Behind the Scenes of a Search-First Blog Post 👀

Published over 2 years ago • 3 min read

Hello Reader,

I thought it would be fun to give you a glimpse at how we iterate and create content for our blog by sharing our most recent (written by Andrea) article. ​

In this piece, she explains why now is the right time for Squarespace users (about 75% of our clients/audience is in this group) to start planning to upgrade to the new version of the platform, 7.1 (yes, the version naming is goofy).

We typically create an article on our website for one or more of the following reasons.

  1. We want to bring in targeted, high intention traffic to our website (fill our pipeline of leads, in marketing speak)
  2. We're trying to build our thought leadership in a certain area (think of this like "cred")
  3. Admin purposes: this is something our clients, leads, or colleagues need (these are typically the result of real life questions we get or noise around topics we observe)

We also make sure that whatever the topic is, it fits neatly into our content framework (which follows our marketing model I've shared before). In this case, this article lives under "Build a Brand Bridge," as it's focused on brand expression and creative work/design. This also is a great way to ensure that we're accountable to ourselves (and keeps me in line, to be honest—I get lots of ideas that do not need to be blog posts because they do not fit in the content framework). We don't have a formal process for this, it's basically a quick chat during one of our Monday team alignment calls.

We also used a few different steps in researching the content for this piece and used it as an opportunity to engage folks on some of our supplementary marketing channels:

  1. I asked my LinkedIn audience if they had questions about moving from 7.0 to 7.1. Unsurprisingly, the engagements were low, though we had some lovely comments from past clients. I have noticed that only "spicy" LinkedIn posts get many views.
  2. I posted on Instagram that we were writing an article about this subject and we got some good questions. Andrea followed up personally with one person who was experiencing some extra weirdness between the two platforms.
  3. Andrea did a lot of keyword research for this topic. Gone are the days when we could rank nearly instantly for Squarespace-related keywords, so this was an essential step. The article is currently sitting on page two of Google for our target keyword, but it's only been six days—our aim is to be on page one, of course. (It is on page one if you include the qualifier "2022," which is progress, though!)
  4. We looked at some of the questions we've answered recently about this subject—I always say to mine your own "user generated" content for this kind of research!
  5. Andrea developed the "key takeaways" after this research. This is a great way to make sure that you're staying on track and focused when writing long articles like this.

Once the post was written, we formatted it, created sharable graphics, and I did the final pass for SEO-ifying and quality control. (I'm not a proofreader, but I am good at spotting opportunities and ensuring we keep our brand voice intact.) Then we hit publish.

At that point, this post goes into our repurposing "factory." I've mentioned before that we don't create anything that can't be reused at least three times—and this is no exception. In addition to this newsletter, we'll break this up multiple times for our other marketing channels and get as much traction from it as possible.

A final detail: We have been aggressively updating content with a technique we refer to as "layering." This is definitely a post that will need to be adjusted and added to as the facts change. This is something you definitely want to include in your repurposing plan as well, especially if your field is particularly dynamic.

I know this sounds like a lot of steps, but it's important to think through all the opportunities that content like this creates. If you read through these steps again, you'll see that there are multiple points in the process that were, for lack of a better term, marketing opportunities. That continues after the post is published as well. Now, not everyone wants or needs a system as complicated as this one (though in execution it is truly fairly minimal), borrowing even one or two elements from this for your content efforts can expand the impact of your effort.

Give it a shot and let me know how it goes!

Talk soon,

Sarah

P.S. Want my eyes on your content? A strategy session is a great way to start. Book yours here. ​

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