Hey friend,

Welcome back to the second edition of the SaaS Splash Bulletin.

Settle in because this one is going to be LOOOONG one!

Skills to master for becoming a content marketer

But there are definitely those essential skills that you HAVE to acquire to get started as a content marketer. Let us name them - Primary Content Marketing skills.

As per my experience, the skills that you MUST acquire are 👇

• Audience research
• Keyword research
• Content structuring, optimization, and publishing
• Writing (The most important and you are already good at this, so yay!) ✅
• Content repurposing
• Performance tracking and reporting
• Content operations

Now, let’s further break down the first two skills into secondary skills:

Of these two skills, I am pretty sure that being a writer, you already know enough about audience research (also, it will be a long process). So, I will come back to it later.

I will start with keyword research and cover the parts of audience research that come with it.

Let’s go!

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How to get started with keyword research? (The easiest and correct way) ✅✅✅

In this part of the newsletter, my friend Maria Prakkat collaborated to create a simple roadmap to get started with keyword research. She previously worked as the Senior Content Marketer at Uniqode (Previously Beaconstac) and is now a SaaS content marketing consultant.

Connect with her on LinkedIn ​

The foremost step to move from “writing content” to “writing content that markets” is keyword research. And yet, it is often dismissed as a technical chore, but it’s the soul of effective content marketing.

Let me break this down further.

Keyword research is focused on three critical elements:

Understanding Exploration Consideration

#1 - Keyword research is essentially understanding what your target audience is looking/searching for. That’s the first step! (Easy peasy lemon squeezy, right?)

#2 - Now on to the next. Once you have figured out the understanding part, we’ll explore the topics you can write about related to the keyword. As a beginner, you can use tools like Keyword Planner or Google Trends to discover relevant keywords. You also don’t focus on just one keyword but a mixture of primary and secondary keywords, short and long-tail keywords, questions, parent topics, and much more.

#3 - And finally, you need to consider the impact of your chosen keywords. Consider the intent behind them and evaluate the competition.

If you’re still with me, congratulations on tackling the first part of keyword research! But hold on, there’s more ahead (You certainly don’t want to miss them).

But before that, here’s my favorite snack-sized guide (follow from top to bottom) with all the steps that helped me understand keyword research better at the beginning of my content marketing days.

(Remember, the goal is to win over your audience, not just web crawlers. So, incorporate these keywords naturally into your content, avoiding unnecessary repetition)

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The wrong way to perform keyword research - Avoid these ⛳⛳⛳

Make sure that you are not following the below-mentioned steps to start keyword research because, friend, they are BIG RED FLAGS ⛳:

• Picking high-volume keywords just because, well, they have high search volume. Because search volume doesn’t matter, relevancy and intent do.
• Mindlessly going after competitor keywords. Competitors and your products might be similar but not identical. And even though they are identical, ultimately, your long/short-term goals should decide the future of your content pipeline. Competitive keyword research is a skill that needs to be strategic. I will get to that in the next edition.
• Relying too much on keyword research tools. Keyword research tools are required, but don’t be overly dependent on them. You don't need keywords if your client/company is a startup. You just need relevant questions/phrases to plan your content calendar.

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My tried and tested keyword research template (Available for the next 24 hours)

Make a Copy of the Keyword Research Template

P.S. - Keep it to yourself. You might not be able to use it now, but this will be useful once you learn all the other steps of keyword research.

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Sneak peek of the next edition of SaaS Splash Bulletin

• The essentials of competitor keyword research
• How to perform the same using SEMRush
• A Loom explaining how to fill the “Competitor Research” tab in the above template
• Breakdown of the next two Primary Content marketing skills

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Book a 1:1 session with me where I will answer all your queries related to content marketing 👇

Book a 1:1 Consultation Call with Sreyashi (Paid)

Say Hi! On LinkedIn 👋

P.S. Any questions on the newsletter? Want to share your feedback? Please feel free to reply to this email.

Onwards and upwards,

Sreyashi