Creating a Blog is a Must When You Are Writing Website
When working with clients and writing website, often their faces change from smiles to frowns when we mention the importance of blogging. Then they are presented with the following facts:
- Nearly 40% of US companies use blogs for marketing purposes
- Companies that blog have 55% more website visitors.
- B2C companies that blog get 88% more leads/month than those who don’t.
- B2B companies that blog get 67% more leads/month than those who don’t.
The facts speak for themselves. Marketing data clearly shows that blogging is a critical piece of writing website and directly correlates to better business results.
But merely blogging won’t dramatically transform your marketing. Your blog has to be well-optimized and promoted, and, most of all, rich with content. Frequency of blogging plays an important role in this equation, too. In fact, companies who blog 20 or more times in a month see the most return in traffic and leads.
A blog is a long-term marketing asset that will bring traffic and leads to your business. It introduces you as a thought leader in your space and allows you to earn people’s trust.
Blogging and SEO
First, business blogging helps you in respect to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The more blog posts you publish, the more indexed pages you create for search engines to display in their results.
In other words, business blogging helps you rank in search engines and get found when people search for industry-specific products or services. Thus the blog enables you to attract organic traffic and familiarize people with your business.
- In this framework, frequency of publishing blog posts matters a lot. Businesses who blog 16 to 20 times per month get over two times more traffic than those who blog less than four times per month.
- The other essential element of attracting more traffic through organic search is optimizing your blog posts. Make sure your blog titles incorporate industry keywords that people enter in search engines as they do research.
- What is the most important search engine keyword that you have not yet blogged about? Take that keyword, and write a blog post about it. Blogging is a great tool for driving search engine traffic. Take advantage of it!
Blogging and Lead Generation
Your blog is an asset that introduces you as a thought leader. So if you have some industry specific information to share, a blog will help you earn people’s trust and stay top of mind for many in your community.
- Be a Problem Solver – Name the biggest problem your customers have. With that problem in mind, write a detailed blog post that provides practical and non-product focused solutions. Solve your customers’ problems with content.
- Build Thought Leadership – Use your blog as a platform to showcase your expertise on a given subject. Inject your knowledge of the industry into your blog posts and make a clear distinction between your brand and your competition.
- Earn People’s Trust – In a recent survey 71% of respondents said that blogs affect their purchasing decisions either somewhat or very much.
How to Optimize your business blog
- Include social media sharing buttons
- Include an image that conveys what the blog is about
- Use Eye-catching & Optimized Titles
- Formatting is important – break text up in chunks
- Use Calls-to-Action
- What makes people share a post with others is the actionable insight it provides to solve a problem. Provide clear takeaways and actionable steps in blog posts to ensure your idea resonates with readers.
- Comparing two seemingly different things and drawing connections between them is a valuable way to combine relevance and generate more interest in a subject.
- Informative doesn’t mean boring
- Be definitive – great blogs are not meek or subtle