Blogging Strategy for SaaS Business

One of the best ways to build an online presence is by setting up a blog. There is a new opportunity to improve your rankings with every single article you publish. 

Every update you make to a piece of media and every new blog post represent a greater chance for your website to appear as a search result.

So, you want to create a blog, boost your chances of ranking better, direct more traffic to your website, and generate more SaaS sales. Simple enough. 

With this article, we will dive right into how you can put all of these into practice. Let’s begin.

1. The Budget

First things first – your budget. Only a person familiar with your company’s finances can give you concrete, specific advice on this front. 

Drafting a proper marketing budget and then deciding how much of that goes into blogging is a conversation set for you, your partners, and your accountant.

Still, a good rule of thumb is that you can look at investing 2% to 5% of your revenue into marketing purposes. Of course, as time goes on and as you start noticing results, you can easily invest more (or less). 

2. Think About Your Target Demographic

Who is your ideal customer? You need to have a very clear idea of the person or business you are marketing your products to. What are their interests? What kind of content would these people enjoy? What is the best way to attract them?

Now, don’t get us wrong – becoming too specialized means missing out on valuable traffic and information. However, pumping out niche content that very few people write about means less competition over traffic and conversions. 

3. Develop Your Blog’s Intent

A successful blog strategy doesn’t just provide content for your readers. You also need to provide them with a reason to subscribe to your blog. 

Your blog should have a specific purpose and function, so start by developing your blog’s “intent.”

This step is closely tied to the previous one. It’s all about intent coming from your key messages. Yes, the primary goal of your blog is to get you more traffic. But your blog should also have a clear intent, a clear focus. 

What kind of content will you be publishing primarily?

For example, you might decide to focus on product announcements or introduce your newest service. Product announcements are great because they keep readers updated on new developments in the industry without having to constantly promote yourself. 

However, if you’re introducing a new service, try adding some personal anecdotes about how the service has helped others.

4. Publishing Schedules…

An important step in building an effective blogging strategy that people too often skip is deciding on a posting schedule. 

Your blog needs to be updated consistently if you want people to visit it.

Since there are many blogs out there, your site will have less of a chance of being seen if it’s not updated regularly. It’s important to decide on a schedule, so you know when to publish new content. 

Creating a calendar, and planning all of your content in advance, is a good idea.

As far as frequency is concerned, posting more than once a day is unnecessary since you’ll see a decrease in marginal returns.  However, there are actually two more important limits you need to consider:

• Time
• Money

You only have so many hours in the day, and so do your employees. Deciding how much energy you and your team need to invest into your blog will dictate how many articles can get posted. 

Somebody needs to brainstorm ideas, etc. The articles need to be checked, proofread. 

The second point is, of course, money. What’s your budget? Can you spare paying people overtime? How many writers can you hire?

5. … and Quality Over Quantity

Without great content, your blog is doomed to fail. This means you have to create content that will resonate with your target audience.

A lot of people mistakenly think they just have to publish stuff on their website and that’s it. That’s not the case. The best way for you to measure success is to continually ask yourself whether or not you’re writing quality blog posts.

One way you can do this is by using Grammarly or the Hemingway app. Both of these apps can check the tone and voice of your writing, whether it’s focused or meandering. 

Another invaluable resource for measuring success is Google Analytics—a powerful tool that can help you understand what engages readers and what doesn’t. 

You should look at what time visitors are logging into your site and how long they’re staying there to offer them the best experience possible. If you see a specific type of content dropping in views and rising bounce rates, you need to investigate promptly.

6. Don’t Forget About Local SEO

Besides regular optimization, you need to prep your articles for local SEO.

One of the beautiful things about the internet is that the entire world is your marketplace. 

As a SaaS business owner, you know you can promote your products and services in basically any country that you choose. However, that doesn’t mean you should forget about local SEO.

Local SEO is made up of practices, techniques, and strategies that are there to improve your rankings for local searches. So, a Chicago-based web design company needs to have the right keywords within the content on its blog. It should also have some Chicago-specific content, as well as a properly set up Google My Business account.

7. Education, and Research

In 2017, a study on SaaS businesses showed that educational blogs run by SaaS companies get 14% more organic traffic than simple promotional blogs. Furthermore, that same study showed that a quarter of all SaaS companies have an education-focused blog.

Think of it this way – you want to think about the problems your customers face and then offer them solutions, either through your products or through your blog. 

For example, your software might help with time management. That already means that you can have topics dealing with procrastination, organizing your time, and the benefits of punctuality… 

8. Keywords and Optimization

We already mentioned that you should optimize for local SEO, which many companies miss. And while we are certain you already know you should optimize your articles for SEO and search for keywords, we’ll mention a couple of points people ignore.

First off, using tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush is perfect for finding keywords. In addition to that, if you use them wisely, you can get a ton of topic ideas as well. 

Checking out the parent or related keywords for a specific term in Ahrefs can lead you down a rabbit hole of useful ideas. 

As far as optimization is concerned, you need to dedicate time, or delegate to a specific employee, your SEO efforts. 

So, setting up your meta titles and descriptions, creating backlink strategies, optimizing your images, and talking to your devs about decreasing the loading times for your blog should be your top priorities.

9. Monitor, Refine, and Update

Every blogging strategy worth its salt needs to dedicate time and effort to updates. The success of your blog is dependent on your ability to monitor and refine. 

Monitoring means you’ll need to search for opportunities to create better content. Refining means you’ll need to make sure that your strategy aligns with the goals of your business, site, and target audience.

If you’re not monitoring and refining, you may find yourself struggling to keep up with an audience that is growing at a faster rate than you anticipated. You may also find that your content is too generic or that it’s not driving conversions.

Monitoring and refining are two critical components of a successful blogging strategy. Suppose you’re able to monitor trends in your industry, refine strategies based on data, and stay engaged with what’s happening in the world around you. In that case, you’ll be able to produce quality content that will keep readers coming back for more—and it will have a positive impact on your conversion rates.

Furthermore, you need to check whether your articles need to be updated on a regular basis. 

Of course, certain topics won’t really change much, like an article dedicated to the early history of coding. On the other hand, an article on the latest marketing statistics will require regular, almost yearly, updates to its content.

And there you have it, folks, a guide on how to create a blogging strategy for your SaaS business. We hope this article has been informative and useful. 

Just remember to plan things out accordingly, stick to a plan, and you’ll be fine. 

Author Bio

Rick Seidl is a digital marketing specialist with a bachelor’s degree in Digital Media and Communications, based in Portland, Oregon. With a burning passion for digital marketing, social media, small business development, and establishing its presence in a digital world, currently quenching his thirst through writing about digital marketing and business strategies for Find Digital Agency.