10 New Year Blogging Centric Resolutions for the Content Marketer

The New Year has officially dropped which means it’s high time for fresh brands and businesses to turn up their content marketing game with blogging. As it stands, blogging is the source of 97% more inbound website backlinks, 126% more business lead growth and an array of other benefits for small and large firms.

If you’re a small company and have yet to make your mark, it is a better time than ever to aim higher. So, that is why we have conjured up a list of only the most inspiring New Year’s Resolutions that will make you become a better blogger:

“I’ll post More Frequently On My Blog”

Since blogging is such a hot market these days, you’ve to be more frequent in your blog posting if you ever hope to keep up with the competition and engage your audience. It could be that you may not be putting in as many hours as you should be. That is what you need to change in yourself. 

You will have to pull that extra gear if you want your readers to be engaged and keep coming back. If you are slacking on your blog posting and have nothing new to offer to your readers, then you’ll end up losing your readers.

We understand that it may be tough for you to disengage yourself from your regular working habits but once you get the hang of it, you won’t even feel the grudge.

“I’ll Always Put Quality Over Quantity”

Just because you have to post frequently, don’t assume that you post anything that is trending and then share it with your target market. Posting more often than usual could have worked in the blooming days of blogging, but now there is a saturation of posts online that people can go through. 

Additionally, people have less time and less patience to be able to go through everything. That is why bloggers only focus on creating content that specifically targets the needs and demands of the readers. 

Therefore, you need to stay true to your niche and what you can deliver to your audience in a slow but organic manner. 

Try to target specific trending tweets, hash tags and other content that surround your niche and focus your content developing skills around those for your blogs.

“I’ll Take Advantage of Live Video”

The concept of the live video came to fruition in 2016 and is likely to persist in the New Year as well. As of now, social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Periscope, and Snap chat are extremely high on the concept as they are heavily promoting it for their marketing and advertising campaigns. 

Even new agencies, car manufacturers, and sporting events are taking advantage of this new opportunity to gain their exposure. As a matter of fact, 74% of respondents from a Vidyard survey claim videos lead to the highest conversion rates for any piece of content. 

From what we’ve gathered, live videos work better for Facebook. Customers are looking for friendly, authentic and meaningful interactions with brands and only live videos can give them the whole package. 

There’s a little more authenticity to this than what is happening and live videos provide a more fruitful connection. Live videos outdo other formats of media when it comes to timeliness. They can provide updates right on the fly. Live videos are especially useful for promoting events since locations are no longer a barrier. 

“I’ll Update Old Content”

While it is essential to keep your content fresh and compelling, you should not leave your old blog posts to wither away and keep revising to make it relevant to your niche audience.

This is why the majority of the bloggers keep spicing up their old posts with new and relevant information. Not only does it keep the readers informed and up-to-date but it also attracts a whole wave of new readers given how much your reputation has gone up. Besides, the search engines love it when old content gets upgraded.

Therefore, you need to ensure that you go through your old posts on a yearly basis and rewrite the outdated numbers, give alternatives for broken tools and provide up-to-date screenshots to keep your content on the top.

“I Don’t Wait Until The Last Minute to Come Up With Ideas”

If you think you’re the only one to come up with an idea at the very last minute, you’d be surprised to know how wrong you are. Of course, not all last-minute ideas have to be bad as most of the results aren’t exactly favorable. The reason behind this is because anything rushed will lose its appeal.

Keep in mind that blogs which are worth-reading are a composition of quality and quantity. Therefore, you must not ever let the quality of your content slip up. Therefore, you need to prevent such a catastrophe and keep a list of potential blog post ideas at all times so that your chances are better off.

You should also keep a content creation calendar with you so that you know what you have to write about in advance. 

“I’ll Not Ignore The Significance of Semantic Search”

As time goes by, search engines continue to get smarter. As such, it is vital for marketers to keep up with those changes to stay ahead in the competition. Keyword rankings are essential, but there’s more to search criterion than just that as Google uses the history of searches of the users. 

But bloggers will benefit greatly from semantic search as it has improved accuracy. Its features include auto correction, location-specific results, and conversational search results. 

To take advantage of semantic search, content marketers have to focus less on specific keywords and more on a keyword ecosystem. Keywords are still important but other factors must be taken into account as well. You must focus more on the meaning the same way as Google does.

In addition, you have to ensure that the focus of your content is clear and obvious. It will help search engines know what you want and have it delivered to the right people. Additionally, the quality of content has to be stellar – as in it matches the intention of the words that they search for.

“I’ll Find Follow-Up Opportunities”

The purpose of a follow-up is not so that you can create new content and rather it is meant to direct a batch of new followers to your old article which serves as a base for a new one. 

So the next time you start a new article, you must be sure to mention your old posts and why your readers should consider reading that first. 

However, you won’t be writing all these follow-ups all the way in the New Year. You have planned out your approach first; create an editorial calendar, and then mind-mapping comes into play.

“I’ll Keep a Watch for Rank Brain”

Artificial intelligence (AI) is another game-changer that has been making waves for the past few years. Google refers to Al deep learning tool and it is a part of its algorithm now. It goes without saying that the Internet is chock full of content that is competing with your own for their limited attention. 

Google only wants to serve up the best search results that its users are looking for, but there is an infinite void of content to scan and rank. It is for this reason that Google created a tool known as RankBrain to solve this issue. 

It is an AI component that can scan an ocean of content and discovers the most trending topics. It can also adapt by analyzing a series of queries and determining the intent of users. 

To optimize your content for RankBrain, you have to rank for the right user intent, optimize your titles and meta to be something that people with that intent will want to click on and then convert those visitors. 

“I’ll Add More Meat To blog posts”

While it is good to have a ‘short’, ‘sweet’ and ‘precise’ approach when it comes to making your blogs, you sometimes need to add a little more flesh on the bones. By that, we mean making the content of your blogs long enough to increase their readability and share ability. 

Breaking it up into bullet points and subheadings further add to the benefit. If you can give you readers more value out of longer posts in the New Year, you could be breaking new grounds and that too in a good way.

“I’ll Do Competitor Analysis”

Keep in mind that when we say competitor analysis, we do not mean that you go ahead, steal their ideas and make them your own. Sometimes it is important to analyze the approach of your competitors and look into the kind of keywords and social platforms that they are targeting just to know the current practices of your industry.

Probe how they are using it all and see if you can work out a method of your own to use in your blogs.

Bonus infographic:

Source: Expresswriters.

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