With strategy at the base of your writing, the structure and mindset that exists in the process narrows. In turn, a focused content strategy gives way to more clearly defined objectives and an awareness of a target audience, amongst other elements. Exploring the frequency of what you wish to communicate, the medium you use to send your message, and how you execute the content you create all fall into the strategic pot of content strategy.

Nick Westergaard of Brand Driven Digital explains content strategy in his Harvard Business Review article using Rudyard Kipling’s 1902 poem “The Elephant’s Child:”

I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.

Approaching content with the mindset of these elements mixed with creativity and strategy, the piece becomes less mindless chatter and more of a carefully crafted work to serve your audience. Therefore, write with purpose and break through an otherwise noisy and cluttered industry.

The post Content May Be King, But Simply Producing More of It Is Not Enough appeared first on Clix.

A blog can be a great asset to a company because it can have a huge positive impact on its digital footprint. In general, blogging can be used to help earn traffic, build brand awareness, earn back-links, earn social shares, boost SEO, and grow your addressable audience.

Here are 5 pro tips for the beginning commercial blogger:

1. You get what you give – You can’t just set up shop and expect people to start taking you seriously. Start posting in online forums, comment on blogs and articles, start spreading your name around your industry. If you want to start earning traffic and gaining participation, you have to be a participant yourself. (Note: Be sure to follow the rules and guidelines of online forums and message boards. Spamming is usually not tolerated and you will severely damage your brand’s image by getting banned from online communities and message boards pertaining directly to your brand’s industry.)

2. Give shout outs – Align yourself with others in your industry by mentioning, quoting, referencing, and even challenging industry influencers. Shout outs are usually more effective if you associate yourself with people who are just a bit more influential than yourself. The big dogs may not give you the time of day, but a medium dog may appreciate the acknowledgment and want to continue the conversation.

3. Embrace early adopters – Build personal relationships with as many followers as your can, especially the early adopters. Follow these people’s blogs and interact with them on social media. Earn people’s respect in an effort to establish an advocacy group for yourself.

4. Host it correctly – Never ever use a subdomain or a separate root domain to host your blog. Reason being, you will lose your ability to generate domain authority and you won’t get the rankings boost that comes with that high authority. Keeping your blog in a subfolder of your main site is the best thing that you can do for your SEO.

5. Create everything yourself – Taking your own photos and generating your own images and  graphs adds validity to you blog. Even if your photos aren’t ready for TIME Magazine, going through the effort of creating original content will carry weight with readers.

Want more? Check out some more tips for beginning bloggers.

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