What Brands Get Wrong About Blogs (And How It’s Costing Them Business)
Let me give it to you straight: Too many brands are writing blogs for themselves—not their customers.
I see this constantly. A company sits down to build out content for their website and thinks, “Let’s write a blog post on each of our services. That’ll boost our SEO, right?”
Wrong. Not only is that approach outdated, it’s also ineffective—and in some cases, downright harmful to your discoverability.
Let me explain.
The Mistake You Don’t Know You’re Making
Here’s how it usually goes:
Your marketing team (or worse, your product team moonlighting as content writers) outlines blogs based on your core offerings.
You offer a CRM? Great. So you write blogs like “Why Choose Our CRM Solution.”
You do IT services? So you write “Benefits of IT Service Management.”
It seems logical. You’re showcasing what you do.
But that’s the problem. You’re writing content around your internal language, not your audience’s external search behavior.
And Google? It doesn’t reward what you sell.
It rewards how well your content answers what people are actually searching for.
Let me put it plainly: There’s a canyon between branded keywords and organic search terms. And if your blog strategy doesn’t bridge that gap, you're wasting time and budget.
Real-World Example: Same Budget, 3X Results
We worked with a mid-market HR tech company—let’s call them PeopleFirst.
They had a great product, a solid in-house team, and they were publishing regularly. But their blog traffic? Flatlined.
Why? Every single post was centered around phrases like:
“Best Employee Onboarding Solution”
“Why Choose a Digital Onboarding Tool”
“Our Approach to HR Tech Innovation”
Not one of those phrases was something their audience was typing into Google. We checked. Their audience—small and mid-sized HR teams—were searching for things like:
“How to onboard a new hire remotely”
“Best onboarding checklist 2024”
“HR email templates for new employees”
None of those topics were being covered.
So BrighterNarrative stepped in. We conducted deep keyword research—not just volume and difficulty metrics, but true intent mapping to understand what their buyers were struggling with. Then we rewrote, restructured, and re-optimized their content library.
Within 6 months:
Blog traffic rose 220%
Organic keyword rankings tripled
And most importantly: leads attributed to content doubled
Same content cadence. Same internal team. Just a smarter strategy.
Why Brands Miss This (And Why You Can’t Afford To)
Look, I get it. Most internal teams don’t have the time or tools to go deep on keyword strategy. And let’s be honest—most agencies either skip it entirely or phone it in with a basic SEMrush report.
But good keyword research isn’t about just finding high-volume terms. It’s about connecting the dots between:
What your customer is struggling with
What they’re typing into Google
And how your brand can show up with value—not just visibility
You can’t shortcut that with ChatGPT or plug-and-play tools. You need human insight and a strategic lens.
Because here’s the deal:
If you’re not ranking for organic search terms, you’re renting your audience—through paid ads, paid sponsorships, paid everything.
Organic traffic is your owned pipeline. But it only works if you’re showing up where people are actually looking.
The Bottom Line
Content without search insight is like publishing in the dark. You might be loud, but you're invisible.
That’s where a partner like BrighterNarrative comes in. We help brands bridge the gap between content and discovery—through tailored keyword research, smart editorial planning, and SEO-informed storytelling.
We won’t just help you rank.
We’ll help you resonate.
So if your blog isn’t pulling its weight—or if your team is cranking out posts with zero return—it’s time to stop guessing and start ranking.
We’ll bring the data. You bring the coffee.