It is critical in today’s online marketing world that businesses must incorporate blogging into their content marketing plan. Companies of all sizes from all types of industries should take up blogging. If you do not have a blog on your website today your business is getting left behind.
Why blogging is important…
Blogging helps your business achieve many things including:
Building a personal connection with your customers: Writing relevant content in your blogs helps consumers build trust in your business which leads to establishing strong relationships with potential customers.
Educating the customer: Customers learn about your company and product offerings by reading your content. Crafting quality content that is useful to the customer will encourage them to engage, interact and share it with others building further relationships.
An expert in your field: Your content may be of educational value to customers and they will return for more as they will see you as an expert in their area of interest.
Brand Identity: Your valuable content differentiates you from your competitors and sets a corporate image of how your business is perceived.
Share-ability: By providing consistent and in-depth content throughout your blogs there is potential that the reader is most likely to return or share it to others using various channels.
Exposure for your business: For a business to become more visible in Google’s search rankings it is important to develop good quality content. Using relevant keywords or phrases within your content improves Search Engine Optimization. This creates greater exposure and increases traffic to your business’s online presence.
Lead Generation: Increased exposure allows further opportunities for your business to generate leads for potential sales.
On average, companies with blogs produce 67% more leads per month
– A Guide to Marketing Genius: Content Marketing
Remember when Blogging…
Before you start be sure to fully understand the topic and research it before you begin. Look for statistics or quotes that you can reference in your blog. Blogging is not only about writing about a topic and then publishing it in the hope that it will be seen, you still have to optimize the content in order to enhance its effectiveness for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search engine results page including Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines.
– Content Marketing Institute, 2015
Tips and tricks to optimising…
– If using the content management system WordPress there are some great plugins that can help you build SEO for your blog e.g WordPress SEO by Yoast. This is an ideal platform to use because it ties with Google’s requirements for search engine ranking. Some useful tips and tricks for optimising your blog include:
– When creating a blog, set a unique focus keyword that best represents that post. It is critical that the keyword appears throughout the content. Don’t use the keyword too often within the content as Google may interpret this as ‘keywordstuffing’ which could result in a penalty. Ensure your keyword appears in your title and meta description.
– It is recommended that a minimum of 300 words is written within the body copy of a blog. Remember it is not all about quantity but more so the quality of your content.
– It is best practice to include headings, images, internal and external links related to the content and place the keyword within these where possible. Uploading images, videos etc. will engage the reader.
– Use the 80/20 principle (80% about the topic, 20% about your business) – the preferred method of Google.
– Sharing your blogs on other platforms and channels like LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook will also increase traffic to your site and improve rankings.
MakinMediaMobile – blogging for your success…
Here at MakinMediaMobile we have many clients on board in which we have created a content marketing strategy with blogging as a core element. Want to increase traffic to your website? Haven’t got the time to blog? Contact us today for the best advice and we can devise a strategy to cater for your budget.
