Recently, I not only started blogging here on Medium, but I also started a blog to talk about something I’m very passionate about, Movies. I wanted to separate the two as I saw Medium as a way to expand my Marketing knowledge while my movie blog was more of just a hobby. If you’re interested in my movie blog you can click here. I took this Content Marketing course on HubSpot to gain some more insights into how to create a successful blog and I wanted to share some of the things I found insightful and interesting with everyone. This will be part 1 of what I learned from HubSpot Academy, Content Marketing.
The Power of Storytelling
Every business needs a powerful story. It can help a company express their ideas, vision, and dreams to their audience. This could be achieved by using come of the concepts that were touched on in Inbound such as the Golden Circle, from why, how and what. I touched on it in part 1 of what I learned from taking the Inbound course. The structure of creating a story for a business is very similar to creating a story for something like a novel. You need characters, conflict, resolution. By having those elements you help your company create a relative brand, a vision that people can understand on a human level. For me it’s pretty relevant, especially with my movie blog where the whole goal is to be relatable to my audience and building a connection with my readers who, hopefully of done right, will come back again for my future posts.
Building a Content Creation Framework
A content creation framework in HubSpot Academy is defined as” a structure of processes for publishing content, from the beginning stages to post-production”. This framework helps a marketing team develop content in an organized consistent manner that, down the line, develops long-term content sustainability. This planning can be done both in the short and long-term, the ladder would help, “educate them over time.” According to HubSpot, there are 5 steps to building your framework from conceptualization, planning, creating, reviewing, and organizing/ storing content.
Planning a Long-Term Content Strategy
Planning your content creation helps to provide a roadmap of when and where to post your creations. They used a good example of thinking about your content strategy as a savings account. How much dedication and planning are you putting in to ensure you’ll save the most money and preparing for the future. Even unforeseen things get in your way, your strategy can help you get back onto that horse and stay the course. When it comes to setting goals for your content strategy they should be SMART, as specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Seeking industry influencers to collaborate with can bring increased awareness of your content. Although my blog is relatively very new, it’s still interesting to learn because it at least helps me figure out in the long term to how slowly grow my audience as I continue to get comfortable with creating consistent blogs and finding my voice.
Generating Content Ideas
There needs to be a process when generating ideas. With many of us being busy with our lives whether it be because of work or at home, no matter how creative you are, there is always the problem of writer’s block. That feeling where you feel like your creative juices just stopped flowing and have stalled like a car stuck on the side of a road with nowhere to go. By having a process, we can combat writer’s block. These ideas can be done on your own or with a team if you have them. Since my blog is pretty much just me, what I tend to do is go onto youtube and a few popular sites like Variety etc… and see what they’re talking about, find what is interesting to help me create a launching pad to start writing.
Creating Quality Blog Content Your Audience Loves to Read and Share
A blog post needs structure because it gives the writer a direction, making their writing more effective and efficient. When it comes to writing your post, there are a few structures that one can use such as the “list” or the “how-to” formula. Rather than starting at your introduction you should start at the main point and fill in those areas, saving your introduction for last. I followed this structure when writing my first 2 blogs. I was writing a review for the recent Pixar film Onward, but I didn’t know how to introduce the blog, so I just started writing the points I wanted to make on the film and my thoughts, making the introduction a much easier task and not getting bogged down by writer’s block.
How HubSpot Uses Blogging to Rank #1 on Google
Blogs are still the top source of business for HubSpot. Blogging helps build relevance to your company, allowing you to rank and build authority in search queries. Not only does that involve creating new blogs, but it also involves updating old ones and making them relevant, also known as historical optimization.
And there you have it, Part 1 of what I thought was insightful from the Content Marketing course on HubSpot Academy. Stay tuned for part 2.
