For all you HubSpot users out there, you may have noticed a considerable change in the blog tool. Blogging is an extremely important part of Inbound Marketing so this change is worth discussing and explaining so that HubSpot users (or future HubSpot users) can leverage this to their own benefit.
(Note: If you're not a HubSpot user or don't know what the heck it is, I did a complete overview of HubSpot in blog post form. Here's the 2nd part of my HubSpot overview.)
If you’re running a business/company blog, there are 3 key things you need to be able to do at any point:
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Publish your post with ease
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Manage other blogging aspects (comments, topics, authors, subscribers, etc)
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View blog analytics
The new Blog dashboard addresses all of these. Let me explain.
Publishing Your Blog Post Through HubSpot’s New Blog Dashboard
Once you click on the blue “Write new blog post” button in the top right corner, you’ll come across an exclusive new feature of the HubSpot: Blog post blueprints.
These 3 blueprints serve as blog templates.
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“How-To” Post
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“List” Post
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“Visual” Post
Each of them are types of posts that are easily digestible for readers. If you don’t use HubSpot, I highly recommend that your posts follow these easy-to-read formats. “How-To” posts are usually actionable with explanations on how to do something (ex. How To Cut Kale). “List” posts, obviously, spell out facts or pointers in numerical format (ex. 7 Tips For Remodeling Your Bathroom). “Visual” posts usually feature an infographic and other ways of communicating information aesthetically.
Blog posts should be easy for your readers to consume - in whatever format. The content should be engaging and it should be written like how you talk. The new additions to the HubSpot Blogging tool (from the new Blog dashboard) helps with that.
Managing Other Blogging Aspects
Simply just blogging isn’t enough. Sure, it carries all the benefits that blogging has but managing a blog doesn’t stop when you hit the “Publish” button in HubSpot. You need to deal with the following:
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Comments
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Blog Author bios
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Topics/Categories
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Subscriber Lists
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RSS Feed
Every item on the above list is located in the left sidebar of the HubSpot’s new Blog dashboard.
Comments
Within the comments tool, you’ll be able to view all your comments along with the commenter, the commenter’s email, the post they commented on, when they commented and the comment’s status. You can select a particular comment and either delete it, approve it or mark as spam.
Blog Authors
The Blog Authors area in HubSpot allows you to manage what authors can post on the blog. This is especially helpful if you’ve got multiple authors in your company or guest authors publishing. From here, you can add and edit their bios and social media profiles.
Topics/Categories
Blog topics aren’t just for the organization of your blog but can also be used to display on the front-end of your blog as well. Readers may want to read your posts on a specific topic and this would be how they can do so. This is also where you can view how many posts have been written on a particular topic and when the last post was written.
Remember: You can add a topic/category to your posts within the HubSpot Blog editor (where you go to publish a post) in the 2nd tab.
Subscriber Lists
When you click on “Subscriber Lists” on the left sidebar, HubSpot will take you to the Lists tool where you can view all of your lists - including your list of blog subscribers.
RSS Feed
Short for “Really Simple Syndication”, your RSS Feed can also be accessed on the left sidebar. When you click on it, it opens a new window and shows your feed of media with metadata.
RSS Feed 101: An RSS Feed is just a way of someone accessing your blog posts without having to check your blog all the time. They are usually accessed by typing in the site address followed by “/blog/rss.xml”. Think of an RSS Feed as subscribing to your content in as least a user-friendly way as possible! In my view, email subscriptions are better.
All of the little things in managing a blog matter. Beyond simply publishing a blog post, the above list of small items do make a difference in the overall user experience of your blog. Best of all the HubSpot Blog dashboard makes it a little easier for users to utilize them.
Blog Analytics: Measuring Your Success
Data is a big part of tracking your success. You need data. You need it to help you make decisions. After all, why make decisions arbitrarily without having anything to back them up with?
HubSpot’s new Blog dashboard gives you the necessary data insights to make key decisions regarding your content. Right out in front of your face is the a full graph measuring your blog traffic between two time periods. You can toggle between measuring the current month or previous months compared to previous months before that or even year over year. You can either look at views or subscribers and track the changes in both metrics. The graph will show you the percentage change - and this is one key thing that’s great with HubSpot. They know businesses love data and percentages are easy to report. So they’ve included that here.
Additionally, they’ve added your most recently published blog posts just underneath the graph along with the total view and call-to-action (CTA) clicks for each post. Underneath that are the 3 most recent comments for any blog post.
In my view, I think these metrics are good for tracking the basics. Of course, you can drill down a bit further by going into the Reporting Tools within HubSpot. But as it pertains to your blog and HubSpot’s new Blog dashboard, this is a great start - and will help you nail down statistical reporting for all the content you create.
Lastly…
HubSpot’s new Blog dashboard serves as a great tool to do everything you need to do to succeed in business blogging. You'll be able to publish posts with ease, manage all the little things that matter and measure your success - all in one dashboard! Pretty sweet, right? Guess what we'll offer you? Send an email to offers@localtrifecta.com and put "Ramesh made me love HubSpot!" as the subject line and you'll receive 20% off the first month off a 6 month Internet Marketing package!
About the Author:
Ramesh Ranjan is the Inbound Marketing Specialist at LocalTrifecta Internet Marketing, where he helps businesses across Metro Vancouver increase sales and revenue through Inbound Marketing. His marketing heroes are Marcus Sheridan, John Caples and John Carlton. In his off time, he can be found playing roller hockey in Richmond, blogging on his personal website, and at the top of the office hockey pool. You can follow and connect with Ramesh over Twitter and Google+
