Where to Start with Your Blog Strategy
When it comes to getting your marketing tasks done (read: the ones you’re least excited about), you might feel like getting something done is better than nothing. In general, that’s not untrue, but sometimes it is. Because certain marketing tasks are more closely tied to the foundation of your business and how effectively you’re working towards your goals—making them too important to skim over.
Your blog is one of these “too important” tasks because blogging just to blog isn’t the most effective use of the blood, sweat, and tears you put into writing it (let’s be real, writing anything isn’t a walk in the park). Rather, you need to make sure you’re getting the most out of the precious time and effort you invest in writing 500 or more words—and having a basic blog strategy is a start. So today, we wanted to talk about where to start with building an effective blog strategy for your wedding business—starting with a conversation about content pillars. Read on to learn what content pillars are, why they are important as well as 3 core pieces of content you should write (because they are definitely worth your time).
What is a blog strategy?
Don’t let the word “strategy” intimidate you—a blog strategy doesn’t have to be a complicated thing. In fact, for most wedding planners and pros, the most basic blog strategy you can put together is simply a list of blog topics you think are smart to write. Easy, right? But if you want to step things up from there, your blog strategy can go on to organize that list by month or quarter (in order to publish each blog when it is most relevant or timely). Want to take it a step further? Do some keyword research to try and find SEO keywords that aren’t oversaturated with existing content (usually the most generic keywords) and ones that are more local or closely tied to your services and expertise.
What are content pillars?
If content buckets are the themes or categories you use to define what type of content you are going to write about, your content pillars are your strongest pieces. (Feel free to think of all of this in the context of building an actual structure if visuals help!). For example, if one of your content buckets is inspirational content, what are the most popular and important topics within that theme? If you are a wedding planner, it’s likely topics around wedding venues, color palettes, and big-ticket décor items.
Your content pillars are important because they help you build what’s called “domain authority” around a specific topic. In plain English that means your website becomes a trusted source of information about a specific topic. It takes time to build this reputation, but here is how you can start.
Publish a pillar piece that is written around a big and/or broad topic. When you do your SEO keyword research, look for and use a mix of keywords with a moderate to high monthly search volume
Branch out from there and write blog posts that are related to or deeper discussions of the pillar piece. You’ll use SEO keywords that are more niche (meaning have a smaller search volume but more targeted search intent)
When you publish additional blog posts to compliment your pillar content, “connect” them with internal links. Ideally, you are using the keywords from other pieces within each blog post and linking them. This is good for SEO as well as encouraging people to stay on your blog—our pro-tip below is a great example!
Pro-tip: If you haven’t read our articles teaching you how to optimize a blog post for SEO or how to optimize images for SEO, be sure to check those out!
3 Blog posts every wedding planner should write
Ready to start being a more strategic with your blog? We hope so because this is a typically low-cost way to really build your brand and get found by potential clients on the internet! Plus, it gives you great content to repurpose and share on social media or Pinterest! To get you started, here are 3 blog posts that are 100% worth your time and effort.
Article 1: A blog about your approach to wedding planning that is focused on your value and differentiators. You’ll want to use your service as the main keyword for the piece (for example “wedding coordination” or “wedding planning”). This is a great piece of pillar content because wedding planners often feel like couples don’t understand exactly what they do—this is a great way to clarify it all.
Article 2: A blog about the best or popular venues in your area. You’ll want to use the venue names as keywords, and this is a really good blog article to write since couples very often start the wedding planning process with venue searches—creating a way to get in front of newly engaged couples early.
Article 3: An FAQ style blog post. You’ll use the questions as keyphrases (if your couples and potential clients are asking you certain questions over and over, they are likely “asking the internet” as well). This is helpful blog to write because it can save you time when couples ask these questions—no more retyping your thoughts for the 50th time or searching through your inbox so you can copy and paste what you wrote last time.
After writing these 3 blog posts, how does having more than 25 blog outlines to work from sound? When you become a Sourced Co. member, you get access to blog outlines covering a range of topics you can use to build your domain authority! Each one comes with the keyword research already done for you, a thorough outline that walks you through what to write, a content distribution plan, and examples of what your URL and image file names should be! Memberships are $365 a year—and we promise creating the content you need to market your business will be easier than ever!
