When we start a new project with a client, we often talk about investing in "owned" vs "rented" properties when it comes to marketing.
Rented properties are those where the "landlord" can change the rules at any time. They can revoke your access, shut down your account, or change the rules at any time. Think: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram... really, pretty much any social media channels.On the other hand, owned properties are things you have full control over. You can use them however you want because you own them and set the rules. These are things like: your website, your email list, your blog, etc.
While rented properties shouldn't be neglected, you should focus much of your time and energy on your owned properties.
One of the best ways to do that is through writing great blogs and then using those blogs to nurture your audience.In this article, we're going to talk about:
Cornerstone blogs are the foundation of your blog strategy. These are long-form blogs that serve to cover important topics and keywords relating to your brand. Think about a cornerstone blog almost as a summary of something you do.
Here's an example: if you sell an online course helping parents navigate divorce, one of your cornerstone blogs might be titled, "How to Protect Your Kids in a Divorce."
The cornerstone blog helps to create authority for your brand and gives the reader a lot of information relating to your topic. We recommend writing 3-5 cornerstone blogs that will be relevant for a long time. Each of these cornerstone blogs should be 1,500+ words and have several headlines helping the reader navigate. Additionally, you'll want to incorporate external links (links to websites and research outside of your website) and internal links (links to other blog posts or pages on your website).
General blogs are topic-specific but typically shorter in length and cover something more niche than your cornerstone blogs.
Here's an example of a general blog that's been taken from a cornerstone blog: If we're using the blog example above and there's a headline in it that says, "Learn How to Split Finances With Your Co-Parent," you might write a blog around that topic.
When you've written your cornerstone blogs, you should have plenty of content for general blogs. Find more "niche" topics in those cornerstone blogs and use that content to guide your general blogs. We recommend writing 1 of these per month. They should be under 1,500 and should also contain external and internal links (eg, you can link back to your cornerstone blog). Lastly, these blogs should organically mention your product at least once.
Once you've written your blogs, you can now use them to nurture your audience on your email list (another owned property!). These emails should be short, sweet, and to the point. The goal is to get the user to your website, not to sell them a product. Let's keep the example from the general blog... a nurture email might sound like this:
"Hey [FIRST NAME] - Splitting money while you're going through a divorce can be an overwhelming challenge. We wrote a blog to make it easier for you and your co-parent to manage your money. Click here to read it."
See how easy that is? We recommend sending 1-2 nurture emails per month, scheduling them in your email software (ie, automate them), and sending them to a list that has not yet purchased. For instance, if your list has downloaded your lead generator (<--- that's an internal link by the way), and they've gone through your automated sales sequence but haven't purchased, it's now time to nurture them with these emails. You can have as many as you'd like. Writing blogs and nurturing your list with them is a great way to:
While you plan and write blogs, you want to start by asking how you can solve your customer's problem with a post. You may also want to see what your competitors are writing about (just go to their website), or you can use some tools to help gauge search volume for a particular topic. Here are a few tools we like:
This blog is 769 words and would be considered a "general" blog. I have a few headlines, some internal links, some external links, and this post covers a specific topic (blogging).
