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Four Ways To Beat The Blogging Writer’s Block
- Posted by Elise Schoening
- on
Blogging isn’t just for the beauty gurus and Millennials. More and more marketers are incorporating blogs into their content strategy and seeing real results from doing so. In fact, blogs are the most shared content among peers and colleagues and 71% of buyers said they viewed a blog during the customer journey, according to Demand Gen Report’s 2018 Content Preferences Survey.
“We keep hearing about the Netflix scenario, where everyone wants to binge, binge, binge,” said Dana Harder, VP of Strategy at Content4Demand. “Creating a blog and making it the foundation of your content strategy is a way to not only get consistent content out there, but also make the kind of content that people want to see and read at the moment.”
Research suggests that marketers who posts at least 16 blogs a month see 3.5X more traffic than their competitors. But for many marketers, it’s hard enough to keep up with their inbox, yet alone post four blogs a week.
So, we did some of the work for you. Here are four easy ways to beat blogger’s block and crank out stand-out content on a regular basis.
1) Fuel Content Creation With Industry Events
It seems every month, there are at least two major events in the B2B marketspace — whether it be Uberflip’s Conex and Terminus’ #FlipMyFunnel events in August or Salesforce’s Dreamforce and Drift’s Hypergrowth East and West in September. But for marketers, attending industry events doesn’t have to be a drag. Events can be a great venue to network with other practitioners and thought leaders, as well find inspiration to fuel content creation long after you’ve packed your bags and headed home.
Following Conex, Demand Gen Report’s Klaudia Tirico put together a blog with the top takeaway quotes from experts such as Ann Handley of MarketingProfs and Carlos Abler of 3M. Some of the quotes are insightful and offer tactical advice, while others share personal, entertaining anecdotes, making it hard to choose a favorite.
2) Look To Your Inbox For Inspiration
Sometimes, the best ideas are right in front of you, or more accurately — right in your inbox. Instead of automatically hitting delete, take a minute to go through your inbox and search for industry trends, breaking news or other eye-catching content that could be repurposed on your blog.
Using this approach, HubSpot created a blog about “15 Out-Of-Office Messages To Inspire Your Own.” The company also included templates, so readers could create their own wacky out-of-office messages. The result? A quick-hitting and humorous piece that stands out among other run-of-the-mill marketing content and is actually useful.
3) Embrace Industry Leaders & Influencers
Nothing inspiring in your inbox this week and no time to write up a blog? Fear not: industry leaders, influencers, customers and partners are all great resources for blog content and they’re just an email or phone call away.
Not only does a guest blog take some of the work off your plate, but it can also increase your reach and grow your following. In fact, research shows that influencers can deliver 11X higher ROI than traditional marketing content.
Orbit Media Studios often hands over the blogging reins to industry leaders and influencers. Barry Feldman of Feldman Creative, a digital marketing consultancy, wrote a recent post on “How To Launch a Social Media Advocacy Post.” Feldman has a Twitter following that is nearly five times larger than that of Orbit Media Studios. By outsourcing blogs to influencers such as Feldman, the company is positioning itself for long-term growth and greater brand recognition.
4) Cross-Promote With Podcasts
Today’s marketers have to juggle content across channels, including video, blogs, podcasts and more. But blogging doesn’t always have to be a burden. Savvy marketers have learned to work across channels to create and promote content.
In a recent blog post, Drift repurposed a podcast interview between CEO David Cancel and VP of Marketing Dave Gerhardt. The blog outlines three tips to get you to read more in 2018 and then links to the podcast at the end so users can listen in to learn more.
The same tactic works the other way around. Got a podcast interview coming up? Save some of the questions for a blog. Then when the podcast airs, you can direct users to your blog to get more insights, creating double the content with half the work.