Businesses operate in an ever-changing marketing landscape. With technologies ever innovating that shift the consumers’ demands to a whole new trend, marketers need to be always on the radar for any significant changes that happen in the market. This is the way businesses move in survival mode.
Part of this business survival tactic is developing a strong web presence to communicate and engage with the customers. Without an established web presence, it is most likely that your business or your brand is not even on the map.
As a marketer, the way to be on the map of the business landscape is to generally be on top of the trends and adapt to the changes in the marketing landscape. While creating a highly developed website is a great component that your business can have which will help establish your comprehensive branding and marketing efforts, there is one digital marketing strategy that has been consistent in bringing your business website some activity that brings in traffic. And as we all know, traffic is the lifeblood of any business.
While this is true, many brands today are gearing toward using video and social media marketing as a relevant and more modern marketing strategy to invite the following. Which sometimes got us thinking:
“Is blogging still important?”
“Why does my business need a blog again?”
“Do people still read blogs these days?”
This is a big Y.E.S… In fact, according to blogging statistics, 77% of Internet users read blog posts regularly.
Regardless of what kind of company you run, blogging is an essential element for any business. So whether you run a local business or an online company, a blog will always be an important aspect of your marketing strategy. For businesses just starting out to emerge in the online market, blogging is an inexpensive marketing tool that can drive traffic to their website and enhance inbound marketing strategies that can help attract more potential customers. It is also ideal support to your other marketing strategy.
So, is blogging really overrated? Does it really drive organic traffic to your website? Whatever the answer may be, one thing is for sure— a lot of successful businesses are investing their resources in content marketing through blogging on top of their digital marketing strategies.
To elaborate more on the importance of blogging on your website, here are some reasons why you should really consider having a blog for your business.
1. Exceptional Boost in Organic Traffic for your Website
Blogging gives brands and businesses the opportunity to create relevant content for their customers. Providing good quality content is a great way to establish your brand voice, showcase your brand personality, and establish loyalty and trust with your customers. A highly developed website would be useless without content that actually makes sense. Thus, it is important that you create reliable content with the purpose of informing or educating your customers about your discussion. Create a blog that will showcase your brand voice, is informative, and will answer their queries. Generally, it should be something worth spending time with.
Another advantage of blogs when it comes to driving traffic is that it gives your customers or social media followers a reason to click and visit your website. If they like what they see and read, it is most likely that they will stay longer or will explore your website which earns you organic traffic. This increases your chance of having more conversions.
Additionally, you can also add inbound links directly in your blog articles and use anchor texts that actually make sense to drive traffic to specific landing pages of your website which allows your audience to get to know more about your business. Blogging is the most effective way to get readers to spend more and more time exploring your site.
2. Incredible Boost on Your SEO
SEO and content marketing will always work side by side when it comes to its marketing efforts. The deal with having an efficient SEO is that your website will have improved quality, searchability, and visibility which will allow your audience to know about your business. The process of SEO is based on guidelines, practices, and control which you will need to utilize to improve the quality of not only your website but also your content. Google’s Algorithm is programmed to reward great content with higher search engine rankings. This is the ultimate goal of SEO for your website.
Regardless of what type of business you have, having a blog that is SEO-friendly is a sustainable way to market your website. Fresh content is still a key to get ahead among your competitors on the search engine results page. Blogging regularly about your business and using proper keywords that may increase your chances of being “Googled” will not only prove that your business is active but it also will establish trust and confidence from your customers that you are a serious business.
3. It complements your other digital marketing efforts
Digital Marketing is comprised of many other marketing strategies. While it is not necessary for all businesses to have all digital marketing strategies to be implemented on your marketing efforts, content marketing, SMM, and SEO are definitely prerequisites for an effective digital marketing strategy.
At the center of these digital marketing strategies, content marketing is an adaptable strategy that enhances the efficacy of many other marketing efforts.
When your business has a huge following on social media, you can use your blog to talk more about your brand and services and then share the content on your social media. Blogs can be used as an anchor for your social media updates. When you have a new blog on your website that you want others to be aware of, you can share it on your social media platforms to invite more engagements. Your followers can be redirected to your website for them to explore (which drives traffic), and if they like what they’ve read, they can go back to your social media post and leave a comment.
Having this type of engagement will allow your audience to know that your platform provides reliable and useful content that they can access and engage with however works best for them. And since blogging is designed to be flexible, you can change your strategy over time depending on your marketing needs.
4. Develop better customer relationship
Blogs provide another source to connect with your customers. By redirecting your customers to your website, be it from social media or from a search engine, your clients will have the chance to explore and get to know your business at the comfort of their home. So whether you are an online entrepreneur or have a local business, having a blog on your website will set your foot to where your customers are.
Additionally, although this may only happen sometimes, respond to comments on your blog and interact with your readers. If they have questions about your article or blog, respond to them on the website if possible. Since, unlike social media sites, your interaction with your audience can be seen and will last longer on your page making your website look active, more interesting, and reliable in the long run. Lastly, with a blog on your website, people can search for it again which they can share to other platforms like their social media.
If you want to increase your online exposure, while establishing yourself as an industry leader, then taking advantage of blogging as a marketing strategy is a great business move to make. Although it doesn’t give you instant results in terms of traffic, growing your platform and using it to anchor your other digital marketing strategies will help speed things up enabling you to finally drive traffic and increase conversions. If you don’t have the time, resources, or expertise to write blog content, outsourcing your content from a digital marketing agency is a good way to go.
The importance of blogging for any business venture is not something to undermine given the present marketing landscape. While we continue to innovate, hence, the emergence of many tools that support online visibility, the value that blog contents are able to provide to any brand or website has not lessen. Truly, blogging has remained consistent in being a great tool for driving website traffic, growing audience and extending reach, and successful conversions.
