Is the blog on your website gathering dust rather than views? Or does your website not have a blog at all?
Content marketing is an essential part of your overall marketing strategy. It focuses on connecting with your customers to build trust and relationships. Only after building those relationships do you work to sell.
One of the biggest building blocks of content marketing is blogging. 81% of companies say their blog is necessary or critical to their marketing. If you don’t have a blog or haven’t updated it in years, it’s time to fix that.
Let’s look deeper at the benefits and stats of business blogging and why you should add it to your marketing strategy.
Important Stats
Why is blogging for your business important? These stats will show you. Because who doesn’t love a good statistic?
80% of Searchers Ignore Paid Ads
People skip over ads straight to the organic search content for their answers. Don’t waste your money on skips. Instead, write blog posts that rank in the first few search results and outperform your competitor’s Google ads.
81% of Consumers Trust Blogs
Gaining trust is an important part of blogging. The good news is people already trust blog content more than the media or ads. They also prefer learning about your brand through a blog rather than an ad.
Business Blogs Have 55% More Traffic
By having a blog, you’re already ahead of websites that don’t. More visitors means more opportunities to gain leads, conversions, and customers.
Benefits of Blogs
Those are all excellent reasons to start updating your blog content. But while stats are interesting, blogging is beneficial for many other reasons.
Establish Trust
An active blog shows visitors you take time to maintain your site. Whereas a blog with no new content in six months makes them wonder. Whether you mean it or not, your blog reflects the other parts of your website. If people click on your blog, you want to leave them with a great impression.
You can also show your trustworthiness by writing multiple high-quality posts in your niche. You can claim to be an expert all day long, but people want proof. Content like blog posts or videos establishes your claim.
Provide Value
You might want to be the top-ranked post for a particular keyword or get a certain amount of sign-ups from your blog. But before anything else, you should focus on providing value to your readers. Write to them first, not the algorithm.
“What value does this provide my reader?” should always be the first question when creating a new piece of content. If it answers a question, do so quickly and clearly. If it’s a tutorial, lay out the steps in an easy-to-follow manner. When you provide value first, readers enjoy your post, which in turn helps it rank higher.
Drive Conversions
While your first goal is to provide value, you want that value to bring sales and conversions. As traditional marketing efforts, blogging can produce 3x the leads and up to 6x the conversions. How can you use your posts to get those types of numbers?
First of all, don’t forget a call to action. Ask readers to sign up for your emails, download your e-book, or follow you on social media. Second, promote your products in your posts. Third, write informative posts in your niche to make visitors curious about your services or products.
Build Relationships
Once you’ve proved yourself trustworthy, you can work on building relationships with your customers through your blog. Blogging gives people a reason to keep coming back to your site. The more they interact with your content, the more positive they'll feel about your brand.
It also allows you to engage with them through comments on your posts. They might even ask about specific topics that you can turn into content. If they like your posts, they can share them on social media and get you more exposure. When they decide to buy, they feel like they know you.
Help SEO
Depending on your business and your competitors, ranking your entire website for a particular keyword can be difficult. This is where blogging comes in. Ranking a blog post for a relevant long-tailed keyword can be much easier and get you even more traffic.
Your website might not update that often, either. But when you publish a new blog post twice a week, Google crawls your site more often. The more it does that, the better your website and posts will rank.
Remember
A well-planned blog has many benefits beyond what we’ve talked about here. I’ll finish with a few things to remember while running your blog.
People Skim
I know you worked hard to make sure your blog posts are perfectly written down to the smallest word. But the sad truth is that most people skim online content. (Be honest, you’ve been skimming this post too.)
Make sure to write and format your post for skimming. Include headings, subheadings, table of contents, and bulleted lists. Make your paragraphs short and highlight important sentences.
You might want them to stay a long time on your page, but making information hard to find isn't the answer. If you do that, they’ll click away and find another post that gives them the information faster. Which in turn hurts your search ranking.
Cross Promote
Don’t forget to cross-promote your new blog posts. People may not follow you on all channels or even know you have a blog.
Promote new posts on your Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. You get shares and likes as well as exposure to new potential customers. You can also send your latest post out in your emails. Let people know you have a blog. Give them a reason to return to your website again and again.
Proper Formatting
I could write several pages on formatting alone. It ensures your post is easy to read and helps your search ranking. People often forget these steps, so completing them will help put you above the competition.
•Use Headings. H2 and H3 headings help readers skim your articles and find answers. Headers should be clear but not overused.
•Include image alt text. This is another place where you can include your target keyword. It also helps if your images don’t load or for visually impaired people.
•Don’t forget the CTA. It’s worth mentioning a second time. A CTA is just as vital in a blog post as in an email.
Blogging might seem easy on the surface, but it has a lot of intricacies. The best part is blog posts compound on results, and you can freshen them up to keep searchers coming.
I hope this guide inspired you to polish up your blog or talk to your team about starting one today. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll get results.
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