This is Shelly.
She sells sea shells by the seashore. Unfortunately for Shelly, shell sales have been remarkably low lately. In an attempt to boost business, Shelly has decided that it might be time to seek assistance from a marketing agency. However, she has one major hesitation - No one knows sea shells quite like she does…
It seems unlikely that any of the agencies she might work with will have ever marketed sea shell sales before. However, despite her skepticism, she needs help. So Shelly turns to Little Bird Marketing to see if they can sort out the situation and stop the slipping seashell sales so she can soon sustain a steady stream of profit once again.
...Okay, enough of that.
While the above example is completely nonsensical, it does address an important question that we hear fairly often when talking to potential or new clients - Can Little Bird write blogs that are relevant to our industry?
This is an important question. While we like to think that our team is pretty knowledgeable, it’s not uncommon that we take on clients in industries outside of our network of familiarity. It’s important to us that those clients know that we aren’t just creating content at random. We have systems in place to help us gain the knowledge that we need in order to create great content that is relevant to your audience.
Putting Our Best Foot Forward
There is a delicate balance that we try to maintain when we first start with a new client. We want to start putting out fresh content quickly because we're excited to start producing results, however, we don’t want to put out content just for the sake of having content. More than anything, with new clients we just want our first steps to be assured - confidently placing one foot in front of the other until we eventually hit full stride.
From the moment we begin the onboarding process with a new client, we are learning about your industry. All new clients start by filling out an onboarding questionnaire. While this gives us information that’s more about your company rather than your industry, this is the first step in gathering information that will guide our efforts along the way.
During onboarding we also develop your buyer personas. This is the process of defining your ideal client relationships, which offers a lot of insight into your industry and target market. With your input, we define exactly who it is that your organization is trying to reach. Every piece of content that we create will then be targeted to your buyer personas.
Once the buyer personas are built and the rest of the onboarding is complete, we then hold an internal meeting in which we discuss your account in detail. This allows for our entire team to be on the same page. It’s also a great opportunity to ask any questions pertaining to your industry, your audience, or questions about your company in general.
Building a Better Blog
Fast forward a bit. We are about to start your very first blog.
A big part of our decision making for your blogging strategy takes place in the development of working titles. This is quite a lengthy process. So, in order to keep the length of this blog down, we’ll give you the crash course:
- We use your buyer personas to develop a list of questions that we think your personas would be seeking answers to.
- We then take those questions and carefully define what the best answers to them look like.
- We then take those answers and create working titles that give us a direction for the content of each blog.
Once we have a working title in place that offers us a direction for your first blog, we start the research process. We spend a significant amount of time reading relevant information online about the topic of the blog.
This provides us with a lot of insight. It shows us what’s trending - what the people we are trying to reach are already consuming. It helps to put us in the minds of those within your industry. And it shows us how to be unique and provide new information that others haven’t yet touched on.
While some people might consider us writers, truthfully we are more so readers. The information that we collect while researching is compiled and used as a resource when we finally begin writing. It is this diligent research that allows us to have the appropriate voice for your audience. For every blog written, we are probably consuming at least 5 relevant articles for research.
Aside from just scouring the internet for information, there a lot of other resources that we use to guide our writing, including:
- conducting interviews with clients
- subscribing to industry blogs/newsletters
- sourcing content through partners
- following competitors and industry leaders
We Get By With a Little Help From Our Friends
At the end of the day, despite the amount of planning and research we do. We are experts of marketing. You are the expert of your industry. You are our most valuable resource. Your involvement in what we do is invaluable to us.
Content of the best quality requires an open line of communication between your organization and ours. If we have questions, we need to know that you're able to provide us with answers and if there is something that you know of that we should be talking about, you have to let us know!
Lastly, everything that we create - whether it be a blog, video, social share, downloadable resource, email - it never get’s published without your review and approval. This is the most important step of the process.
No matter how good we feel a particular piece might be, we don’t know how well we’ve done until we get feedback from you. That’s why it's so critical that you take the review process seriously. You are the last check that lets us know if we were truly able to capture the voice of your industry and create a relevant piece of content.
Trust us yet? If you think you're ready to get started working with us, kick things off with our FREE Marketing Assessment!
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