Napkin Content Marketing Plan For Getting Your Blog Started

Specifically I am trying to “re-launch” a blog I have had for the past 3 years. I basically took a major hiatus from it, still generates about 300-500 unique views per day and about 2-3 leads per day, all organic.

I would like to get back to working on it but this is really a side project outside of my main business and since i haven’t really created new content on it at all in over a year (due to time constraints), I’m wondering if it would be better to just gradually resume creating content as time permits. I’m afraid it could take me months or maybe even a year to create all 30

Answer 1: Get Going With A Titles List, Do Research, And Write A Series Of 2-3 Blog Posts Per Title

Having 30 posts up-front is a good idea because you can schedule them and on a set-and-forget deal, you start the blog and won’t worry about it for the next month.

From my experience, I’d actually say 50 blog posts, each with a few pics SEO-ed for the target keywords.

A trick I’ve learned about fast writing is to get a topic, gather 3-5 other top-ranking articles and write up a combination of all of them. You can create a series of say 2-3 texts, so you end up having 10-15 major topics you write on, and you have 2-3 texts on each that cover the issues very thoroughly. Blog series work great because when a person reads one text, he/she’ll want to read the other two.

So with a single visit from an ad of search, you generate 2-3 page views and at least 5 minutes Time on Site. So you’ve achieved several strong SEO goals.

Depending on the niche you’re in, content can stay relevant for years. So with a batch of 30 inter-connected blog posts, you’re up for a very powerful start and you get to use the benefits for years.

If you can, go with 50 texts. Pick 20ish titles, gather 3-4 articles on each title, and start reading and summarizing. If you can find conflicting articles and you know of yet another perspective, that would be great cause then you can go to those original pages and post a comment and link back to your view of the issue. Once you get in the rhythm of reading and writing, you’d be surprised by how quick articles get written.

I’d say for those 20ish titles, you’d need a couple of hours per title to read and write. Total, you’d end up spending about 120-150 hours to build up a very admirable content footprint of 50 texts.

Or just hire someone to do it for you, someone that knows research and writing and knows on-page SEO.

Side Note: Why Content Quality Is Extremely Important For A Solid And Steady High-Quality Organic Traffic?

With content marketing and getting someone to do it for you, keep in mind that those 30, 50, X articles will be your first impression. So you never get a second chance for a first impression. Go for high quality, not just numbers: 

A real-life situation:

With three of my clients working in a similar niche that I did content marketing for a bit over a year, I can see VAST differences in results because they were willing to invest different cash in it: 

• The first company is an established one, international, and is in the biz for over 20 years. I charged $25the 0 per 800-1000 character articles on a manufacturing/engineering subject that was key for their business. The text complexity was pretty high, aiming at Fletch Kincaid Grade Level of 14-26. Average for all texts was about 18 which is masters-level texts. They still hire me for more. They won’t tell me how much their site is making but it’s obviously making plenty since they’re just getting more and more services.
• Another client, a startup, hired me to do all of his online presence. I billed him $150/text, shorter texts, aimed at high school level text complexity. He billed close to $200k the first year and continues to get a solid stream of leads to this day, without much new content. In the second year, he got an invitation to do a TV show similar to Pimp My Ride. He declined, unfortunately.
• A third client, also in the automotive industry, was price-shopping. I got her a low $100/text. She did get clients from the site, and also got noticed by the tv industry, but didn’t make as much money.

Bottom line, you get what you pay for. There’s a significant difference from an article that costs $100 vs a $250 one both in terms of generating traffic and generating sales. I can’t encourage you to go for article writers that do Fivrr or alike. I have tried to work with purchasing articles and tweaking them but the quality was so low that I ended up just rewriting them from scratch.

Question 2: First Things First… But What Is The First Thing In Using A Website To Generate Business?

Thank you for the insights. I guess my confusion is…for this particular niche website/blog I already have about 60 pages written on the site. They are well optimized in terms of keywords. I still pull in a decent amount of long-tail traffic from the articles I wrote years ago.

But I never had a social media presence at all before as I was just focused on writing articles. I didn’t focus on list building either – just recently started to seriously collect emails. I also never created any of my own courses or e-books – my only monetization method right now is Google AdSense and a few Affiliate links on the sight (not even good ones – mostly Amazon right now to be honest).

So should my next step be:

1. Doing a “re-launch” with 30 to 50 NEW pieces of content 
2. Setting up a stronger social media presence – recycling my old pieces of content, a few new pieces sprinkled in here and there, quote boxes/engaging photos, run a couple of like ads using my retargeting pixel to get more of a following there.
3. OR should I focus more on the product end of thing – building better lead magnets, my first tripwire and core offer?
   
   I know this is a hard question. So I guess my main confusion is what’s the best order? A big blog launch? Social media? Product development and setting up the conversion funnel?

 Answer 2: Set The Mechanisms Before You Unleash The Traffic

Without sales funnels, your traffic has no real value for your business (Image from Askari)

Build the funnels before you let the flood of visitors go through your site. 300-500 unique visits/day is not bad for a site you haven’t done work on for years. At a 1% Conversion Rate, you’re looking at 3-5 conversions daily.

Depending on what you’d sell through the funnels and landing pages, that can be solid cash that you can pour back in the site and scale up.

Wrap-Up: How Content Plays Into Making More Business With Your Website

From this short conversation, it is obvious that although you do want to use your website to get more business before you start working you need to have some ideas on paper. Careful planning early on will help you save time, remain focused on the key issues, and ultimately duplicate or even quadruple your business without significant increases in traffic:

1. Create a list of topics you want to cover with your initial content burst of 30-50 texts
2. Do proper research and add your own experience/expertise by writing 20 series of 2-3 blog posts covering a single title from the previous point
3. Build all the needed funnels before launch because once the traffic starts flowing in, you will need some processes in order to achieve your business goals.
4. Your web content will get you traffic, but in order to convert them to clients, your content will need to be of high quality: well researched, informative, optimized for user-intent
5. Don’t hesitate to contact a professional. Learning from your own experience is the longest, hardest, most expensive way to grow a business.

Feel free to reach out and contact us using the Contact form. We’d love to give you a hand in planning and executing your content marketing strategy.