5 must-do's when building a blog for your SaaS

Starting a SaaS blog is awesome. You imagine loads of website traffic, thousands of leads, and happy paying customers. All I’ve to do is start blogging, you say to yourself. You can’t contain your excitement.

Then, you sit down to build your blog.

But, the excitement drowns. You feel overwhelmed with many things to do all at once. You don’t know where to begin from. And that confusion stops you from building your SaaS blog.

Does it? Let’s fix that. Let’s make sure you get those benefits of blogging.

In this blog, you’ll learn the 5 must-do’s you should focus on (and how to do it) to start your SaaS blog.

1. Research your audience

No matter how good your blog is, if you're targeting the wrong audience, it will fail. Always. You should have a clear understanding of whom you're writing for.

Begin with these 5 questions:

i) Who is your ideal customer? For example, say you're selling SaaS blogging software. Your customers will be SaaS companies looking to invest in content marketing.
ii) What are their problems?
iii) What are their likes/dislikes and interests?
iv) Where do they hang out online?
v) Where do they consume information from?

Reach out to your customers on social media or online forums. Interview them. Know their pain points. Learn what difficulties they have. Create content around it.

2. Create a content strategy

Every company knows the benefits of blogs. That it drives 55% more traffic and brings in 3X as many leads as traditional marketing. Companies with a blog are 13X more likely to see a positive ROI than companies without a blog.

But, just writing a blog doesn't guarantee you these perks. Think of it like driving. You know where you've to go. But, if you don't know what's the path to it, you'll never reach it.

That's where creating a blogging strategy comes in. It tells you what content to write, how to write it, and reach the right audience. Companies with a written strategy are 2X more successful than companies with a non-written strategy.

Here's how to create a content strategy:

i) Learn about your audience. Interview them. Understand their needs. Ask them what answers they want about your product.

ii) Research keywords related to your business and product. Find search terms your users are using to search for you. Use tools like Ahrefs to do this.

iii) Create a content calendar. Fix the blog topics (7-10) and publishing date in advance. Note down each blog's goal (want to educate or sell) and format (want to write a how-to guide, case study, or an opinion article).

iv) Promote the blog on social media channels and online forums (like Zest.is, Hacker News, or Slack groups).

v) Track your blog's performance. Look at the number of blog views and sources of traffic. See which blog is performing well. Use that as an inspiration to structure future blogs.

3. Create content for every stage of the buyer’s journey

No two customers are the same. Some want to know what you're selling. Some know that. But, aren't persuaded yet. You need different content for both of them to turn them into paying customers.

The trick is to create content that addresses readers what they're looking for. If you do so, you'll educate them about your business and solve their pain points. This will increase the probability of a paying customer.

Start here:

Create content for the 3 stages of a buyer's journey (A buyer's journey is the path a person takes before buying a product or a service).

i) Awareness stage: These buyers realize they have got a problem. They now look for sources to understand it.

Blog about what problems you're solving. Educate the readers on why it is necessary to solve it. Provide insights and research data. State the solution.

ii) Consideration stage: These buyers know they've got a problem. They're now researching different solutions. You're one of them.

Blog about what differentiates you from your competitors. Create a comparison page. Explain your different advantages.

iii) Decision stage: These buyers want to purchase your product. But, they need that last push to become your customer.

Blog about case studies. Speak on how you've solved the problems of a peer customer. Write testimonials and FAQs addressing your user's objections.

4. Don’t ignore SEO

68% of online experiences begin with a search engine. Plus, 53% of website traffic comes from organic search. That's plenty.

SEO helps you take advantage of this. It's the gateway to higher search engine results and increased organic traffic.

Search engines do the hard work to land your blog in front of your audience. All you have to do is optimize your blog with the best practices:

i) Do keyword research. Use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to research keywords. Choose long-tail and low-competition search terms.

ii) Include keywords in the blog title, introduction paragraph, subheadings, body, conclusion paragraph, meta descriptions, and URL.

iii) Include images in your blog. Add image alt text.

iv) Increase the loading speed of your website.

v) Make your blog mobile-responsive.

vi) Avoid cluttered URLs. Those with long words, unrelated words to the blog topic, and numbers. The URL should be simple. It should educate the readers on what the page is about.

vii) Link to different internal pages of your blog. Plus, cite references of industry leaders. Write helpful content so that others too link to your blog. This helps in link building.

viii) Write 1000-1200 words of content per blog. Avoid plagiarized content. Focus on writing evergreen content. Topics that are not time-bound. But, those that readers can keep coming back to. It will attract traffic and generate leads for years to come.

For example, blog on SEO guide for your blog instead of industry news.

viii) Upload the XML sitemap to Google Search Console. Google uses it to index your blog pages and rank them on search engines. (Here’s how to do it)

5. Analyze your blog performance

Perform content audit every few months. Track different metrics to see how your blog is performing. This will give you an insight into what's working and what's not. Duplicate the best practices. Cut down what's not working.

But, many focus on vanity metrics. These don't reveal your blog's true performance. Instead, focus on the below metrics:

i) Page views: Check which blogs receive the most number of page views. This will tell you which blog post resonates with your audience. Write future articles like that.

ii) Returning visitors: Track blogs that readers keep coming back to. These are posts people refer to their friends. Use that post as a guide to writing on similar topics. (Here's how to check returning visitors)

iii) Conversion rate: Your blog isn't only for attracting traffic. You want to convert them into leads or customers or whatever goal you've. See which blog is getting the highest conversion rate. That tells you how you should optimize your blog posts to convert them often.

iv) Inbound links: Backlinks are among the top factors Google uses to rank your page on search results. Check for content that receives the most external links to it. Go to Google Search Console to track it.

Google Search Console > Choose your property > Links > External links > Top linking sites

Now you know the 5 critical tasks to do when building a blog for your SaaS

SaaS blogging doesn't demand you to focus on a hundred different tasks. If you get a few key things right - and do it well - your blog will succeed.

You now know what they are. Start with these 5 must-do's to build a blog that attracts, engages, and converts visitors.