Gone are the days of keyword stuffing and pushy sales websites. Today’s consumers and the search engines they use are looking for relevance, content and value. It is imperative to engage your audience and develop a strong web presence to build trust with your users. These measures will hopefully convert them to customers. The main benefits of blogging support these core values, providing a boost to your business with minimal investment. Listed below are the six benefits of blogging for your business and how leveraging them can score more customers.
BLOGS DRIVE WEBSITE TRAFFIC
One of the most noteworthy benefits of blogging is the noticeable impact to search engine optimization (SEO). Think of your core website pages, how many there are and how often these are updated. The answer to both of these is likely – not a lot. Each blog added creates pages for search engines to index, fresh content for crawling and “gold stars” for your website’s presence. Additionally, each blog is an opportunity to leverage keywords that would otherwise be awkwardly included on your website’s front end.
In years past, SEO practices involved inserting every desired keyword search into one page, so your website would show up for searches, relevant or not. Algorithms have since evolved to penalize this technique and recognize pages utilizing keywords in a more natural, relevant manner. Now that best practices call for one keyword per page, where to put the additional keywords you’d like to use? The blog, of course! The benefits of blogging include new website real estate with necessary content for ranking in relevant searches, as well as driving new traffic to your website.
If you’ve decided to create a blog, or add an existing one to your site, working with an ad agency like Strategic Marketing can help you maximize website traffic in its execution. Unfortunately, because algorithms only recognize content of a certain length, adding a monthly paragraph to your blog will do little for your SEO. Similarly, there are rules on keyword usage, best practices for posts and other nuances affecting blog ranking. An ad agency partner can evaluate your current needs, develop maximum-impact strategies and execute this time-consuming tactic.
CULTIVATE A BRAND IDENTITY
The long form content of a blog provides you with ample room to showcase your business’ identity. Consumers want to connect with the businesses they shop from or work with. Blog posting communicates a vision, opinion and personality usually not able to be portrayed through outbound advertising and marketing. Blogs are your opportunity to engage new and existing customers in a more traditional and conversational manner to build trust and rapport. You can expand this even further by maintaining an active comment section for your blog where customers can communicate openly with you and others regarding the content that you are publishing.
BECOME AN INDUSTRY LEADER
By establishing your business as an authority on a specific product, service or innovation, you will be able to capture both, people who are ready for purchase and people who are researching before purchase. You can leverage your blog to provide resources, information and necessary guidance to users regarding your industry topic. Users who find your information useful or who see you as a trustworthy source on the subject will be more likely to purchase from you versus a competitor. This is an easy way to build trust with people who are actively or inactively searching online for the products or services you offer.
LEVERAGE BLOGS FOR PUBLIC RELATIONS
Although your blog should be more about relating to your audience and utilizing important search keywords, the secondary benefits of blogging include the ability to communicate public relations (PR)-type information. From product releases to event information, your blog is a platform to capture the eyes of your own audience who is interested in your product or service, instead of pitching ideas to journalists who may or may not pick up the information. It is a quick way to disseminate important information in an efficient way. We would not suggest using the blog as a method of providing administrative information on a regular basis; However, in a pinch and if it is relevant, the blog can be a great tool to get information out to the masses.
SHARING OPPORTUNITIES
Who doesn’t like free marketing? Each blog presents an opportunity for people to share the content with others, link to it within their own content or share it on their social media. Each share becomes an opportunity for your blog to engage a whole new audience of people and drive new customers to your website. You can add “calls-to-action” within your blogs to make it easier for people to share or reach out to you directly, which can help to funnel people to your business as well.
BENEFITS OF BLOGGING: LONG TERM
The great thing about a blog is that you can “set it and forget it.” Once you publish a piece of content, it will continue to get views and traffic for weeks and months to come, especially when people stumble across it in their searches. If you combine this across several regularly posted blogs, all with their own keywords and messages, then you really have a comprehensive tool to generate traffic for your website and build a trusted brand that resonates with people.
Although it is simple to start blogging on your own, managing a blog page can be tedious work. Researching fresh content with regularity, copywriting meaningful long-form posts on a consistent basis, managing comment responses and monitoring traffic is an extensive undertaking. An ad agency like Strategic Marketing can help you with these tedious tasks and create a cohesive strategy for your blog. Being a strategic partner, we can even help you leverage the blog on your website, social media and other areas where you will be able to pick up even more website traffic for your business. Increased website traffic typically converts into more sales. Visit thinkstrategic.com for a free marketing evaluation and see how we can help you grow your business.
