8 Reasons Why You Need a Blog Content Strategy
With all the different types of content available to use and explore today, you could be forgiven for getting distracted and neglecting your blogs.
But that stops today! Blogging has, and should still be, one of your top priorities when it comes to content marketing, as it is the perfect avenue for telling stories and engaging your audience.
According to HubSpot, blogs are still among the primary three forms of media used in content marketing strategies in 2020, revealing that the majority of businesses still utilize this reliable form of content creation.
Here are 8 reasons as to why your business needs a blog content marketing strategy to remain front-of-mind in the eyes of your target customers.
- Blogging helps to generate successful social media strategies.
In times past, blogging and social media platforms were used independently, without any collaboration between the two or correlation between the talking points of each post.
In 2021, however, businesses recognize that social media marketing can be used as a link to your blog, and can be a way of advertising your articles and more informative content to your target audience.
By having your socials and blogs work together, you can drive engagement with your customers and promote your brand much more efficiently.
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Blogs can become a long-term way to produce frequent content.
Blogs are all about engaging your audience through storytelling, and each week, or even day, there can be new topics to discuss and inform your readers about.
Blogging is the perfect way to keep engagement up with your target audience, as by posting frequent, educational and hopefully fun blogs, readers will be able to keep up-to-date with your business and form a long-term connection with your brand.
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Blogging increases your expertise and generates thought leadership.
For your blogs to be truly successful, they must resonate with your target audience.
Your blog topics and posts must assess the current issues facing your clients, or the primary needs they may have at this point in time.
By using the right tone and language within your blogs, your posts can be used by your target audience to find solutions to their problems or satisfy their needs, showing clients that you have the right expertise and authority for their industry, and that you are competent at producing high-quality content on topics relating to your industry.
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You will generate more leads through blogs than advertisements.
Not only do advertisements cost your business money you could be budgeting for other areas of your work, they are shown to be far less effective than blog posts in generating new leads.
According to HubSpot, you will generate three times more leads for your business through blogs than you would ads, meaning it is definitely much cheaper and simpler to spend your time on creating high-quality blog posts, rather than spend money on less effective advertisements.
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You can create a like-minded community through blogging.
As we have acknowledged, the primary purpose of any content creation is to generate leads and engage your target audience.
Blogging can be a way to facilitate new conversations in your industry by discussing current issues and through focusing on topics troubling or affecting your businesses’ industry today.
By discussing the right topics in your blog posts, you will attract a like-minded audience and create an engaged community who will become more interested in the content produced by your business, and therefore more likely to stay engaged with your business in the long-term.
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Blogs are trusted and well respected.
Blogs are not just another form of content for your business to produce.
Blogs are where you can create stories, find the tone your business wants to relay onto your target audience, and create trust between you and your audience by discussing issues relevant to them and their work.
People trust blogs, which is why you need to ensure that what you are posting is helpful and accurate if you are to increase the trust your audience has in your business.
By encouraging discussions between your readers and by creating posts that differentiate you from your competitors, other businesses and people within your industry will come to trust and respect what you have to say.
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Blogging is affordable and supports other content strategies.
Saying blogging is affordable is an understatement, as there are many platforms available for you to post your personal blogs for free!
Even for content marketing teams and businesses, blogging is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to produce content and release it to their target audience efficiently.
Not only is blogging low-cost, it is one of the easiest ways to support other content produced by your business.
You can create links within your blogs and make reference to other forms of content produced by your business that is relevant to the topic being discussed, such as other recent blog posts, website content, or videos produced by your business, just to name a few.
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Blogging can expand your own knowledge and push you out of your comfort zone.
Coming up with blog topics that will interest and excite your readers can be challenging if you want to create frequent blog posts relevant to your business or industry.
That is why they can be a great way for your content team to branch out and learn about new topics they might not have had any prior knowledge about.
Your target audience wants to read content that provides them with new and insightful information, which means a lot of the time it will be necessary for your content team to do their research if you are to truly engage with your readers.
Ultimately, there are many reasons as to why blogging is still one of the best forms of content out there; we have just given you a few here today to stress its importance.
