How to Streamline Your Blog Creation and Generate More B2B Traffic

Are you struggling to stay afloat when it comes to blog creation?

You’re certainly not alone. 66% of marketing professionals cite a lack of time as their greatest challenge when it comes to content marketing, and an additional 46% have difficulty producing enough content.

There are few shortcuts to creating blogs that drive traffic, and cutting corners on quality certainly isn’t the answer. However, taking the steps to streamline your process can change everything. With sufficient organization, you can improve your quality and volume through standardization. Here’s how.

1) Document Your Content Strategy

Only 44% of marketers take the time to document their content strategies. If you take the steps to write down your plan, you’ll be well ahead of most of your competitors. Your content strategy should include:

• Identification of KPIs for traffic, leads, and sales
• Definitions of your buyer persona profiles, and their pain points and priorities
• Keyword research, topics, and campaign themes

For more information on defining your target audience, see our 8 B2B Buyer Persona Tips: A Cheat Sheet for Persona Development.

2) Create a Content Calendar

If you were to pick a single item that no organization should go without, it should be a content calendar. Taking the time to plan your content in advance of publication has immense benefits, which can include content that’s more cohesive, higher-quality articles, and improved oversight of the process.

There are a number of free and paid tools for content calendar creation, but the very best tool is one you’re able to commit to using month after month. Even Google docs can be used to effectively integrate large teams or hybrid groups of both in-house and outsourced content creators.

3) Curate and Refine Constantly

The best content marketers are continually thinking forward when it comes to blog creation. As you research and self-educate, continually work to curate resources, research, and source examples for titles in your content calendar. This can save significant time when you actually sit down to write, and lead to better-quality content that draws a higher volume of traffic.

Providing sufficient resources and examples through curation can also be a benefit if you’re using outsourced content creators, by giving your writers improved direction.

4) Invest in Exceptional Titles

Content managers should be heavily invested in the title creation process. Large-scale research indicates that titles are a key component in the number of social media shares earned by content. It’s critical that your titles are targeted to your buyer personas, in order to drive the right type of traffic to your website. While some content managers create titles during the content calendar creation stage of their process, you may opt to refine and further target your titles during the editing and publication stage of the process.

Not sure how to go about title creation? Here are 10 sharp tips for developing B2B blog titles.

5) Don't Be Afraid to Outsource

72% of marketers are now using content outsourcing in some capacity, and this figure increases each year. Using an inbound marketing agency for blog creation and optimization can be an enormous benefit, allowing you to focus more on strategy and promotion.

Regardless of how much outsourcing you’ll use, plan the blog creation to outsource during the content calendar stage of your process. We also recommend standardizing your training and onboarding process, to provide your content creators with the best possible overview of your goals.

6) Document Your Process

While it may seem laborious to document your processes in-depth, it’s actually one of the most beneficial things you can do to streamline your work. Documentation allows for standardization of work, provides a solid platform for continual improvement of your approach, and will allow you to maintain an organized approach when it comes to blog creation.

This article originally appeared on the Strategic Internet Consulting blog. Strategic Internet Consulting is a HubSpot Partner located in Marylebone, London.