2.35 [Success Story] How to grow a really popular marketing blog

Do you run a blog that covers the topic of marketing? Have you struggled to gain traction and drive hundreds or thousands of regular readers? If so, you need to listen to this episode of Marketing Scoop! Joining us for the final episode of season 2 is Ian Cleary, Founder of marketing services firm RazorSocial, and the popular RazorSocial blog. Ian is a marketer with a very strong technology background and an ability to apply his technical skills to marketing projects to ensure there is improved ROI in terms of more effective delivery of projects, more leads and more sales. Some of Ian’s recent achievements include: Listed as the17th most influential person in content marketing globally by Onalytica in 2018 Listed as one of the top 100 online marketers globally by Brand24 in 2018 Listed as one of the top internet marketing blogs globally by INC Q1 2016 Here’s what we discussed: 1:00 We introduce today’s guest – Ian Cleary 2:00 Ian explains why he does hand stands! 3:00 Did Ian always have goals to have his RazorSocial blog recognised as one of the best in the industry? 4:20 How did Ian start off making his blog popular? 7:30 How did Ian select his content to begin with? 8:30 Why did influencers want Ian to write for them – is it because of the length of his posts? 10:00 Why does longer form content work better for Ian? 11:00 How does Ian go about researching content for his new posts? 13:10 What tens to be Ian’s biggest source of traffic to his blog at the moment? 14:00 Would Ian ever pull back from blogging completely and just focus on client work? 13:50 Why doesn’t Ian have blog comments anymore? 17:50 What would Ian’s advice be for someone starting a marketing blog at the moment? 20:00 Is it still possible to launch a blog with many other blogs in the same industry and still manage to make your blog different? 22:00 Do you have to be publishing for a certain period of time before you can expect success? 24:10 Ian’s actionable tip 24:55 Is there any specific email marketing software that Ian recommends? Find out more about the Marketing Scoop podcast here: https://www.semrush.com/podcast/