The blog has come a long way from its first appearance in the late 1990s until now. Initially used as a unique platform to share a person's thoughts, feelings as well as opinions and experiences – it used to be an online diary with a few followers.
Today, it has become a platform used by millions, and especially strategic for companies. But why exactly is it important to the business world?
A company blog can:
- Improve your website's SEO (search engine optimization)
- Increase traffic to your website through links
- Establish your brand as an expert in a particular field
In other words, it has become an indispensable tool for companies' visibility, playing a central role in companies' imbound marketing campaigns. In this article we have prepared, you will know in more detail what a blog is and the importance of this tool. Good reading!
Why is blogging important for companies?
For companies just starting to craft a marketing strategy, blogging is a marketing tool with a low barrier to entry, plus a tangible payoff. For more established brands, a blog is an ideal anchor for a multifaceted marketing strategy.
In any case, a consistently updated, high-quality blog remains the ideal way to drive traffic and grow your brand. When a blog is well managed, it increases your inbound leads in an important way.
Google loves a relevant, complete, but also frequently updated blog, rewarding those articles that are better written and answer the most queries with the highest rankings.
The blog is also the perfect way to establish a brand voice, thus making yourself recognizable to customers. In addition, a great blog shows that your brand has a unique personality and is a reference in a certain niche.
Also, what other marketing tool brings leads, all without the need for a large-scale marketing department or a massive budget? Here are some concrete examples of the importance of blogging to keep in mind:
The blog improves your google rankings
In fact, having a blog on your site improves your Google rankings by up to 400% according to experts in the field! Regular blogs with high quality content improve even more.
Simply having a website is not enough. Google rewards sites that publish consistent, informative content that provides real value to visitors. Newly updated content is even better.
The blog is flexible and complements your global strategy
The blog is adaptable and is the perfect complement to the other facets of your marketing strategy. Create an e-book as digital bait to get leads on your website? Your blog posts for the next few months can cover a topic from your e-book, with a CTA calling for a form and downloading the e-book.
Blogs can be equally useful as an anchor for your social media updates. When you post a new blog post that you're excited to share, go ahead and do it through your social channels. You may find that readers click on your blog, read some posts, and return to the Facebook status update to comment with their thoughts. Your audience will soon learn that you are providing useful, fun, and unique content across multiple platforms, allowing them to engage.
Blogging, creating cool video content and downloadable graphics, email marketing and updating your social media regularly are important!
A complete inbound marketing strategy is made up of several parts that help make each other stand out. And because blogging is designed to be flexible, you can pivot your strategy over time as your marketing needs to change. Want to target specific SEO keywords locally? Build your blogging strategy around these keywords for now, until a new priority pops up.
Blogs are reliable and informative
Yes, your followers will click on a quick video out of boredom or curiosity. But when they want to dig deeper and learn more, they'll turn to your blog posts.
Shorter posts are a great way to share a unique insight into a specific topic in your industry, quickly explore a new feature or product, or even talk about a book or podcast you know your readers will love.
Long-running posts, on the other hand, allow you to dig deeper and become a trusted authority on a particular topic. A well-researched blog post can help you become the leader in a particular area of your niche in a way that social media and other forms of digital marketing are unlikely to achieve.
Blog posts are ideal for internal links
Internal links encourage your customers and readers to spend more time on your site. A blog is the most intuitive and logical place to work on these links, whether they lead to related posts, services or products.
As long as you're linking to relevant pages using anchor text that makes sense to your readers, blogging is the most effective way to get readers to spend more and more time exploring your site.
Here's an example: Let's say you're a fashion startup blogging about the importance of fairs as a way to expand your brand's reach and get your product in front of more customers.
You can use something like “reach more customers” as the anchor text for a follow-up post on the importance of social media engagement for fashion companies.
Your readers can learn several useful lessons that they can apply to their own marketing strategy, all because they followed a link to your blog post.
having consistency is important
It's important to keep in mind that while just having a blog is a great start, it also needs to be updated consistently.
It's tempting to create each post with the precision of a literary masterpiece. After all, you want your blog to be a reflection of your company's values. If you have the time to do this, great!
But beware: are you spending so much time improving your posts that you don't publish as often and as consistently as you should?
The point is, while the quality of your content matters, how often you post and update that content is also vitally important. Balancing the relationship between quality and frequency is so, so critical.
