If you’re in charge of content strategy for a SaaS blog, it can be hard to know what to write about. Trends change, developments happen quickly, and writing something relevant and engaging can be tricky.
This post is designed to answer the question, "How can SaaS blogs produce great content which is both interesting and regular?". We don't think it's so hard to do; if you follow a few simple rules during your content creation process, the writing will take care of itself.
What type of blog content should I write?
If you are selling a software application then you should focus your blog on insights, benefits, instructional content and updates from your company.
Some ideas for post content that fits into each of these buckets include:
- Work that your clients are using your software for and associated insights
- Instances of how your software helps businesses grow to convince potential customers
- Insights to help your customers with their day-to-day activities and work processes
- Company accomplishments and achievements
- Industry news and insights with commentary from your position within the industry
How to generate blog titles
Blog content starts with the title and it’s the first place most people will look. Make sure it packs punch. Without a good title, your blog isn't going to interest your audience or draw in prospective readers.
There are three ways you can identify content that will resonate with your customers:
- Look what your competitors are writing about
If you have similar audiences, the chances are you should be writing about similar topics as other voices in your niche. Don't steal or copy their ideas, just use them as inspiration. Ideally try to improve upon them, leading to a gradual upward movement in the quality of industry commentary.
For instance, HubSpot has written an article entitled: "When does a company need a CRM system?". Using this title as a basis for your own could lead to "When does a company need SaP accountancy application?"
By changing a word or two you can make your title and subject unique, and be pretty sure that it'll do pretty well because of the success of the original title.
- Find inspiration from what people are searching for
There are plenty of free tools on the web that allow you to get a good idea of the topics people are searching for around specific search terms.
The most simple way is Google’s related searches. Using the topic above, we get the following:
Because these recommendations are based on Google search queries, you can be relatively sure that a post covering these areas, especially answering questions around them, is likely to be relevant and popular.
Another tool is the website answerthepublic.com which has a great way of providing the questions for your answers.
Enter in the terms "CRM" and "software" and you'll see what people are searching for on this subject. Some of them will even form the title for your blog. Here's one: "How much does CRM software cost?".
It also offers prepositions too: "Using CRM software with project management" which can offer you more focused blog titles and narrow your audience down to specific personas.
Our blog post about how to put together a B2B content marketing strategy goes into a lot more depth about title and idea generation.
- Keep keywords in mind
Your keywords will also give direction to your blogging content based on what people are searching for. You can find out more about conducting keyword research for SEO here, but for the time being you just need to know this: there are certain phrases you will want your business to rank for on search engines.
When prospective customers are trying to find services your business provides, you want to increase your likelihood of appearing in the results. For example, if you run an accountancy firm in Manchester, you may want your website to appear in search engine results for ‘accountants Manchester’, ‘how do I choose an accountant?’ and ‘should I get an accountant?’.
These phrases are your keywords.
When thinking about what kind of blog content to write, you should think about how your SEO keywords will fit into that content.
Time to write your blog
Our top tip is to choose a title and topic you know well, or consider outsourcing to a writer who does. There is no point in writing about a subject you aren't familiar with unless you have a lot of time to invest in research.
If you struggle with the process of writing, make it easier by breaking it down into time-managed segments:
- Create your outline: spend 15 minutes outlining your introduction, conclusion and three-five points you want to make.
- Write your blog: spend an hour writing your post, make it conversational, informative and engage in the reader by using 'we' and 'you' and 'I'.
- Proof it: get someone else in your organisation to proof it and upload it (complete with a fancy image).
If you can create a framework for writing your blog content, including making lists of the type of content and blog titles you'd need to write about, you can schedule in a regular time to write them.
Investing time in planning content can make your software blog a regular and useful resource for your company. Coming up with blog titles is rarely the biggest obstacle you'll face.
Find out more about inbound marketing for software and tech companies, download our guide here!
