Blogging and Content Marketing
If you’re a digital marketer, there’s no doubt you’ve heard about “content marketing”, but content marketing itself has been around for decades – although the phrase has gained buzzword status in the most recent one. Presumably because of the rise in influencer marketing and social media marketing, and it’s natural synergy with both.
There are many types of content marketing, and blogging is one of the mediums for delivering curated content to a specific target audience. It’s actually the third most common strategy for businesses. The main purpose being, to create awareness and assist buyers in their research efforts. It’s brilliant, really. Businesses that blog have reportedly had more than 55% more visitors to their site and 434% more indexed pages than those who don’t.
It’s a strategy that calls for brands to focus on creating content that will attract their ideal audience who are potentially already searching online and then either provide them with a solution to a problem or the information to educate themselves on the problem, with the objective of driving customers to action.
Blogging allows brands to truly provide valuable information (key emphasis on valuable), and build trust with potential or existing clients. At the end of the day, there’s a difference between publishing content on the internet vs. strategically leveraging a marketing technique to support all your digital marketing channels. You can guess which one is the most efficient way to go about it.
A blog also gives you credibility and establishes your brand as the go-to authority when looking up information online. Returning readers of a blog have great trust in the value of the information and place substantial weight on the expertise of the blogger. As an educator or thought leader in a particular field, a blog will provide you with a means to be front of mind and stay in front of your readers.
The biggest secret to success when it comes to blogging as a form of content marketing, is that you have to always add value. Remember when we said key emphasis on valuable? That’s it! The usual secret in the marketing world: add value. The reader has to walk away from the blog post convinced that your company is one that they would want to do business with – now or in future. Now, that’s no easy feat and it will require some thoughtful insight into your audiences’ needs and what you can provide them to set your brand apart from the rest.
The bulk of your SEO efforts should be blogging, whether that means hiring an experienced writer or taking the time to do it yourself. It’s a great starting point and sets you up to be a subject matter expert or authority figure in your industry. Blogs have been rated as the fifth most trusted source of online information.
It’s not for everybody, though. It requires a lot of work and a lot of patience. But it’s well worth it for most, in terms of content marketing ROI. And with the recent deployment of GrooveBlog, there’s no excuse not to jump onboard the blogging bandwagon and take advantage of all it has to offer your website. In case you’re still not convinced, here’s some additional benefits of blogging:
Blogging keeps your website updated and relevant
When a customer lands on your website, there’s an immediate feeling of cautiousness if there’s no signs of recent activity. It can leave one wondering if the company is even still in business. In today’s world, information can quickly become outdated and irrelevant so it’s normal for people to seek out the latest content.
That means Google doesn’t really want to provide users with outdated information, and a regularly updated website is a sign that fresh content is being published – so that’s how the algorithms look favourably on indexing your website. Stay on the radar! By doing so, you’ll acquire new customers.
Blogging provides an opportunity for others to link back to your website
External links that lead to your site are one of the trickier parts of mastering SEO, as it’s not too often that others will point their audience to your homepage. And, again, Google wants to provide people with useful information. If other websites link back to yours, that’s going to be excellent for your search engine results.
And how to get these inbound links? Well, it certainly isn’t impossible without a blog but it’s by far the easiest way. While a good social media strategy can assist with making this happen, just focus on creating valuable, sharable content – consistently and regularly. When a website shares your blog, their audience will end up on that specific article and once you’ve got them there, you want them to stay. If you want to be found by the right people, this is the way to go.
Blogging keeps your audience on your website for longer
When someone does an organic search online and clicks on your site, that’s good news for your site’s click-through rate, but you’re also going to want them to stick around for as long as possible. This is yet another indication to the algorithm that the information is helpful and the search was successful.
Get the most out of your most popular blogs by making use of anchor text and internal links to send people to other pages too. This will mean more of your content will be discovered and keep people on your website for longer than they may have otherwise stayed. This will also help you build an engaged and interested audience.
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Once you get started blogging, you’re going to want to ensure that you publish on a weekly basis. As the name implies, content marketing requires a lot of… content. A quick tip: Regularly brainstorm content ideas for your blog ahead of time and use SEO keyword research to guide your topics.
It’s by no means news for most digital marketers that you can increase your chances of getting your website ranked higher up in the index rankings by hosting and maintaining a blog. But for those who haven’t given it much thought or question the ROI, just think about the reason why indexed pages are so important.
Even when it might feel like everybody is launching a blog, if you’re a business owner and you don’t have one up and running, you should reconsider. Don’t just let content marketing be a buzzword around your marketing team and rather ensure that you deliver valuable information to your ideal prospect by utilizing the benefits of having a blog.
That’s a good publish about Blogging and it explains in detail about the benefits of blogging. Thanks for sharing this information, keep posting good posts like this.