That's why you should make a concerted effort to follow a consistent publishing schedule to keep content fresh.
How Blogging Powers Your Inbound Marketing Strategy
In recent years, brands have placed a greater emphasis on content creation, publishing everything from videos to tweets in order to get in front of their audiences in the right way, at the right time.
In the information age, blogging has become an integral part of any marketing strategy. Inbound marketing is no exception. In fact, blogging is so essential to inbound marketing that it would be difficult to have an inbound campaign without it.
Inbound marketing is a methodology that uses “pull” marketing to bring customers into your business. Some key attributes of this methodology include having a customer-centric focus and delivering value at every step of the buyer's journey.
Inbound Marketing campaigns can be divided into 4 stages:
- To attract
- Wrap
- Converter
- Pleasure
Let's explore how a smart blogging strategy applies to each of these steps.
Stage 1: Using Inbound Marketing Blogs to Attract Visitors
Inbound marketing campaigns start with the “attract” stage. The focus of this step is to bring new visitors to your website. Customers in the attraction phase are usually at the top of the funnel, or too early in their buyer's journey. Brands can attract these customers by creating content that meets common customer needs, which is where blogging comes in.
Brands can use blogging as a way to publish solutions that potential customers may be looking for. As these potential customers are taking to the internet to research their needs, your blog can act as a seller — launching a solution you offer. Keep in mind, it's not a question of “if you post them they will come”. Simply writing relevant blog posts is not enough to attract new site visitors.
This is where SEO and social media should be employed as promotional tactics. Optimizing your blog posts for search queries will help your pieces appear at the top of the results pages. But including keywords or phrases in your blog post is only one piece of the puzzle. Providing high-quality educational information is now considered a best practice to improve rankings and attract new visitors.
When it comes to social media as a promotion strategy, make sure you're sharing the high quality content you've worked so hard to create on your branded pages. Encourage employees to share blog posts as well.
It's a free way to improve the reach of your blog posts and help potential customers find you.
Stage 2: Inbound Marketing Blogs to Engage Your Audience
The next step in an inbound marketing campaign falls deeper into the funnel. It's the “engagement” stage, and therefore, it's where site visitors become leads by creating content that encourages engagement.
Blogs that are getting involved will need to be written with your shopper persona in mind. Your goal should be to create blog content that your readers can't get enough of. So, write posts that are valuable to each persona, delving into your industry topics and providing information your readers never knew they needed.
At the same time, make sure your headers and titles are indicative of what your readers will receive from your blog posts. Click-bait headlines are seen as misleading, which is the opposite of the customer-centric focus of the entry methodology.
Phase 3: Writing Inbound Marketing Blogs to Convert Leads
When a website visitor becomes a lead, the next step in an inbound marketing campaign focuses on converting that lead. The blog is useful at this stage because posts can be written to highlight your products and services and ultimately convince your leads to turn into customers. Companies that use blogs as part of their content marketing mix receive about 70% more leads than those that don't.
For example, a marketing agency at this stage of an inbound marketing campaign could publish a post detailing the benefits of outsourcing marketing efforts.
Within that post, the agency could include the strengths of its brand and the services it provides. This post would then act as a sales tool, promoting these services in the right place, at the right time, to the right person who is researching marketing agency options.
Stage 4: Using your inbound marketing blog to delight customers
Once your leads have become customers, it's time to keep them coming back for more! At this stage, brands can write inbound marketing blogs to highlight additional services that current customers may need. This is where you turn customers into loyal fans who will want to continue to engage with you.
Loyal fans can become brand influencers, and so will want to share their positive experience with others.
Inbound Marketing goes beyond blogs
These examples are a simple look at how blogging helps drive input methodology in your overall efforts.
Blogging is just one of the many strategies we recommend if you are looking to improve your marketing strategy. Whereas inbound campaigns are important to improving your overall marketing. So check out our Marketing Guide to learn how to create a successful inbound campaign to learn how to take your marketing campaigns to the next level.
If it is in your interest to position your company well in search engines as well as improve visibility and engagement, having a blog is essential.
With Colors Agency, we guarantee much more than just an attractive look as well as a modern layout for your website. Our main focus is to offer companies around the world effective solutions to generate visibility on the internet.
Our agency develops SEO strategies and brand positioning for multinational companies, large, medium, but also small, all projects are important to us.
