4 Tips on How to Take Your Blog to the Next Level

It wasn’t like this a few years back. But now content marketing is an integral part of online marketing for most businesses.

As more and more businesses are learning the power and effectiveness of content marketing, they are investing more time, effort, and resources into it. New articles, content, guides, and resources are being published every day.

How do you then stand out from the rest of the digital noise?

In one sentence: give your readers something more than the average.

In this post, you will learn 4 tips and tricks on improving your content marketing plan and taking it to the next level.

1. Streamline Your Content

When you are starting a new blog, it is very common to be all over the place. One day you are publishing blog posts of 150 words, and on another day, you are publishing long-form 2,000 word guides.

This variation can be important when you use it tactically. However, as you aim to grow your online business and improve its content marketing plan, you will have to streamline the content you produce.

Define what kind of content you will be normally producing. Focus on that, and build on it as much as possible. Don’t go jumping around on every piece of content that is out there. Instead, focus on what your strengths are and build a niche of your own.

2. Write on Closely Related Topics

If you want to grow your online business exponentially, this is perhaps the most beneficial tip for you.

The idea is to shortlist a few good topics to write on, and pick the ones that are closely related to each other. Writing on closely related topics gives you multiple benefits.

For instance, when you write on closely related topics, you can create more internal links within blog posts. This will improve readership, lead generation, and reduce the bounce rate of your website.

Furthermore, you will also be able to leverage  “content upgrades” and “lead magnets” in a much better way if you write on closely related topics. We will discuss more about it in the next point.

Last, but not the least, when you write on a group of subtopics, you carve a niche of your own. You become the authority on that particular subtopic and the go-to resource for your target audience.

3. Content Upgrades & Lead Magnets

If you are not creating lead magnets and content upgrades, you are missing out on a lot of great opportunities.

Content upgrades and lead magnets help you generate more business leads and email subscribers. And it is, by far, one of the most important factors in taking your content marketing to the next level.

Here is an example of a content upgrade.

A content upgrade is a downloadable element embedded within your content. In order to download the “upgrade” visitors have to input their name and email address, thus adding to your email list.

In the previous point, we discussed the importance of writing on closely related topics. As we saw that by doing so, you give yourself an opportunity to create more internal links and an increased number of pageviews on other related blog posts. It also has one more major benefit.

4. Editorial Guidelines

You can’t expect to grow your content marketing plan without proper editorial guidelines. Even if your online business does not have a team, you need a set of editorial guidelines to guide you through the content marketing process.

But what if you are the sole blogger?

The answer is that even if you are a sole blogger, you should still have these editorial guidelines properly written and printed on your desk.

These guidelines will help you define the type of content you produce for the blog. More importantly, these guidelines keep you on track when you start losing focus and interest in creating content.

Here is an example of the editorial guidelines from Crazy Egg.

Note that this is only a small excerpt.

These guidelines will also become very useful for you once you decide to grow your content marketing team and hire more writers.

In Conclusion

Growing a content marketing plan can be a bit difficult and tricky. However, the tip is to take it step-by-step.

Consistency is a very important factor here. Make sure the content you produce have a consistent tone and style. Use your branding, color schemes, specific writing style, content style, and particular types of posts to gain more attention.

When you combine all these important aspects together, you give it a much better chance to take your content marketing plan to the next level.