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The Importance of Blogging
A blog? Isn’t that old school, so 2001? On the contrary. Do not be too eager to dismiss your blog.
How much new content are you populating your website with every day, week, month, quarter? You may be more invested in your social media presence in our current culture of quick-fix news, attempting to engage the I-don’t-have-time-to-read-more-than-120-characters generation.
Don’t allow social media to distract you from what’s really important: new content!
It’s good to pay attention to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It’s smart to develop your place on these platforms. But isn’t the goal to connect with voyeurs and drive them to your website? What will potential customers or clients find when they reach your site? Will the content be stagnant and outdated? Or will they find a recently updated blog full of comments on current events, news in your industry, explanations of services offered, and pop culture tie-ins?
Your blogs ARE your social media content. Drive followers to your website
where there is really something interesting to read.
Pick Your Marketing Battle
In today’s marketplace, you may feel like you just don’t have time to satisfy every outlet’s demands for attention. Unless you have a dedicated social media team, chances are your marketing department’s duties have increased tenfold as they attempt to populate social media and engage with followers as often as possible in an attempt to stay relevant.
If you have to downsize a task to save time and expenses, don’t allow it to be your blog.
It’s critical to nurture your outside audience as much as you do your internal team. Blogging keeps you in the loop and shows people that you have something to say. Bonus: Having new blogs on your site gives you something new to post about on social media. You don’t have to “try” to be relevant, you simply are by showing that you’re blogging regularly and thoughtfully.
Plus, blogging gives you a huge opportunity to build an internal linking structure. Every time you mention a service that you offer, you can link to it elsewhere on your site. And the goal, after all, is to keep site visitors active, reading, and clicking throughout your site.
Don’t Forget About That Other Fella – Google
Not only does an active blog give your website visitors something to read when they visit your site, a blog gives Google something to do. And having something to do makes Google happy and generous. Google wants to see that your website is changing and offering new content to visitors. When Google receives a fresh content signal from your website – indicating, for instance, that you have a new blog post – your web pages will come up more often in search results for your targeted keywords.
SEO is an incredibly important element of blogging.
Your Internet marketing person should be working with you to refine the keywords for which you’re trying to rank, and SEO blog writing can be done to ensure that your blog posts are keyword-rich (but not keyword-obnoxious) so that Google can see you are truly an expert at what it is you’re writing about, selling, or otherwise promoting.
Google is less likely to recommend rarely updated, non-blogging websites in search results.
Blogging Boo-Boos
Not having a blog is one of the biggest website offenses a company can commit in the current online culture. But if you do have a blog, there are a few sins you can commit that will make you look like you’re exploiting your platform for evil instead of good.
Remember that, above all, your blog is a place to inform your readers and site visitors. They are relying on you to tell them something new or interesting. Blogging is not an avenue for self-promotion. You can and absolutely should include a relevant call to action at the end of each blog post, but don’t spend your word count talking only about you, you, you. The rest of your website should do that job for you.
Maybe you don’t know how to blog. No biggie. You don’t need to know how to blog. Others can do it for you. What you want to avoid, however, is copying and pasting material from another site or paraphrasing a competitor’s words. Google will notice, and so will your readers. Be original. Creativity matters, even if your business is not an especially right-brained one (you know, the artsy side).
In the same vein, you should also avoid citing professional journals or another article and trying to pass off that info as your own. Definitely do your research and offer up links to relevant information for your readers, but what you should really be doing is providing your own interpretation on what’s news. Unique commentary is far more enthralling than another summary of what people have already read.
You Can Do It!
Think your clients and customers already know everything there is to know about your business? Believe your website says it all? There is always more to be said about the work you do on a daily basis. And a blog is a great place to say it.
People are often afraid to ask what seems like the “easy” or “obvious” questions, especially if they’re not very familiar with your business offerings. So answer them for your audience: Why should they get XYZ? What will XYZ do for them? How does XYZ fit into their life?
Maybe a competitor is considered the “expert” in your field. Who cares? On your website and in your company, YOU are the expert. So speak to your clients as such. THIS is what I know and I’m generously sharing the information with you for free in these awesome blog posts. How d’ya like me now? (A lot, hopefully!)
Keep on blogging. And if you want a blog but don’t have the time or inclination to write or maintain it, that’s where Pistonbroke comes in – contact us today to get a ghost blogger in your corner and start communicating directly to your audience.