SEO best practices are still best practices. If you have a product company (digital or physical) don’t just rely on your product pages. You need a blog. 

It’s tempting to think blog posts are so 2013. Although with companies relying upon ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI agents to write quick overviews and summary posts for (virtually) free, it’s surprising that product companies still don’t get it.

TL;DR: People searching for knowledge are sent to blog posts. People searching for action are sent to product pages.

Blogs Versus Short Video Dopamine Hits

Physical products like fashion and beauty heavily rely on influencers and affiliate marketing. Tech companies rely on affiliate marketing, too. Why? Other people market for you which means a lower cost for marketing and lower Customer Aquisiton Cost (CAC). 

Relying on other people to do the work can be a good thing. Until TikTok shuts down and you have no content on your own website.  

Snapchat introduced the short vertical video and TikTok capitalized on them – thanks to the pandemic. Short, vertical videos are now the new podcast. My Gen Z niece listens to TikTok videos with her earbuds for hours. 

“Are you watching them?” I asked. 

“Sometimes. I mostly listen when I vacuum and clean the apartment. Of course, you have to stop to swipe to see the next video.” (I’m surprised TikTok hasn’t changed that yet.)

Against biology (our eyes are made to scan right to left, left to right), every platform has this vertical, dopamine-inducing binge watch. Even LinkedIn has vertical video feeds now. (But that’s another rant.) 

Relying upon third-party platforms for your marketing is a scary place to be.

If Amazon’s bid to buy TikTok is accepted, it’s going to become the modern Home Shopping Network. How’s that going to change the user experience? Want to binge on commercials? Unlikely. TikTok will become as annoying as over GIF-ed, loud MySpace pages.

If Amazon's bid to buy TikTok is approved, it's going to become the modern Home Shopping Network.

— Bridget Willard (@BridgetMWillard) April 2, 2025

Do Blogs Still Work for Sales?

Yes. SEO best practices work as a whole to drive sales. Now, if your product pages aren’t optimized for PPC keywords, and you’re not running PPC ads, and you don’t have email marketing, and you don’t have blog posts to explain the why behind your products, then you have bigger problems. 

This is a good time to say that unless you’re tracking your leads, you really don’t know how to attribute those leads. And, first-click leads? Those don’t exist.

“Google is still sending the lion’s share of traffic… but even when they — or most of the platforms, for that matter — do, we can’t even see that traffic because of the flaws in attribution.” Amanda Natividad 

The Internet Runs on Words

Here’s another thing I say a lot: the internet is blind. Videos may have captions (or craptions if you don’t edit them) and photos may be beautiful, but search works from words. 

You still need customers. And how do you get customers to find the thing you just built if they don’t even know it exists? There’s no keyword research for terms people aren’t using. Keyword research is mostly for PPC anyway. 

I say this a lot on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Facebook, and in videos. No one will search for you if they don’t know you exist. If you built a product no one knows exists yet (like the product by my new client Green Link), no one is searching for a baseboard for a chain-link fence. It just got patented, and the website went live in January 2025.

Do Blogs Still Work For Tech & SaaS Companies?

Yes, blogs still work for tech and SaaS companies. Now, if you’re a product company, you may be ignoring your blog in favor of product development, writing their pages and documentation. (I know you’re behind on documentation.) 

You’re super excited about this new tool or feature you built. That’s awesome. Do you hear us saying, “but why” when we read your tweet? What use case does this apply to? What problem does this solve? Why do I want a project management tool inside of WordPress? But Why?

Well-written blog posts translate product pages into sales copy that answers the why. You can’t just post on X that you created a new tool with the link to the product page and expect sales (with or without lifetime deals).

Blog Posts:

• Establish authority (author bylines matter)
• Stay fresh with regular updates (keep publishing)
• Align with search intent (know or do?)
• Get backlinks and mentions across the web (the hardest part)

ChatGPT Backs Up Long-Standing SEO Best Practices

In a (not surprising) recent study analyzing which pages ChatGPT recommends (by AN Digital in German), blogs and editorial content were cited as top choices for informational queries. 

The study by AN Digital found that if someone is looking for the best running shoes, they’ll be shown blog posts. If they’re looking for the best Nike running shoes, they’ll be shown a product page. What happens with Google also happens with ChatGPT.

