Have you given up writing blogs because you didn’t see the value?
Or have you not started because you see it as a lengthy time commitment to give away your knowledge for free?
Yes, producing regular blogs takes time for planning, research, writing and uploading, but having a blog strategy for your business brings multiple benefits.
When written well, with your audience in mind, blogs are a great way to connect with your ideal customers and drive growth.
Blogs add credibility
In the online world, we’re always fighting for attention. Unless your business operates in a super niche market,* there will be other businesses and ‘experts’ promoting the same product or service as you.
Blogs allow you to show your expertise and provide valuable, informative content that should be useful, interesting or enlightening to your audience. This builds trust and credibility, often beyond what your social media posts, adverts or even your website landing pages do because blogs allow you to go into greater detail or write at length about a topic.
If your blogs are well-timed or well-chosen, they can generate a lot of engagement and pick up shares, quotes, mentions, and even PR coverage if it’s picked up by journalists looking for expert opinion on the topic or industry.
*and if you do operate in a niche market, blogs are an ideal way to clarify exactly what you provide and to who.
Blogs provide reusable content
They may take some time to produce, but once you have a great blog (or, even better, a great collection of blogs), you have a rich content bank that can be used across your other marketing channels.
An instant win is to share your blog on your social media platforms – and you can get multiple posts from just one blog.
As well as sharing a link to the blog (getting traffic to your website), you can turn the blog into a vlog (video blog), break it down into separate points and post a series of social media posts, create infographics to illustrate your key points, use it as a lead magnet in your advertising, incorporate it into your email marketing / newsletters, or even use it as the basis of some training or an event presentation.
Blogs help with your SEO
Yep, it’s not just me and your audience that love blogs – Google and other search engines do too!
By regularly adding new content to your website Google recognises your website as being active and can reward you with better search rankings.
If you supercharge that by adding some great keywords into your blog (the words and phrases people are using to search online), you get extra points for having an optimised site and an even stronger chance of appearing in the search results.
Getting more visibility on search engines drives new traffic to your website that increases brand awareness and the potential for new leads and customers.
Blogs can generate leads and sales
Whilst your blog should predominantly be about adding value and informing the reader, you can (and should) incorporate lead generation elements.
By adding a call-to-action (CTA) with either a text reminder of what you offer, a button or link to click, you can convert your blog audience into paying customers. Your CTA might be a nudge to get in touch, a prompt to subscribe to your newsletter, download a brochure, or make a direct purchase.
When your readers take action on your blog post, you can use this captured information to nurture them through targeted follow-up marketing.
Here’s my CTA…
Blogs are only effective if they’re aligned with your audience’s interests, needs or pain points, they’re optimised with keywords, they’re written well, and include all the right elements. If you don’t have the time or skills, it’s well worth outsourcing this to someone who does – like me!
They don’t have to cost a huge amount – my charges typically range from £180 to £300 per blog (depending on how complex the subject and how much research will be required).
When you consider all the benefits of blogs, they are a really cost-effective marketing strategy.
Get in touch with me if you’d like a blog-writing quote.