There are many elements that come together to make up an effective marketing strategy. One of these elements, frequently omitted from strategies, is blog content. Whether it’s due to time restrictions, budgets, or simply the misconception that they aren’t worth the effort, this decision needs to be more thoroughly considered.
Blog content for businesses has become a key component of any marketing strategy and can be the defining factor in a brand’s success. Here are our top three reasons every business, be it small or large, B2B or B2C, should have a blog.
Convert traffic into leads
Let’s start with the most obvious – a blog can draw traffic to your website that can then be turned into leads. Being obvious doesn’t make this any less advantageous, however. A business could boast about having very high traffic, but if that traffic isn’t being turned into leads then it’s essentially all for nought. Many business leads come from prospective clients searching for a question or subject matter rather than looking for the product or service itself. If your company’s blog is able to answer that question and provide an enticing call-to-action as well, then that visitor could become a new potential lead.
Content writers work closely with SEO and branding experts to find subject matter that is trending or popular, making sure that the subject of the blog they release is currently trending and of interest to the target audience. This should increase traffic to your site as well as improve the user experience, which, in turn, should mean more leads.
Prove your expertise
There are two main reasons users will look at your blog: either they are looking for information or they are testing your business. The latter is typically the step a user takes before becoming a customer and is critical to the decision process. You could even consider your blog a test-drive of your services, where you prove that you know what you are talking about and that what you offer has value.
Whether you’re answering common questions, demystifying some of the complex processes within your business, or sharing industry insights, it is all a great way to establish your brand as an authority in your specialist area. Blogs don’t just have to be for the benefit of the customer, either, because they can also help your staff or customer service department gain a deeper understanding of your brand and what its different departments’ duties are. The better informed your staff are, the more empowered they will be to help your business.
Offer intelligent and thought-provoking insight on your blog and you will generate value for your site visitors and build credibility in your brand.
Improve your SEO
Google’s algorithms are always changing and aren’t easy to keep up with, but one thing that won’t change any time soon is that relevance and user experience are major factors in a website’s Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Staying relevant in Google’s eyes means maintaining regular updates with subject matter relevant to the search parameters. Regular blog posts are the perfect way to do this. However, it isn’t enough to simply publish minimum-effort blogs that mention industry keywords a lot. The content must be of interest to the user. This is where user experience comes in – if the user is having a poor experience or doesn’t find what they are looking for, they will exit your website quickly –or ‘bounce’ – which will have a negative impact on SEO.
Another less-considered factor with blog content is that it increases the number of pages on your website. Considering ease of navigation is also a factor in SEO, this may seem like a negative but, as long as it’s simple enough to navigate to the different blogs (i.e. you have a blog hub page), more pages can be advantageous. The more pages you have, the more search engines have to crawl and index, giving them a better idea of what your brand is all about and what subjects your site should rank highly on. More pages also mean your website can be associated with more keywords. A web page can only beoptimisedfor one or two keywords before the effect becomes diluted. With more pages, your site can rank for more query searches.
Lastly, an insightful blog can inspire a reader to share that blog with their peers. Not only does that increase brand awareness in the most reliable and effective marketing tactic in history –word of mouth – but it also increases your perceived authority on the subject matter, making your brand even more trustworthy. From an SEO perspective, sharing or quoting your blog will create ‘backlinks’ (i.e. links to your site from third-party sites) and these increase SEO as well as traffic to your site (as long as the referring sites aren’t toxic).
Those are our top three reasons every business should have a blog. An additional advantage is that the blog is 100% the property of the company. Unlike other social media posts that require a third party, the blog resides on your company website so there is no small print stating the host has ownership. Sites like Facebook or Twitter technically own all the content you publish on their site, but not any links to content posted.
There are, of course, many more advantages to writing a blog. For some, the question has never been ‘is a blog advantageous’ but ‘is a regular blog worth the investment’. Hopefully, seeing just a few of the key advantages have convinced you that yes, they are indeed worth the investment! Just be sure your writer has proven experience in writing – ideally within your industry.
Photo bySerghei Trofimov