SEO best practices haven’t changed. Modern SEO – being found in an AI search tool like ChatGPT  – means you need to feed the machine. ChatGPT recommends real content by real experts. If you want to show up in AI-generated answers, an expertly-written blog post beats a static brochure site with product pages any day.

“Because ChatGPT relies both on pre-trained data and real-time web access, SEO becomes critical in ensuring a company’s content is visible and usable by the AI.” AN Digital

Get Marketing That Works

I’m a marketing specialist in the SaaS space. That means easy onboarding for you. Let’s translate the features and specs of your product into compelling marketing copy for your blog. 

There are limited spots for my SaaS Marketing Plan.

I’m always open for a quick sales call to discuss your goals or get you on the waiting list.

Sources

• Thanks to Warren Laine-Naida and Joerg Geissler for bringing this German Study by AN Digital to my attention.
• AN Digital: Strategies to Optimize the Likelihood of Shops and Products Being Recommended by ChatGPT
• Special thanks to ChatGPT for the translation.

Have you ever seen an image on social media that made you turn your head sideways? Or maybe a billboard or even a written post. There are whole accounts on Instagram dedicated to Photoshop fails and the like. 

Sometimes a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor is appreciated by your audience. And sometimes good intentions get separated from the intended message. It could be your body language, word choice, or accessibility. (I can’t even get going on the PDF flyers I see on IG that no one over 40 can read.)

So this is why you need a professional to not just “manage” your social media. You need a social media marketer. You need a bit of pushback to make your ideas better. They should think about all of the possible outcomes.

This is why a good marketer always does some version of a SWOT analysis.

They don’t just post and hope things work out.

SWOT Analysis Basics

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. An experienced marketer just automatically thinks of these with each new idea they encounter. But you can definitely make a chart, especially if you’re presenting to an internal team or an external client. 

“A SWOT analysis can help you to challenge risky assumptions, uncover dangerous blindspots, and reveal important new insights.” Mindtools 

Many large agencies use focus groups as the research arm of a SWOT analysis. Politicians use opposition research. You have to really understand your audience. How they think and their values will determine their perception of your campaign. 

Strengths

Before you post a photo on Instagram, think about what it says about your brand. What’s good about that social post? How does it make people feel about your brand? Does it have easy-to-read text, great captions, and a call to action? Do the colors evoke the feelings you’re hoping it would?

Weaknesses

What will people say about your brand if you do that? If you wear that? If you post an image of a QR code on a mobile ad? They’ll think you don’t know what you’re doing. You can’t scan a QR code on an image on your phone with your phone. Make sense?

Opportunities

How does this social post give you more opportunities? Does it make people think? Does it give them a tool? Does it encourage them? Do they want to see more of what you have to offer?

Threats

How could this image damage you? Do you think people will make negative comments? Will your competition use this against you? Will your hashtag come across wrong? Are there double entendres that you didn’t intend? Will women be offended? Men? Non-binary folks? 

Example: Swot Analysis of Black Friday Deal by a WordPress Plugin

Strengths

A well-executed marketing plan around Black Friday/Cyber Monday including email marketing, social media, and PPC can bring in a bunch of new business and attention to a new WordPress plugin.

Weakness

Having a sale on Black Friday for a software company doesn’t make sense. Black Friday is for retail stores to shore up their finances before the end of the year. If you want to have an online sale after Thanksgiving, keep it at Cyber Monday.

Opportunity

The reason why so many WordPress plugins jump in on Black Friday is to get in front of people’s eyes. It does give you visibility and keeps your plugin top-of-mind.

Threat

A major threat of Black Friday deals is price integrity. Not only are you devaluing your plugin, but you’re training your customers to wait for predicted sales. Furthermore, if you have an annual license, all of your renewals will come back up at the same time next year. Essentially, you’d have to reverse engineer the cost you really want and charge that on Black Friday if you want a sustainable business. 

Bertha.ai decided to skip Black Friday sales for this reason. I also talk about this in my book, “How to Market Your Plugin.”

Get Marketing That Works

If your marketer just says “yes” to your idea they aren’t doing their job.

Sometimes it seems offputting or even rude but it’s always better to let you know before you proceed. That way you can execute a well-thought-out campaign that achieves your business goals.

I’m always open for a quick sales call or you can just book a paid consult.

“She’ll tell you what she thinks is best regardless if it is what you think you want to hear, she’ll challenge you to think broadly about your vision and goals with social, and she’ll curate storytelling into each component of your content strategy.” Michelle Keefer, MA MBA