It would be a huge mistake to not have blogging as one of your content team’s top priorities, as by having a high-quality blog producing frequent topics and discussions, your business will be able to grow your brand and increase customer traffic and engagement quickly and cheaply.
The Ultimate Guide to Blogging
Blogging, a concept that once used to represent an outlet for individuals to document their lives online has now transformed into an indispensable part of marketing.
If your business doesn’t have a blog, chances are there is a huge scope of improvement in your marketing efforts. Blog marketing is the process of using blogs to reach and inform your target audience. So, what is a blog?
Hubspot defines a blog as “posts that allow you and your business to publish insights, thoughts, and stories on your website about any topic. They can help you boost traffic, brand awareness, credibility, conversions, and revenue.”
Blogging is as simple – and as complex – as that.
Now that we know what it means, here is an ultimate guide to improving your blogging game:
Step 1: Determine the ‘why’ you’re blogging
According to SEMrush even though your blog is a large part of your content marketing strategy, its main purpose isn’t sales – and we can’t agree more!
While you create your blog, it is important to remember that your blog is a space to show your customer that you care and want to add value to their lives. Therefore, it is crucial to publish information that will establish your brand as a credible thought leader in the field.
Blogging has other advantages too.
The Balance Small Business outlines a few other pros – it is inexpensive to start and maintain, easy to use, generates website traffic, improves SEO, engages your target audience and creates more avenues to generate revenue.
Step 2: Know your audience
While the purpose of your blog may be to establish your company as a thought leader and to elevate the brand’s image, it is just as important (if not more important) to cater to your audience’s interests.
Remember, your audience is interested in the services you offer, but it’s your job to convince them that your business is the right fit for them. So, if you start pitching your business straight away, you’re sure to lose your audience.
Therefore, it is important that you are producing something that adds value to your target audience’s lives, introduces them to new ideas and hooks them to find out more. For example, if you’re a marketing firm, there are a billion other firms out there. Your audience will look to your blog to understand what you’re doing that’s new and interesting in the field. So, you may want to talk about marketing tips, strategies and tools that may help your customer, rather than the specific services that you offer.
So how do you know what your customer wants? Create profiles on your target audience!
It’s all about breaking down your target audience by demographics, needs, financial capacity and a host of other metrics to really understand how they think, what their needs are and then understanding how to meet that need.
Step 3: Engage your audience
With a wealth of information available at our fingertips, it’s no secret that people’s attention spans are getting shorter. Therefore, it becomes very important to engage your target audience.
A catchy heading is absolutely essential to capture your audience’s attention.
This should be short, snappy and attractive. This can usually take the form of “How to” or “What is” or “10 ways to…” posts.
It’s best to use the listicle format so your content looks well-organized and delivers what it promises by establishing clear topics and sub-topics.
Next, you need to have a great intro.
The first few sentences of your blog can make or break your blog. It makes the difference between generating a lead and losing a customer. HubSpot recommends that you “tell a story, be empathetic, or grip the reader with an interesting fact or statistic.”
The rest of your post can be written in any format you desire, as long as you keep your objective in mind throughout the process. This could include infographics, photos, videos, and other creative forms of expression.
Step 4: Develop a content marketing plan
Social Media Examiner recommends mapping out your marketing calendar. The idea is to create hooks around content that you develop.
This means organizing your content to come out at an appropriate time – this can include public holidays, and other important dates, as well as dates specific to your product or service such as events, conferences and tradeshows you attend or any other marketing activation that you engage in.
Step 5: Be heard
Once all the hard work of producing a brilliant blog is done, you want to share the news!
The first step is ensuring that your content is search engine optimized. This means ensuring that relevant keywords are incorporated seamlessly into the article, as well as ensuring that your blog is optimized for mobile phones. Scott Chow offers other neat hacks to SEO such as header tags, permalinks and categorization.
Other methods of marketing your blog can include simple word-of-mouth, sharing your blog across your social media – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram, creating an EDM campaign, engaging with other bloggers and even including calls to action on your blog to engage more actively with your target audience.
And most importantly, have fun with it!
Your blog is your space to get your creative juices flowing and create something new and interesting to share – enjoy the process!