How Blogging Can Help your Business
Blogging has been around for decades now, but it continues to be a cornerstone of SEO strategy in modern times. The usefulness of blogging can be summarized in one statistic: companies that maintain a blog get 97% more links to their website.
Here at The Look & The Feel, blogging is a key tactic we've used to build our company SEO and, ultimately, generate quality business leads. Quite simply, blogging and revenue go hand-in-hand—content marketing is a time investment but the ROI is well worth the time spent.
Look at it from this angle: brands clearly want to boost their business links, and to achieve this, they need to share valuable content, which is mostly done via blogging. Marketing via blogging has become the secret weapon for companies that want to connect with their customers and maintain resilience in a competitive market.
In addition to connecting you to the right customers at the right time, blogging can lead to more money for your business.
Want to understand how you can raise your online presence and build brand awareness with blogging? Read below to find out more.
Why is blogging important for branding?
Blogging helps your brand build credibility and trust.
Blog posts provide excellent opportunities for you to connect with your customer base on both a personal and professional level. The personable, friendly tone of posts can help make your brand feel more human and approachable, an essential part of lead generation.
Giving your customers fascinating, relevant content can establish your expertise as a company and allow your customers a window into the way you do business. Don't miss this opportunity to put your best foot forward.
Blogging allows you to educate your customer and provide more valuable information than general website copy.
While website content is critical to the success of any company, it isn’t all-encompassing. Customers crave other outlets for gaining knowledge as well, and blogs provide the perfect avenue for providing additional, highly valuable information that boosts your relevance.
Blog posts often capture more newsworthy, in-the-moment content that excites your customer base and gives you an innovative edge. Blog content also gives you a chance to elaborate and expand on your brand message to really drive your point home.
Blogging drives quality traffic to your website.
Blog posts are often found and shared through social media, allowing for wide dissemination of the content and an increase in your business's visibility. In fact, around 96% of bloggers promote blog posts through social media.
This can generate new traffic to your website, made up of customers who've already taken an interest in your brand content and voice. In general, blogging has the dual benefit of increasing both the number and quality of the leads your business receives.
Blogs answer questions your customers are searching for.
Blogging provides a unique platform for addressing your customers' most pressing needs, from FAQs about your services to strategies for enhancing their health and wellbeing.
Blogs are incredibly versatile, and can often help answer questions your customers didn't even know they had -- they provide immediate value, even before a customer decides to work with you.
Convinced you need to at least consider starting a blog? Great. Now the next hurdle is learning the essentials for how to use blogging to promote your business. This can feel like a daunting process at times, which is why we've broken it down into a few blogging basics that just about anyone can tackle.
What are blogging best practices?
Stay consistent.
Blogging requires consistency in order to build and maintain your readership and generate more leads over time. With that said, be sure to choose a frequency you can commit to.
I'd suggest starting with one blog a month and building from there. Once you get into a rhythm, you'll probably find that you can blog more frequently. Google and other search engines value websites that are regularly and consistently updated, and blogging is an easy way to ensure your website doesn’t become stagnant.
Ultimately, the more you blog, the more likely that your audience will find you. It's all about building your SEO!
Write ~1000-1200 words.
Of course, there's no one "magic number" for how long your blog posts should be. However, you don’t want to create a post that is too short.
Research shows that 1,000-1,200 words may be the sweet spot; any less than that, and it isn't SEO-friendly, any more and you might lose the reader's attention.
Always add in links to reputable websites and sources to support your content. Incorporating external links can show you've done your homework and that there are credible sources backing up your points. This helps solidify your expertise on any given topic, and can also guide the reader to other useful sources of information, providing them with added value.
Link to your internal content, too, to keep the reader on your site.
Internal links can direct your customer to additional content that may be helpful to them, while giving your brand added visibility. This is a deft way of giving a customer more exposure to your business and services, often resulting in increased lead generation.
You might also consider including a "call to action" that leads your reader to a particular service, product, or piece of content associated with your brand. For example, you could link to a different blog post, for instance, or to your business's "services" page so the customer can find out more about your offerings. Including at least one "call to action" can help build meaningful traffic to your site.
Consider adding images.
A really good image captures a reader's attention and helps the blog post stand out against the competition. Blog posts that contain images get 94% more views, an impressive statistic that may mean the difference between a customer connecting with your business or walking away forever.
Sometimes it's important to get back to the basics, to stick to the elemental principles of lead generation that have been proven to work over many years and for countless businesses. In the midst of a challenging market, there's never been a better time to commit to the tried and true practices for building SEO strategy and developing brand awareness.
Have you used blogging as a business? Have you had success with blogging for lead generation? Ever made a blogging mistake you'd like to warn others about? We'd love to hear about your own blogging best practices. Feel free to share some of your blogging tips in the comments below!
Need help with blogging strategy and/or copywriting?
We can help with everything ranging from how to write a blog, how to choose a blog topic, how to develop a blog calendar, and much, much more! Talk with our brand experts to find out if we're a good fit.
