What Is A Blog?
In the simplest terms, a blog – or weblog – is an online journal, log or diary. Here, the company and/or individual shares long-form content with their readers. The content of the posts on a blog can be broad or specifically niched to the industry that they’re in. Think of any given topic and there’s bound to be a plethora of blogs on that topic. If there’s not, start one today! This is a great way to get your company to show up on Google. The earliest forms of blogs have been around for approximately 25 years. At this time, individuals would post their own life updates or musings on the internet, with their readers being whoever they’ve chosen to share the details with. Fast forward to 2020, and blogs are accessible to all with an internet connection and make up a key part of most marketing strategies.
Why Your Company Needs A Blog
01. It Improves Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) And Ranking Of Your Website
Writing targeted blog posts are a great way to continually rank for different keywords within search engines. In Yo Telecom’s case, we might write posts on a specific phone system or broadband package as these are two key things that we offer. These are also what our customers are in need of. As well as this, blog posts also provide a great opportunity for internal linking. This is linking back to other relevant content on your site that you’ve written, which is vital for SEO.
02. Strengthen Brand Image And Tone Of Voice
Does your company have a very specific tone of voice or personality? Writing a blog is a great way to showcase this, particularly as this often can’t be achieved by other standalone pages on a website. If all of your content follows a similar theme, this helps to amplify your brands’ image. Similar looking branded images, key phrases and tone of voice are three ways to theme your posts.
03. Increase Trust In Your Brand By Showing Authority
If a user inputs a question into a search engine, clicks on a link to your post and your content answers their question, they are more likely to see your brand favourably as a result. This is because their query has been resolved as a direct result of your expertise, showing that your brand is one that can be relied on for useful information, hence building trust in your company.
04. You Can Direct Traffic To Specific Pages
Whilst a user may have ended up on your blog following a specific question or query, you can also direct them towards another page that is of interest to you. For example, our post What is Fibre Broadband answers a very specific question, but at the bottom of the post is a ‘Book Free Demo’ button which sends readers to a contact form for a demonstration of what Yo Telecom can offer for their business. This format can be used for any page that you’d like to drive more traffic to, whether it be your ‘Contact’ page, ‘Services’ page or ‘About Us’ page.
05. It’s A Promising Avenue For Lead Generation
A blog can be a great source of inbound leads for any industry. For example, if you write a food-based blog for your restaurant or gastropub, you could write posts on current seasonal produce, trends in food, and cookery tips but link all of these to your current menu. This serves two purposes, to increase the number of internal links on your site and also to drive customer footfall ultimately leading to profit.
06. There’s A Constant Supply Of Content For Social Media
Creating content for multiple social channels can be a lengthy task, but an easy way to reduce this is to cross-post your blog posts on other platforms. A short excerpt, an image from the post and a link will more than suffice. Not only this, but cross-posting also allows your content to be seen by more people, driving up your impressions and attracting more potential customers.
07. It Allows For Two-Way Conversations
This has been touched on multiple times, but communication is vital for building stronger client relationships and a blog is a great way to start conversations with current and potential customers. Finishing a blog post with a question is the simplest yet most effective way to initiate a conversation with your readers, allowing for a discussion between brand and customer to begin.
A blog is a great asset to your company’s marketing strategy for a number of reasons; from creating conversations to strengthening your brands’ voice, and improving your sites’ ranking to generating leads. If there’s one thing you do for your business in 2020, it should be starting a blog!
Not sure what to write about? Our post What To Share On Your Company Blog is a great starting point for any industry…
Has your company got a blog yet? If so, what are your most popular posts?
