SCORE Blog Writing Services

ContentMender’s SEO-driven SCORE blog writing takes the hands-off approach for clients.

The service creates a blogging campaign in five proven SCORE steps:

• Strategy
• Content Creation
• Optimization
• Refine
• Evaluate & Engage

In the saturated world of digital marketing, where many hacks reside, content has surpassed its title as the “King.” 

Content is now the emperor. Slipping into the King’s spot are the search engines and readers who help build upon the emperor’s reign. 

Yes, in 2022 and beyond, content is the new emperor – especially written content, which is the sharp focus of our agency.

Our team has written extensively about the benefits of blogging on the ContentMender blog, and at leading publications like Search Engine Journal and Forbes. 

If you made it to this page, you already understand the value of blogging. Now it’s time to create the optimal strategy to truly create a high-quality blog. 

Understand this immediately – when a business spends its hard-earned dollars on writing services, it should expect high ROI, an extremely responsive writing team, and transparent project management like no other.

The content marketing strategy should focus on a target audience, and SEO should be a major focus embedded into the fabric of every process – not simply an after sight. 

Many hacks will either charge pennies for sloppy and optimized content, or they’ll promise number-one rankings for a certain keyword or topic within weeks. 

Run. And run quickly. 

ContentMender spent years developing and redeveloping its expert blogging services. And one service that keeps the emperor reigning within our client’s business is our SCORE Blog Writing Services.

Again, ContentMender’s SCORE divides your website’s blog creating into five vital areas:

• Strategy
• Content Creation
• Optimization
• Refine
• Evaluate & Engage

Let’s explore each tactic in SCORE.

Strategy

We start with a strategy built around your customer’s needs, gathering this much-needed data from various teams: marketing, sales, CEO, founders, those on the proverbial front line, etc. To understand your target audience, you must reach further than the marketing team. 

Once we have some data, we break down the audience based on where they reside in the sales cyclone. Yes – we don’t use the archaic reference of a sales funnel. The 21st Century is loaded with uncertainty, and I always struggled with the traditional sales funnel. Thankfully Eric Keiles and Mike Lieberman wrote “Smash the Funnel,” which deconstructs the traditional sales funnel that’s over 100 years old, and reconstructs it for a modern audience. 

In that sales funnel there are eight buyers “cyclones,” beginning with pre-awareness and ending with ongoing services. Typical shoppers bounce around each cyclone and sometimes go from completely irrational buying decisions to rational ones. 

ContentMender’s SCORE service creates content to engage with people in various cyclones. An example of this is our “50/25/25 Blend”:

We create blog strategies that provide:

• 50-percent education for newbies – those who know nothing about a service/product
• 25-percent education for intermediate readers are educated but want to sharpen knowledge
• 25-percent education for expert readers. They know everything about the product or service, but just are looking for something a bit more valuable to help guide their purchasing decision

Every business will have a different audience that’s at different “cyclones” of the buyer’s journey. Make sure to create content that speaks to each one.

Next is as vital to the above strategy – and that involves keyword research

Our keyword research is based on your:

• Products/Services
• Industry
• Brand

We always start our research based on the products/services that show the most ROI; we want to help grow the bottom line faster.

We also perform competitive research on your top competitors – both who you think are your competitors and what our research shows.  Our competitive research is only for keyword spying and finding who’s linking to who; it saves us time, which saves you money.

We don’t recommend heavy competitive insight because when you study the competition, you sound like the competition – something that doesn’t add value to your brand, especially on a long-term basis.

ContentMender optimizes each existing and proposed web page for a focus keyword(s), along with related keywords that search engines like Google demand for relevancy (a major ranking factor).

Since on-site content is focused on building your company’s brand and revenue through conversion rather than just useless clicks, we also speak to your sales team and those on the proverbial front line that truly understand your customers/clients.

This also allows us to build an audience persona that we’ll use during content creation.

Once this data is compiled, we create a content calendar based on our engagement, which we recommend for a minimum of three months (time frame for noticeable changes due to search engine indexing). This calendar can also include new page content and optimization of existing pages – it’s whatever you need that we can figure deliver. We also can customize month-by-month when needed. 

We also leave space open (Flex Hours) for content that needs immediate creation, such as newsletters or press releases.

A typical content calendar for a smaller monthly blog-creation engagement consists of:

• 3 social-driven articles that can quickly go viral (typically listicles)
• 3 blogs that educate or influence the audience
• 2 blogs based on thought leadership for brand/product/service/brand awareness
• 2 blogs that focus on trending topics

We also can substitute for service-level pages, product pages or actual product descriptions, and the optimization of existing pages.

Note: A smooth-running website platform from a technical SEO basis is vital to get the most out of your content.

We first conduct a high-level website audit that will discover major concerns such as tech issues or sloppy website architecture — both vital to any content marketing plan. This report is provided for free.

Based on the health of your website, we can discuss if an SEO Refresh campaign is needed alongside our SCORE Content Marketing strategy. Or if you have in-house web developers/SEOs, the work can be addressed by your team.

Creation

Once the Strategy is developed, it’s time for content creation. Each piece is written in traditional style with value and relevancy at the forefront, and properly keyworded.

Here–especially with the first few pieces–we work closely with the client to establish and build upon brand voice and authority within your respective industry.

We currently have a team of over 30 expert blog writers across various industries. We match the writer to you. And if they don’t have the skill needed, we find that writer or send ours for training. Simple and valuable. 

Optimization

During this stage of our SCORE blog writing services, all newly-created content is given full SEO treatment by an expert SEO.

Each piece arrives optimized with all the vital essentials of on-site SEO – the stuff businesses shouldn’t have to worry about.

These SEO enhancements include optimized:

• URL Structure
• Title Tag
• Headline (H1, H2, H3, etc.) Tags
• Internal/External Linking with Proper Anchor Text
• Meta Descriptions
• ALT Text for Images

There’s no reason to bore you with SEO talk.  These elements are absolutely crucial for not only better search results, but also better user experience and conversion.

Refine

After each piece of content is created and optimized, we again work closely with you for any tweaks or edits. Then it’s off to you for uploads (we do offer upload services for WordPress platforms). But it doesn’t end there

Evaluate and Engage

Winston Churchill says “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”

Using tools such as Google Analytics and SEMrush, we monitor the performance of each page or post and do what’s necessary to make it stronger (for the entire contract period). Every quarter we also revisit everything written up to that date, and optimize it with more relevant internal links, information, keywords, or maybe tweak the title.

Most agencies post and forget – we don’t; there’s always time to refine so clients get the best ROI out of their blogging efforts. 

We also provide support with social engagement, whether that means educating your in-house social team or leaving it up to us.