Have you got a blog but just not doing much with it - or about it?
New to blogging and wondering what the fuss is all about?
A blog is a brilliant marketing tool for businesses - not only does it amplify your visibility, but it also works to pitch you as an expert in your industry. It’s a media platform that you own (rather than rent from the likes of Facebook or LinkedIn) and can be hugely beneficial for growing your community.
Here are 4 reasons why your business needs to be blogging:
1 - TRUST
The biggest benefit for you as a blog owner is that you are sitting on a sure-fire way to foster trust with your audience: they’re hanging out with you online because they’re keen to hear what you have to say. The key to growing your audience is to approach it in a way that builds a community of advocates for your business. Use your blog to entrench yourself as the expert in your industry and the go-to brand for the goods or services being provided. Offer insights, tips, advice, information, education and engaging content that pitches you as the one to watch and follow.
2 - IT’S OWNED MEDIA
You OWN the media that’s published on your blog - whereas on Facebook or Instagram, you’re just RENTING space. By directing traffic from your social pages to your blog, you’ll be moving audiences from your RENTED media space (i.e. digital space that you don’t own, that’s subject to the relevant platform’s rules of engagement) to OWNED media. With your OWNED media, you have more control and autonomy over what, how and when you publish content and can format your media to create a unique user experience. This is where you can really start to create meaningful conversations with your audiences without worrying about the algorithm and who Facebook is (or, given the current state of reach ISN’T) showing your content to.
Continued below…
Shot & Styled by Shout & Co. for Capulet
3 - IT ENHANCES YOUR VISIBILITY
Blog posts are important from an SEO standpoint: They help to make your blog or website more visible to people who are using search engines (like Google) to find businesses that offer goods and services just like yours.
Blogging works to position your website as a possible answer to relevant questions posed in search engine queries, giving your pages opportunities to rank in the search results.
Here are some factors that will impact your blog’s SEO rankings and what to do about them:
Dwell Time: This is the amount of time a person spends on your website. This metric gives the search engines an indication of how valuable your content is to the them: the more time they spend on the page, the more relevant the content must be to them. So the more relevant your content is, the longer the dwell time and the better your visibility becomes.
Include important keywords that you want your website or business to be associated with. Don’t put too many in though as this could look like “keyword stuffing”. Use 1 - 2 long-tail keywords (i.e. long-form, question-based keywords) as they’ll be more effective than shorter, more generic keywords. For example, users would be searching for “an all-natural skincare routine” rather than “natural skincare” so incorporate the former into your copy.
Add visuals: But ensure that you’ve allocated alt text to them. Search engines can’t read images but they can read the text that’s associated with those images. Larger file sizes will impact on the blog’s loading speed, so keep them to about 250kb each.
It’s all in the title: if your title is enticing enough, readers will click through to read the article. Use the following mix of words in your title:
Emotional Words: they help build trust with your audience and give your blog an authoritative viewpoint, e.g. “Expert”, “Experience”
Power Words: they help to get your audience’s attention and makes them curious about your blog content - e.g. “popular”, “trending”
Numbers: this gives readers an indication of the volume of information or facts they’ll come away with after reading the blog post - e.g. “3 reasons to start blogging”
Make sure your blog is optimised for mobile - search engines look favourably on this
Link the post to other related blog posts you’ve written
4 - EASIER TO CONVERT
Once readers are reading your blog, it’s easier to convert them from audience member to paying client or customer because they’re clearly interested in what you have to say. All you need now is for your blog content to take it over the line:
The information that you give them through your blog needs to resonate with them
A comprehensive call-to-action is needed to tell them what they need to do next
If the content doesn’t resonate, you’ll lose them in the first paragraph. So how do you find content that resonates with them?
Find your best performing social media post and create a long-format version of it in blog form
Poll your audience to see what they’d like to know more about
Recycle an old blog post that has performed well and give it a face lift, either with new images, updated information or a new call-to-action
Find something topical that has a lot of people talking - but make sure it’s spun in a way that’s relevant to your industry or business
And what does a comprehensive call-to-action look like? It’s:
Specific
Clear and unambiguous
Uses action words and verbs
Is short and succinct
Is easy to find or see in amongst all the copy and images you’ve put in your blog post
Has the correct link
While this is just a snapshot of the importance of blogging, the bottom line is this: your blog is an important tool you can leverage to build trust with your audience, improve your SEO rankings and effectively encourage readers to take further action on your website.
What principles will you implement to ramp up your blog content? Share with us in the comments!
If you need any help working out what type of content your blog needs,
We can help you generate a content calendar to create engaging, relevant content your audience will love.
If you’d like to know more about the Digital Marketing services that we offer,
We’ll talk you through our process, answer any of your burning questions and quote up any projects you’re needing help with!
