As much as we'd love to tell you differently, your website alone isn't always going to offer enough to make an impact online to stand out from the sea of competitors available through a simple search. As good as your website might look, and as seamlessly as it may operate, without the content to gain some traction, there isn't always going to be enough of an audience around to really appreciate its beauty. Thankfully though, introducing consistent blogging opportunities into your site and your content strategy can help to give your website - and your brand - a welcome boost. More than just expanding your online presence though, regular blogging offers your brand the chance to connect with your audience (and potential new clients too), supplying them with the answers to all the questions they could possibly conjure, but doing so with plenty of that winning style and personality your brand is known for - helping you stand out from the crowd!
Whilst there are many (expensive) ways to attempt to drive traffic to your website, the blog is unique in that it’s free but also an incredibly effective tool to organically drive audiences into your clutches. The more blogs you create and put time into, then the more questions you can answer, and more importantly – as far as search engines are concerned – the more keywords and phrases you can slyly sprinkle into your content. With search engines always on the hunt for new content to index and scan through, creating relevant blogs can help to enrich your site with the type of exciting industry content that your audience is likely to search for. With every blog post, you create, you're also doing wonders to create opportunities for your website to appear within search rankings. Doing so will provide your brand with the perfect opportunity to improve your SEO strategy through all the relevant long-tail keywords, titles, and meta tags.
With customers growing weary of traditional “buy now” marketing prompts advertising, they can often smell from a mile away when you’re pestering them to sell something – and they won’t always like it. Blogs offer a more dynamic and slightly more subtle way of advertising to prospective clients by creating content that your audience is actively searching for, whilst also sliding in the opportunity to advertise your company, your brand, and the full potential of your products and services you can offer. Providing value to your audience through relevant blogs that are tailored and personalised can help to attract the right people to your website and everything your website showcases. Offering more of an in-depth, long-form type of engaging content in the form of a blog (as opposed to direct sales tools) can do wonders to keep the audience interested in what you have to say. And whilst you have their attention, it would be rude not to try and sell something to them...
Whilst it would be advisable to create blogs that are at the very least somewhat relevant to your brand and your industry, that doesn’t mean your creativity has to be hamstrung by a formula or hard restrictions. All in all, the content you come up with can be flexible - ranging from industry news, opinion and think pieces, advice and storytelling, or internal news and staff blogs for a more personal touch. As large parts of your website, your brand, and your marketing materials might be more strait-laced and direct in tone, blogs allow you the opportunity to unwind and relax a little. By taking on a less serious tone, you can offer your audience the chance to peek behind the curtain and see a bit more of your brand in a way they wouldn’t usually. The flexibility offered by blogs crafts an engaging space to connect with your audience by showing them you are more than just the products you sell or the services you offer. You’re a brand made up of creative and dynamic individuals that have a lot to offer and say. Sharing more insight into your brand can help let those individuals shine, humanising your business by showing off the personality and the edge behind it.
Looking to save time, resources, and the stress of coming up with exciting, new content? Not only can blogs become a key part of your website's digital strategy, but they can also transform your social channels and become a content pillar. Every blog you put to the screen can be easily repurposed and shared via your social media channels so that you're not just exposing it to a larger audience and making it easier to share around but you're also saving time and resources to create content perfect for socials. Easy to cherry-pick and tweak, sharing blogs across social media allows you to create content that’s fit for multiple uses over a period of time, whilst at the same time helps to drive traffic towards your site. Creating engaging content, strengthening your social channels, AND driving traffic to your website? Blogging can do it all.
Whilst relevancy might fade or change over the years, there is no obvious or immediate expiry date for blogs. Unlike other types of content or marketing materials, blogs have great potential to drive long term results. This is something our parent company, Minto Branding, has plenty of experience of with blogs from years gone by continuing to this day to get results and pull an audience to the site. And although not every blog is a direct sales tool, creating content that is engaging, fun, and informative will provide the blogs with a lasting shelf life that can see consistent results over time, potentially bringing in a new audience to your website and into the sales funnel. With all the work already done once the blog has been created and uploaded, blogging is a resourceful and innovative way to drive long term results without any additional investment.
