Blogging and content aren’t dead.
It continues to be a leading strategy for online businesses to funnel and attract a specific audience. Starting and growing a SaaS startup blog is an intelligent marketing strategy to apply to an early-stage startup.
In the business to the business world, information is key. As much as 96 percent of B2B buyers are consuming information from credible sources before making a buying decision.
Prospects are consuming blog posts, influencer content, relevant blog articles, case studies, white papers, and videos to inform their buying decisions.
And because of this, B2B marketers have opted for content marketing as a go-to strategy with as much as 93 percent of marketers leaving room for it in their strategy.
As a SaaS startup, building a blog should be top priority. Crafting a blog content strategy is the first strategic step to attracting and qualifying potential prospects into buying customers.
Blogging is a marketing strategy that easily couples with startup business goals like finding leads, building brand awareness, and becoming a thought leader.
Why Grow a Startup Blog
Content marketing is marketing that keeps giving.
When other forms of marketing tailor off after budgets are spent, content resides on your website continuing to attract prospects.
Content provides a startup with four key benefits.
- Builds authority. Blog content is a useful way to display knowledge. Writing a well-informed article with credible links and knowledge is hard work. As a SaaS blog tailors towards a specific topic, the startup’s expertise in the specific field shows off and they’re well on their way to becoming what we marketers say, “an industry thought-leader.” I build authority in three areas: content marketing strategy and human-centered content creation.
- Blogging provides transparency. Blogging is a great method to start an introductory conversation with a new person. They learn of your interests, your tone, your expertise, and personality. Blogging provides transparency to who you are and what you believe in. And transparency builds trust.
- Blogging starts an online conversation. Humans enjoy engaging with others of similar interests. When a prospect visits your blog, they take a look around, read the content, and form an opinion about you and your startup. A blog is a conversation starter introducing the topics you’re an expert in, where you can provide help and your expertise.
- Business case. Blogging is one of the strongest ROIs for business prospecting, authority building, and search volume ranking. Google ranks quality content that is specific towards a target market and answers their unique challenges and questions. Blogging provides organic traffic to a startup business and service. New prospects to nurture. When more than 50% of organic traffic comes through blog posts, blogging is a great ROI business case.
How to Grow a Startup Blog
It might seem daunting to imagine starting a blog.
It’s work. It takes time — and like anything created in business — it should have a solid strategy behind it. Creating a blog without a strategy leads to missed opportunities and frustration.
Where do you start with a blog strategy? Here are three quick tips that we approach with every startup client. It’s a progressive approach to content topic generation and structure.
- Befriend your audience. Who is your audience? What are their concerns, challenges, pains, and motivations? Befriending the audience is the first step in generating topic ideas. It sets focus towards that topics that are most beneficial to a target audience.
- Mechanics. Blog content shouldn’t be created then published to the web without thinking through the structure. Is the structure optimized for Google? Is it SEO friendly? Is it user-friendly? The content structure will benefit the blog by increasing its value to Google, thus ranking the blog post higher and higher in the search rankings. Pillar posts, specific categories, and interlinking content is a simple strategy to conquering these mechanics.
- Distribution. Blog content is only as effective as its distribution plan. Does your startup blog have a distribution plan? Distribution is the queen to the king of content. By distributing content consistently and frequently, the process grows the reach of a blog. Also by amplifying your content through a simple repurpose strategy, you can use the same content across different channels.
Follow Suit: The Best SaaS Company Blogs
No need to reinvent the wheel. Several SaaS startups are ‘winning’ when it comes to producing a quality and a lead-generating blog.
Here are three blogs at the top of our list:
- HelpScout Blog: The blog is well structured with specific categories tailored to audience challenges and pains. It’s also easy to read.
- Moz Blog: Moz is considered an industry leader in digital marketing. Things we like: well-structured and video content within the blog posts.
- Zendesk Blog: Zendesk blog is by far the coolest with engaging blog graphics to keep the reader on the page.
Build a B2B blog
Are you thinking to start a blog for your startup?
As mentioned, a blog is a strong ally and strategy for channeling quality prospects towards your service. It builds authority and transparency with the target audience while generating a strong return in organic traffic numbers.
Starting a blog should be a priority in a startup’s marketing strategy — Have you started one?
