10 Easy Steps to Follow When Publishing on Your SaaS Blog
There’s no time like the present to activate your inbound marketing game plan for your SaaS business. Publishing quality content on your blog with SEO strategies in mind is one key way to grow your list of contacts. Yet, the process to produce engaging and shareable articles can be overwhelming when thinking beyond the basics of writing, editing, and pressing the “Publish” button. Use these 10 steps to convert your blog idea from plan to post and accomplish your goal of attracting quality visitors to your site.
1. Choose your topic and keywords
There are infinite topics related to your SaaS blog, so how do you choose what to write about? The ultimate guide to your posting should be your content plan. This map is what will connect your content across all channels and create continuity. Start with the keywords your company has identified and begin to form your ideas around the most valuable information for your readers. When all else fails or if you’re bored of your basic SaaS sales pitch, try out one of these unconventional blog topics that will creatively attract visitors to click to your service.
2. Write and edit your content
With your idea and keywords in position, it’s time to put those fingers to your keyboard. Irresistible content doesn’t happen in an instant, so give yourself and/or your copywriting team the time to craft their magic. Once you’ve put down a solid first draft, there’s never a limit to how many times you can review and edit. If you’re missing some meat in your posts, look to your past blogs or offers to repurpose old content in your new post.
Although the content of your piece is what will inform or convince your readers to engage with your company, your title and headlines are what will drive them to click to your post. This Moz article actually claims that editorial writers should spend 80% of their time crafting a title and headers and just 20% of the time to write the body content.
3. Format in your CMS
Now, it’s time to get technical. Drop your draft into your content management system (CMS) and then add your branding to make your post align with your company’s expertise. Whether working off of a blog page template or designing each post from scratch, you’ll want to stay consistent with your headers, fonts, styles, text size, and spacing. Within the body of your text, start building your links with both internal and external links to related pages. However, ensure that your reader won’t get distracted and lose focus from your blog by directing them to open in a new window.
4. Create a call-to-action
Each post on your SaaS blog should end with a link to an offer or another way to engage with your company via your website in the form of a call-to-action (CTA). If your CMS does not have a way to create CTA buttons, you can use design websites like Canva or simple, free button generators like Da Button Factory to create images that you can then insert in your post and link to your next page. Just like their name, CTAs should involve action words that inspire your reader to click and continue their relationship with your site. Make sure your CTA stands out at the end of your post by placing it in the center and choosing a layout with high contrast and bold text. This way, your reader won’t be able to miss it or resist it!
5. Add media
According to a Hubspot article, by 2017, video content will represent 74% of all internet traffic and 37% of marketers said visual marketing was the most important form of content for their business. The media you include in your blog post plays an important role in the readability, impressionability, and aesthetic of your post. Ensure that your media assets enhance the message of your content, without distracting the reader. The images and videos you choose should seamlessly flow with your content to encourage the reader to continue to the next paragraph all the way to your CTA.
6. Optimize everything
With your post almost ready to publish, it’s time to take a look back at your keywords. Your chosen keywords and how you optimize your post with them will determine whether your blog comes up in the search results for that word or phrase. There are many key places where your keywords should be located in your blog, for example:
- Title
- Headers
- Body content
- Meta-description
- Image alt-text
For titles and headers, the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer is a friendly tool to evaluate your SEO quality. However, while optimization is important, remember to write for your audience and not for the Google robots. Even if you forgot about your keywords while writing, take the time to incorporate them seamlessly into these components of your SaaS blog.
7. Get feedback
Right before you publish and even earlier beforehand, it’s always important to have a second or third pair of eyes review your blog. Have a coworker, supervisor, or even a friend read over what you write to catch any typos or even just to clarify a certain point from a different point of view. Online tools, such as Grammarly can also serve as a more technical way of catching mistakes that might distract your reader from your awesome content.
8. Publish your post
This is your moment. After all the brainstorming, writing, revising, tweaking, and boosting, it’s ok to feel a little anxious about pressing the tempting button in your CMS. Take one last look to double check steps 1-7, catch yourself from doing one of these 5 things people forget before publishing, and then do it!
9. Promote
Even though you’ve optimized your SaaS blog with all the keywords and SEO tricks, there’s nothing like a little company self-promotion. Put that inbound marketing budget to use with paid ads or opt for free channels with email marketing and social media posts. While your blog will just be dated to one day, these promotion methods will keep the fire of your post alive and attract readers with each revived push of your post.
10. Review
Maybe you’re already onto writing your next blog post, but there’s benefit in looking backward when it comes to self-improvement. Check your metrics to see the viewing, reading, and clicking rates both for your blog and your different promotion channels. Reviews can be done monthly or even weekly depending on the frequency of your posts. Overall, it’s best to leave some time for the hype around your writing to unfold and to compare the results of multiple posts, rather than looking at one in isolation.
Inbound marketing with a SaaS blog can be tricky to navigate. Yet with these 10 steps, you’ll be on your way to writing blogs that attract readers to your site and gain their trust to convert.