. That is why I’m going to show you how blogging can be more than just a blog post: it can also be tied into running your business.
At Boom, we blog for many reasons. Yeah, quality content and all that. But here’s some other thinking behind the content we’ve encouraged for years.
Training
When you have new team members or even co-workers moving up the ladder, they will learn new stuff. It’s inevitable. We encourage them to write about what it is they’re learning. And we like to do that right after they have learnt it – it could fall out of their brain before they need to use that skill again. SEO is quite a big discipline, apparently.
This not only helps cement what they have learnt recently in their brain (agency life is fast-paced, and stuff gets forgotten), but it’s also there for us to share with others when they are learning similar stuff.
Examples:
- Content Accessibility: Creating Inclusive Content We Can All Enjoy
- How to Create a Varied Content Calendar for a Company Blog
- How to Plan & Develop Content Ideas for Outreach Success
- Digital Marketing Beginner? Here’s What I’ve Learned as an SEO Newbie
- 23 Super Useful Google Docs Tips for Marketers
Helping Without Pushing
We also publish content that can help staff that’s accessible for any of us to share. I’m a big believer in hitting people up multiple times with advice; otherwise, it gets forgotten. Mention it in a meeting, drop some tips on Slack, mention it in meetings and get it in a blog post.
Meetings are temporal. Slack is the wild west of here today, gone tomorrow information. Your blog can keep stuff organised for future reference – and low and behold, it’s categorised and has tags to make it easy to find stuff.
Examples:
- How to Stay Creative While Working From Home
- A Few Simple Tips for Working From Home
- How To Improve Your Concentration At Work
Sharing how you work
This is mainly internal, but when you try to explain concepts or processes we use, it can get forgotten. Having it as a blog post can be shared again and again.
Do these posts get loads of traffic? Mostly no. But that’s not the point; they get some. They occasionally pick up links, and you can also share them with your clients when needed – nobody wants to write out all the stuff repeatedly. And blog posts tend to be read more often than a word doc ‘cos they feel less businessy (I have no evidence to support this, so don’t ask me!)
Examples:
- How Much Does A Link Cost Using Content Marketing, How Long Does It Take & How Many Links Should You Expect?
- Applying Strategic Business Thinking To Outreach
Content that you can share with clients
Without having each account manager create something new or send clients off to an external resource. Often this can be to explain how we do things differently. Sometimes it’s to back up changes in Google. It can be a bunch of things. And you know what? It’s always better to send a client to you covering a topic than it is another website (include the other good stuff as a resource list at the bottom of your post, though).
Examples:
- Google Shopping Ads on Gmail: What We Know So Far
- What Natural Language Processing Means and How to Use It Effectively
- The Power of Content Readability: Write Less, Say More
- 6 Types of Unhelpful Content You Might Not Know You Have, and How To Improve Them
- GA4: Why You Should Set Up Google Analytics 4 ASAP
- Sustainable Digital Marketing: How to Create a Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy
Internal workflows that don’t deserve a process as such
Think of best practices. If we have them, then we can share them. If we have them on the site, we get the value of traffic (links?) that we wouldn’t if they were just on an internal wiki.
Examples:
- Media Library Optimisation: The Importance of Decent Images
- Practical PPC: When to Use Google Smart Shopping Campaigns and When to Avoid Them
Encouraging people to keep learning and exploring
We would do this to make sure people were actively searching out new content. And it’s quick to put together.
It encourages the team to look at posts outside their direct skill set. It introduces them to new topics that could set off a chain of discovery. Then on top of that, it provides content for your social team to share that references other people in the industry. Anything that saves time is a good thing right? As long as it’s quality.
Example:
- What Boom Have Been Reading – November 2018 Edition
- 9 Digital Marketing Podcasts That are Definitely Worth a Listen
Blogging is not just about gaining traffic. It can be used to tie in other aspects of your business. The key is to use it strategically to get the most out of your content efforts. You don’t have to shout about yourself; instead, think about how you can use it to improve internal workflows and processes. How can you use it as an internal tool rather than just a way of attracting traffic.
But combine the two: work smarter not harder, and all that jazz.
It’s not all about SEO, y’know.
Oh, and here are those slides I mentioned earlier:
We hope our handy blogging tips have helped you make better sense of how to use your blog. Not only is it a very useful tool for SEO and content marketing, but it can also be used as a learning resource for team members, a place to send potential clients when making a sales pitch and a useful place to expand on those minor internal processes that can get lost in the ether… all the while offering clearer insight to those outside of your organisation.
If you’re keen to develop your blogging strategy to benefit both you and your visitors, but you’re not quite sure where to start, just get in touch with our friendly team!
