Blogs are ubiquitous.
No matter what area of business you are in, your competitors probably have a blog. Maybe you’ve even started your own, only to see it fizzle out after a few posts as inspiration and opportunity evaporate into the ether.
From their beginnings as online personal journals of angsty teenagers, blogs have become a multi-million £/$/€ business in themselves. They’re also one of the most important tools business have within their reach for effective marketing.
Why Blog?
There are 5 main reasons why your company should have an active blog:
1. A blog supports your larger content marketing strategy.
Your blogging content can be promoted through your social media platforms, helping you populate your feeds and increase your following and engagement with prospective and existing customers.
2. Blogs increase your website traffic.
Besides the boost from social media sharing, every post you publish is one more page that gets indexed by search engines and one more possibility for someone to come across your website. Businesses that blog get 55% more website traffic than those that don’t. Blogs are great for educating existing and potential customers about your business and introducing them to your newest products and proudest achievements.
3. Blogs show off your expertise.
Content marketing is all about providing value to your audience. The more value you offer them, the more they will value you. Your blog posts are an ideal opportunity to tell your readers about how you’ve built up your product knowledge, how you help customers and why you’re an expert in your field. This is no time to be shy!
4. A blog provides long-term results.
An ad is only effective whilst a campaign is active. In contrast, a blog post is always there, customers can access it whenever they need the information, providing your business with continuous marketing all year round. Excellent planning and writing skills will help you create ‘evergreen’ content designed to be ageless but nonetheless interesting and useful to your readers, whenever they read your blog.
5. Blogs generate more inbound links to your website
Google states that those incoming hyperlinks from other websites to yours, known as backlinks, are one of the top three most important ranking factors. By creating interesting content on your blog, you’ll encourage other people to link to it and share it. Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links that those who don’t, which means a lot more people discovering your website and becoming potential customers.
Maintaining Consistency
If you don’t have one yet, you should start a blog for your business today. Starting it is easy, writing the first handful of posts is not too hard. After that is when the struggles often start.
While most conversions usually happen through older posts, it is important to maintain a posting schedule to keep supporting SEO and promoting through your social media presence.
An editorial calendar is a must-have tool to ensure a regular blog posting schedule is followed that will maximise results. Plan ahead with posting topics as well as deadlines, key words, reference links, sources, CTAs and publishing dates. Your in-house team can create it on their own or you can work with the support and experience of a content marketing agency and a team of professional writers.
TOP TIP:
Make sure that all posts go through a proofreading and approval stage before being published. If you work with an agency, their team usually takes care of these steps for you but if you’re flying solo with your blog then get someone else to check for typos and mistakes. It’s easier than you think to overlook an error.
Work With Us
Working with a content marketing agency can seem like yet another expense on a never ending list of costs to budget for. However, for less than it would cost to employ a full-time member of staff, an agency can offer a full team of copywriting experts that can get the job done in half the time.
Aitkens Media can help your business blog by generating and posting content consistently, increasing posting frequency, improving content quality and most important of all: getting results!
