We get it. You sell insurance, ice cream, or software for niche construction businesses. Why in the world would a blog be worth your time? To be honest, it probably is not worth your time. If you are reading this, you have probably fallen into the same fallacious trap: “digital marketing is the great equalizer for businesses thus I must do it all on my own.” True, digital marketing is the great equalizer for businesses. However, you don’t need to know it all. You just need to know how to delegate the various components of your marketing strategy. That’s an entirely different topic for a different day, though.
Blogging is probably the most deceitful of digital marketing tactics. It seems simple enough that it should be handled in-house. I mean, who knows your business and your target consumer better than you! We’d love to know how many of you read this started a blog, then stopped because it was too much work for no visible return on your time? And, then you figure, if it’s not worth my time, then it’s not worth my money. Here is where the magic happens in digital marketing.
Blogging is not about closing a deal because you wrote such an informational and compelling 500-word essay about your product or service. Blogging is about building your relevance and relationships. Here are 5 reasons why blogging matters in digital marketing.
1. Relevance: The search engine industry does not cater to businesses. It serves the searchers and brings value by showing them what they want and need to see. It’s about connecting them with the answer to their questions. If you are a new car dealership, for example, who has a value proposition for special finance customers, you likely don’t have anything on your website about special financing. A blog or a page dedicated to special financing (resist the urge to sell here, just give information), would build your credibility in the eyes of the search engines.
2. Relationships: Blogging is an opportunity to build relationships with your audience. Again, your goal here is not to be a place of encyclopedic information that will rank at the top of the search engines for your expertise and ingenuity. It is to offer value to your customers so that you become a trusted source of information. Trust is at the heart of what every consumer wants before they transact. Can they trust your product claims? Can they trust you’ll work with them post-purchase if they are not satisfied? There is not a single brand that does not require an element of trust to win over their customers.
3. Visibility: Your goal is to show search engines and visitors that you have expertise, that you offer them value before they transact with you.
When you offer valuable content it draws visibility which only increases your chances of being chosen at the time of transaction. The more content you have on your site that can answer search engine queries, the more visibility you will receive. Blogging is a cost-efficient way to bring visibility to your online store in search results.
4. Understand website behavior: Blogging allows you to gauge your consumers’ behavior. When you publish content and promote it on your social channels, you will see how people engage with it, provided you have your analytics ducks in a row. The more you know about how people receive your content, the better equipped you will be to continue publishing content that converts, which leads to advertising efficiency.
5. Brand Awareness: It is one thing to spend millions of dollars on a commercial during the Superbowl to build brand awareness. It is an entirely different thing to generate content for hundreds of dollars that builds brand image, integrity, and awareness. That’s some serious bang for your buck. Would you rather have a one-and-done ad worth a pretty penny, or a piece of practically free informational content that will work for you over time without any extra money or effort.