Let’s begin with a simple insight: If you want your blogs to succeed as lead generators for your business, you must have a solid content marketing strategy and good content. But what, exactly, makes content “good?”
We’re all writers here, right?
As kids, we crafted mythical stories for friends.
In college, we created sad (and mostly terrible) poetry about unrequited love.
In our early 20s, we attempted short stories, mimicking Flannery O’Connor or Ernest Hemingway.
When we started writing for money–perhaps at a small town daily–we learned to write crisp, fast copy with the five Ws and an H.
We learned the importance of precision, facts, and making deadlines. We wrote sharp sentences that got to the point.
We learned to write ad copy, headlines, and captions–which translated to writing H2s, alt tags, and meta descriptions.
Then, you found yourself in content marketing.
Content marketing, you soon realized, wielded a power that combined everything you’d learned about writing–from the childhood myth to the journalism of your 20s–and shaped it into a tool that could educate, engage, and entertain readers on the world wide web.
And then? You realized how saturated the market is with unoriginal, unhelpful, or “too-salesy” content written by marketers who only care about clicks, or business owners too busy to do more than type a prompt into generative AI and hit post.
With such a noisy market (full of sound and fury but signifying nothing), it’s easy to feel like you’ll never write something that cuts through the noise and resonates with your audience.
However, your journey matters, and it’s what sets you apart in this age of content saturation.
So here’s the question you should ask yourself: Is building a better blog a worthy pursuit in the age of regurgitative word salad created to feed an algorithm?
The answer? Yes! Now, more than ever.
A blog about writing better blogs may sound like a self-licking ice cream cone of an idea–but bear with me. Standing out now means bringing to the page all the good stuff that other content leaves out. It means bringing your best writing to bat.
Content Marketing by People, for People
According to Ankit Singla in Master Blogging, as of 2024, there are 600 million blogs in the world producing 7.5 million blog posts every. Single. Day.
You guys.
That means 2.7 billion pieces of blog content are written and posted every year.
If that isn’t the reason to write compelling content to compensate for the disappointing things we see online, I don’t know what is. There are a lot of words out there–and only the best will be consumed. And yet, we all deal with the same problems when it comes to writing better blogs:
- It’s not easy.
- It takes the right team.
- You’ll need to devote resources: time, money, and effort.
- Without a strategy behind it, it feels useless.
So, what does it take to build a better blog?
A better blog doesn’t have to be formulaic–although it must have certain elements to make it succeed. When built with these elements in mind, a better blog can lead to higher engagement and a more enjoyable reading experience for your audience.
Elements of an Effective Blog
- A PERSONA TARGET: Remember your target audience and speak to them.
- A SPECIFIC INSIGHT: Show the reader how your expertise sets you apart.
- QUESTIONS: Engage with your reader, build empathy, and build trust.
- CALLS TO ACTION/CALLS TO VALUE: Give engaged readers the next step.
- VOICE: Write actively, speak to your audience, and be consistent in tone.
- PERSUASION: Your reader has questions. You have solutions. Persuade them!
- LISTS & BULLETS: use bullet points to break up text and make it easily digestible.
- NUMBERS: use facts and figures to support your points—link to sources.
- SEO, KEYWORD TARGETS, AND A PLAN: without a strategy, your content is merely a fallen tree in the forest with no one there to hear it.
The Content Strategy Behind Better Blogs
These elements are all well and good, but if your blog topics and overarching content strategy are still subject to random acts of marketing, you’ll find that the blogs themselves might perform well, but the sum of the parts won’t equal a whole successful marketing plan.
You have to ground your blogs in clear keyword targets, thoughtful topic ideation, and an organized content calendar and cadence to have true success, By setting clear keyword targets, you ensure that your content aligns with what your audience is searching for, maximizing visibility and relevance. Ideating topics around these keywords helps you create engaging and valuable content that resonates with your audience, driving traffic and engagement. A well-planned content calendar and consistent cadence keep your content distribution organized, timely, and efficient, maintaining audience interest and fostering brand loyalty.
The Proof is in the Pudding
Here’s how this looks in action. One of our clients, a SaaS company founded in 2019 that’s seen explosive growth since late 2022, saw the evolution of how both using the building blocks mentioned above and having a clear foundation for their content could help them thrive. We help them build a strategy based on:
- monthly blogs with evergreen and seasonal topics
- a strong interlinking strategy with internal and external links, and
- a backlink strategy to assist with domain authority.
Over time, they’ve updated their strategy by expanding their keyword targets and ading additional pillar pages. As their offerings grew, they created new pages that focused on customer-requested features of their software.
As they added features to their product and expanded their reach, they recognized the value of not simply more content, but better content. This better content comes from having a plan, listening to your audience and customers and creating pieces that address their needs and pain point.
In early 2024, they revamped their website by adding almost 20 pages of optimized, feature-driven content. From there, they launched a blog series linking the new features page so that every topic had a “feature pull-through” goal. The equation looked like this:
All of this together has led to more engaged, interested readers, higher organic traffic, and better visibility for their brand as a whole in a sea of less-than-useful content.
The Secret Sauce to Better Blogs
Besides creating the content calendar and brainstorming the ideation of topics that fit your keyword strategy, the secret sauce is simply in the execution of the plan.
Take the elements you need for a well-executed blog, give it your voice, and empathize with your readers. For today’s blog? Here’s the secret sauce.
- A PERSONA TARGET = content writers and content marketers
- A SPECIFIC INSIGHT = The lede to this piece: “You must have a content marketing strategy for your blog to succeed as a lead generator for your business. And as a part of that strategy, your content better be good.”
- QUESTIONS = This blog poses 11 questions for the reader.
- CALLS TO ACTION/CALLS TO VALUE = Banners are included in the graphics to give readers the next step in answering their questions.
- VOICE = No passive sentences here, and I hope you hear my voice, as I wrote this just for you.
- PERSUASION = Questions, voice, and information work together to build a compelling case that writing better blogs leads to higher reader engagement.
- LISTS & BULLETS = This blog contains four bulleted lists. You are reading one of them now.
- NUMBERS = I cited outside sources and linked to other blog posts from this site that are full of facts.
- SEO, KEYWORD TARGETS, AND A PLAN = This blog is part of a series on content marketing.
Other facts: I based this blog on my research on how to make blogs more engaging. That research spanned several months of compiled evidence and interviews with other content marketers. Once I sat down to put it together, it took 2 hours and 15 minutes to write. Later, I spent another 30 minutes re-reading, sharpening, and editing it. After another day, I spent another 15 minutes rereading and sharpening my word choices. Before publication, it also went to editorial, graphics, and a final director review before posting.
It takes intent, time, a team, and a plan. The result? Engagement.
Ready to Build Better Blogs?
Want to learn more about content marketing, writing better blogs, or building the best possible content team? Check out other posts in our resources section.
Want to work with a great content agency that really understands content marketing? Reach out to us today!
