I followed your advice and I just created a blog for my SaaS. What do you think?
A few weeks ago I asked for your advice on whether I should create a blog to write some content marketing pieces for Adflow. The response was a firm yes, so here we are—the Adflow blog is now live.
What do you guys think? Any tip on how to make the blog (or Adflow's website, for that matter) better?
Let me know in the comments 👇
Postface about the technical details (for you fellow makers out there):
- The blog is built with NextJs and deployed on Netlify
- Articles are written in markdown and the blog posts are statically generated at build time
- I tired to do do my best with creating useful json+ld scripts for SEO. I'm not an expert so if you have suggestions, feel free to share
Next up:
- [ ] Improving metadata
- [ ] Programmatically generating og:images
- [ ] Adding a recommended articles section for interlinking (when I'll have more content 😅)
I'll keep you guys posted on the impact of these changes on traffic and whther the investment will be worth it
sweet! keep going!
Looking forward to seeing your progress 👍
🚀🌕
Congratulations on getting the blog up. Here are a few thoughts/suggestions:
While the content in your first post isn't bad, there's nothing particularly special about it either. People have no shortage of choices when searching the web. If you don't provide some sort of unique value, you're not going to beat out blogs that have more history, brand recognition, established audiences, etc.
I understand why you put 2021 into the title to try and make it timely, but there isn't anything that's really specific to this year, which makes it feel like a bit of a bait and switch. Plus, without the year in the title, it can work as evergreen content, which may be better in the long run.
The structure of the post doesn't match the headline. If you are positioning it as avoiding mistakes, you should mention the mistakes in the numbered points. Or you could change the headline to speak to what you should do.
Which way you should go would depend on which traffic sources you're optimizing for. If you are going for organic search traffic, I would make it more about how to set up a successful campaign or whatever terms people are likely searching for. I think more people would search for that than what not to do.
If you are optimizing more for social networks, then speaking about mistakes could work better, especially if you tweak it to illicit more emotion and curiosity.
I hope that helps. Best of luck.
Thanks @SeanKirby for the detailed feedback. I'll keep your suggestions in mind to make sure future posts have a greater chance of capturing more traffic. I'm also going to revise the blogpost to edit out some of the inconsistencies you mentioned.
I am not a professional content writer myself; we want to see if the investment pays off—if it does, finding a proofreader will definitely be on our radar. I guess this exercise will be great to exercise a few creative muscles ✍️.
Nice work with the blog, looks great!
Really like the design of Adflow, was that professionally done or using a template?
Thanks 🤩. The product is pretty good too 🤪.
I'm in charge of most design decisions (my partner in crime @signorettif is the actual programming wizard). I find it convenient to design in code directly with tailwind—at least until we have time to set up our own design system.
Looks great, keep it up! I keep seeing you around the web, I'll be following your progress.
🙌
Hi Lorenzo! Congrats on launching your blog?
What packages are you using to render your markdowns on NextJS ? Also any reason why you don't use products like Substack?
You can take a look at Next's own blog starter—my implementation was heavily inspired by them.
In a nutshell, the md is parsed to html through remark (I use a couple of plugin to change how a few elements are parsed).
I have personally never used Substack. I was quite familiar with the whole process of setting up a blog like this already, so I went with this solution over something else because of TTM.
Did you launch the MVP of your product to test market demand?
Hi @Vo_Alex 👋. The MVP is already live and you can signup today (no cc required!).
I'd love it if you wanted to take it for a spin and let me know your feedback!
Holy shit it looks awesome! Very clean and professional.
Thanks! It's hopefully going to look even better as the articles (and the traffic) start flowing in 💪
Content marketing usually takes several months to work, but once it starts working, you got a moat.
agree. It needs some time to invest efforts
Fingers crossed. But I know the SaaS game is a marathon and not a sprint 🏃♂️
Not a question on your blog exactly but prompted by it - how to track conversions if you don't use GA? I use Simple Analytics mainly for privacy reasons.
Yes indeed, I myself don't use GA but Splitbee on some of my projects. This is definitely a topic for another post 📝