Our Group Marketing Director, John Newton, explains how we're making blog content more useful for our audience. From who we'll be writing for to what we'll be writing about, read more.

We want to make this blog more useful to you. Here’s how we’re going to do it.

You might have noticed that we are posting far more frequently to the ClickThrough blog. This is a deliberate choice. We've realised that although we do a pretty good job of communicating what we've been learning internally, we could do a much better job of doing this externally – and this has resulted in a lot more activity going on the ClickThrough blog.

Why we knew things had to change

Looking back over the previous year, we published a blog post about once every two weeks. We knew that we needed to do better – and we have. So far this year we've seen a 46% increase in blog pageviews, compared to the same period last year, and a big reason for that is a four-fold increase in the number of blog posts that we have published.

There’s plenty of hard-headed reasons to do this. Publishing more useful posts means more traffic from people that we might be able to help – which helps us and them. More frequent blogging will allow us to share what we've learned and give our big thinkers a place to share their big thoughts with the world.

But this commitment to publish more isn't just from those directly involved in the delivery of digital marketing. Colleagues in operational roles, including leaders in HR and Finance will also be getting in on the act. In fact, our Head of HR, Debbie Bissell, wrote a great post on a few weeks ago.

Who we’ll be writing for

It's crucial to make sure you remember who you're writing for. I’d always advise using a real person instead of a manufactured persona. It removes ambiguity and can be a useful heuristic when making decisions on tone, and what to include/leave out of articles. We have individuals in mind when we are writing these blog posts – but we’re not going to say who!

Generally, our target audience are senior marketers whose key concerns include:

• Hitting their sales targets
• Acquiring new customers at a lower cost
• Increasing the lifetime value of current customers
• Growing awareness of their brand
• Understanding what has worked and why
• Learning how to place smart marketing bets
• How best to work with an agency

What we’ll be writing about

A key thing for us is to concentrate on driving growth. In fact, it's our central mission. We know that whenever we talk about how we have helped brands grow it's of real interest – not only to our existing clients, but also lots of other companies we aren’t yet working with. And we're going to be continuing to do more of that.

We've also adopted and adapted Google’s Digital Maturity framework, designed to help organisations align their digital marketing with best practice, and made it our own. There are so many different areas of the framework where we know we can add value and perspective, and I'd expect to see a lot more blog posts from ClickThrough on the framework as the months go on.

You're going to be reading more from us about the campaigns that we run, the ways that we do business and the tools that we use. We'll also comment more frequently on some key industries, discussing how they are changing, why, and what the implications are.

We're also going to be thinking about our core values - Growth and Truth. Each speaks to how we want to treat our customers and colleagues (brands and brains). We know that growth can only come from truth, because you must acknowledge where gaps are in order to fill them.

You will also see some longer blog posts, because we know that some subjects demand detail. This should also help us develop our progress in our aim to improve the volume and quality of the content we have to offer.

How we’ll be writing

Discussion with our regular bloggers reveals that roughly 40% of the time creating a blog post is spent on researching, 10% developing the right structure, 40% writing, and 10% on final ‘polishing’. We feel this gets the balance about right.

Blogging can be daunting for those who have not done it before. That’s why we are committed to providing resources to anyone who writes for ClickThrough, whether it’s their first or 500th blog post. Audio transcription tools and meeting recordings can help squeeze the very best ideas out of our heads, and mind maps can organise our thoughts and allow us to produce thoughtful, comprehensive posts.

But regardless of what you're blogging about, it's probably true that the first blog post isn't going to be your best. Just remember, publishing any blog post is better than publishing no blog post.

Wondering how blog content could enhance your digital marketing strategy? Get in touch with our content marketing experts today to find out more.