The Rule of Thumb for Blog Post Writing

Why Goals Matter to Your Blog Content

For blog posts to be compelling, you need to write them with specific goals in mind. For example, let’s say one of your marketing goals happens to be increasing downloads for your report on “7 Reasons Why You Need to Hire a Designer.”  You can encourage people to download your story by including a call-to-action and link in your blog post.

Neil Patel uses this approach in his blogs (here he uses it to get readers to check out new software):

(Source)

Goals also help you write more interesting blog posts. Because the content is focused on a particular idea or concept, rather than just writing for the sake of pushing out content. (Here are some ideas for making your blog posts more exciting and effective.) You need goals when writing blog posts so you can propel your readers into action, whether that’s downloading a report, checking out an app, or subscribing to a newsletter.  Otherwise, why are you creating blog content in the first place? Give your blog posts real purpose, and they will repay you in valuable, measurable ways.

What Types of Goals Work for Blog Posts?

The types of goals you have for blog content may be different than the goals you have for other marketing channels.  That’s because blog posts usually aren’t the last touchpoint before a sale; that is, most readers aren’t going to purchase after reading your blog content.

Of course, this isn’t always the case. B2C customers have a much shorter path to purchase than B2B customers, and they don’t require as much education as B2B buyers to make a decision. You can also refer to this chart by Hubspot, that compares B2C and B2B audiences that might come in handy that explains every step from the purchase motivation to its process.  Aside from understanding your general audience (B2C vs. B2B), it also helps to develop buyer personas so you can speak to what motivates them.  Finally, when you have a grasp on the target audience, you can use that information to determine and refine the goals. You will apply these goals to guide your blog post writing.

Some ideas to get you thinking:

Goals for B2C Blog Posts

• Increase product sales
• Grow traffic to other pages
• Boost the sharing of blog content
• Acquire more email subscribers
• Get more video views and subscribers

Goals for B2B Blog Posts

• Increase downloads for white papers or reports
• Grow email subscriber lists
• Get more webinar sign ups
• Secure more free trial or demo requests
• Increase traffic to other pages

Put Your Goals into Place

Once you select the goals that are important to your organization, and that make sense for blog content, go ahead, and create the language, add links and calls-to-action around those goals.  Be sure to have tracking, analytics, or other tools in place, so you can analyze how well you are achieving your goals through your blog posts. When you have the data at your disposal, you can make changes to the content or your goals or even do some A/B testing to improve your results.

Learn More About Content Marketing

Check out Simplilearn’s Advanced Content Marketing Certification Course to master your blog messaging.