Incorporating a blog into your overall marketing plan can provide a considerable boost to your business's online presence. A well-designed and well-written blog can provide value to customers and interested prospects alike without forcing them to make a serious commitment to the brand. The net result is that more people will be "organically" attracted to your website, and your brand reputation will steadily grow stronger.
Let's discuss three specific ways blogs can generate traffic to your site and help your business experience sustainable growth.
Blogs Are an Entry Point for Customers
Some corporate leaders view blogs as a "luxury" resource: something that's nice to have but doesn't contribute to important KPIs, such as leads generated or sales closed. However, this viewpoint couldn't be farther from the truth! The reality is your blog can serve as the main entry point for a sizable percentage of your consumer base.
Think for a moment about the different stages of the customer journey. Your blog can connect to buyers at any stage of their particular journey, whether it is:
- Awareness - a high-level blog post on the uses and benefits of your product
- Consideration - a case study that demonstrates how another customer benefited from your product
- Decision - a CTA with a special promotion at the end of your post
In addition, sharing your blog posts can serve as the centerpiece for email and social media marketing campaigns. When your contacts and followers turn around and share the post with their network, it often generates a new lead for your business. And as you regularly update your blog, you demonstrate your company's health to customers while nurturing them to an eventual sale.
Blogs Help to Educate Customers and Make You an Authority
Modern consumers tend to be wary of brands they don't recognize as an "authority" in their respective fields. Of course, if a consumer doesn't trust the brand's level of authority, then they're not likely to buy from the brand, either.
Maintaining a regular blog empowers you to combat this trend. Blogs allow you to share relevant information about your industry with your target audience and explain your unique perspective on your product or service in an easily digestible way. By adding quotes from recognized experts into your content, as well as well-documented statistics, you're able to position your company as a trustworthy source of information in your industry.
Moreover, blogs designed to educate the customer will inevitably reflect well on their brand - provided, of course, that the information they contain is accurate, up-to-date, and valuable. Value is a crucial concept here. As you provide your audience with value through your content (i.e., actionable insights that they can fully or partially implement on their own), their trust in you will grow exponentially. In the end, they'll be more willing to do business with your brand compared to buying from your competition.
A Blog Gets Your Website Found During Searches
Effective online content presents for two distinct audiences: (1) your customers and (2) the big search engines like Google and Bing. While you need to develop your content with your human audience in mind, the best article in the world won't do your brand much good if Google buries your result on page 20 of its search results. Properly utilizing SEO (search engine optimization) helps you increase rankings, making it more likely that customers will find you.
Google ranks search results on multiple factors, but relevance and authority are two of the biggest ones. As mentioned above, your blog can help position your brand as an industry authority. You establish your credibility not just in the eyes of your consumer base but also from Google's perspective (provided your posts get enough quality backlinks, shares, and so forth). In the same way, strategically incorporating keywords into your blog posts can help you rank higher for specific search queries that customers enter.
Staying on top of your blog posting strategy enables such customers to find your business at crucial moments in their research. Most online searches never go beyond page #1 of Google's results, so it's no surprise that higher visibility = greater customer engagement, more leads, and more sales.
Getting the Most out of Your Blog
A well-developed, consistently maintained blog can significantly benefit your online presence. It can serve as a critical entry point for new customers, position your brand as an industry authority, and boost your SEO scores for essential keywords. You must pay attention to these crucial aspects of blogging to obtain the highest return from your investment.
Many companies have found that working with an experienced media partner is the best way to optimize their content marketing ROI - in terms of their blog and other campaigns and initiatives. In any event, if you put forth the effort to get the most out of your blog, rest assured that your business will benefit as a result.
