How to Get Blogging Strategy for Businesses Right
Deciding whether a business should publish regularly, about what, and to what end.
Dana Whitfield
The key figures
- Frequency
- no published standard exists; consistency matters more than cadence
- Differentiation
- content that repeats what everyone publishes competes with everyone
- Maintenance
- every published post is an ongoing maintenance commitment
- Expertise
- the differentiating input is usually internal knowledge
- Measurement
- defined before starting, or the program cannot be evaluated
Why this is worth getting right
Most business blogs are published because competitors have one, which is not a strategy and produces content nobody reads or maintains.
Do this, not that
Do
- Publish what only this business can say
- Set a cadence the team can sustain indefinitely
- Plan for maintenance as well as creation
- Define what success looks like before starting
- Stop publishing categories that never perform
Don’t
- Publishing because competitors do
- Cadences that collapse after a quarter
- Restating what is already well covered elsewhere
- Archives nobody has reviewed in years
When to bring in help
Our advice Bring in help when a blog has run for years with no measurable effect, when cadence is unsustainable, or when a program needs restarting with a strategy.
Where this comes from
- Google Search Central — Creating helpful content
- Nielsen Norman Group — Content strategy
- GOV.UK Service Manual — Publishing strategy
The figures and practices above come from the sources listed.
Working on something like this?
We take on Content Strategy work for teams who want it done once, properly. Tell us what you are building and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right studio for it. Start a project.
Where to go next
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