The business landscape is one that is ever-changing in technology and consumer demands. It’s become increasingly important for businesses, big or small, to develop a strong web presence in order to keep customers engaged. One of the most effective ways to build brand awareness, while engaging your target audience is to use blogging as a marketing tool.
Blogging is an inexpensive way to create value for businesses by driving traffic to their site, enhance marketing efforts and attract more prospective customers. Today, let’s talk about the benefits of blogging as a marketing tool, and why you should blog if you don’t already.
1. Boost search engine optimization efforts
Search engine optimization is more than just ranking. It is a long-term strategy to increase your business visibility over your competition in search engine results. All search engines love fresh, new content, and blogging is one of the most straightforward ways you can create this. When a business puts up blog posts regularly, they are constantly providing Google with fresh content to index.
Blogging is also a great way to insert relevant keywords that your customers would search for. By publishing relevant content, the search engine algorithms will pick up your keywords. And according to its relevance, your business may rank higher on search results pages.
2. Cost effective
While there are many ways to reach your audiences, blogging as a marketing tool is also an inexpensive one. Unlike spending a huge budget on a marketing campaign, or starting a YouTube channel which requires professional equipment and a steep learning curve of shooting and editing videos, the cost of blogging is minimal.
All you need is a web hosting service (which costs between $10 to $80 each month) and a content management system – the backend of a website where you can upload content. Sites powered by WordPress automatically have that!
3. Provide value to customers
People aren’t keen about blog posts that are clearly selling something. These types of posts are just not as interesting as they could be.
One of the most important benefits of blogging is that you can provide value for your customers. With blogging, you’re giving your customers something for free, in hopes that that will lead them to choose to make a purchase.
Some helpful things you can provide via blog posts are ideas, checklists, directions, recipes etc.
The more your potential customers can get from you for free, the more keen they will be in making a purchase, and the more loyal they will be when they become your customers.
4. Drive organic traffic to your website
Every time you put up a blog post, it’s one more indexed page on your website, and one more opportunity for your brand to show up in search engines, and also one more avenue to drive traffic to your website via organic search. Blog posts are also a way to let Google and other search engines know that your website is active, and they should be checking in regularly to see what new content to surface.
Blogging also helps you gain visibility via social media. Every time you write a blog post, you’re putting up content that people can share – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest – which helps to expose your brand and business to new audiences that do not know you yet.
5. Convert traffic into leads
With traffic coming to your website via your blog posts, you have brand new opportunities to convert that traffic into leads.
Just like every blog post you write is another indexed page, each post is a new opportunity to generate new leads. One way of doing this is by adding a call-to-action in your blog posts.
These calls-to-action may lead your web visitor to things like a discount code, free trials etc. Basically, offer something that the visitor would be willing to exchange their information for. For example:
- Visitor comes to website via blog post
- They see call-to-action for a free offer or discount code
- They click on call-to-action which brings them to a landing or popup page where they can fill in their information (name, email etc.)
- The visitor fills out form, submits information, and receives the free offer or code
6. Establish your brand as an industry authority
While there are several ways of establishing your credibility as a business, the most fulfilling and impactful way in the long-run is through blogging. By blogging, you are able to position yourself as a business that understands the industry by providing content that reflects your insights and values. If you are consistently generating content that’s helpful for your target audience, it will help to establish your brand as an authority in their eyes.
Over time, your helpful and informative blog posts will help make you the go-to figure within your industry, leading to more inquiries and higher conversion rates.
7. Connect with your audience
Blogging is also a great way for you to learn more about what your customers like and don’t like. They can leave comments, share stories about your products/services with other users, or even provide criticism and leave feedback on your blog pages.
From there, you can address any questions or comments a prospective customer might have, or make changes/adjust your marketing strategy according to your customers’ feedback. With an active comment section where you can respond directly to comments is huge in building trust and relationships.
8. Provide long-term results
Let’s say you sit down for two hours to write and publish a blog post today. Maybe that blog post gets you 150 views and 50 leads. The next day, people see your post on social media and you get another 100 views and 10 leads. But after a couple days, most of the traffic from that post dies down.
But that’s not where it ends!
That same blog post is now ranking in Google and other search engines. This means that for the next few days, weeks, months, and years to come, you can still continue to get traffic and leads from that blog post you wrote. Even when you’re eating, sleeping or holidaying.
This perfectly captures the benefits of blogging as a marketing tool. While you might not get immediate results, you can get a steady amount of traffic and leads for your business overtime, without coming up with a big marketing budget or additional resources.
