Today, the internet is packed full of approximately 150 million different blogs. A couple of decades ago, nobody cared about whether you had a blog or not – then again, in that time, the internet wasn’t quite as essential to business success as it is today. We all remember the days when the word “blog” was associated with teenagers plastering music lyrics over a brightly-colored background and looking for ways to vent their frustration. Today, however, blogging is by far one of the most popular and effective facets of internet marketing available.
Blogging can help companies, causes, people, and organizations to generate further interest in their organization or brand, while showing off important information to your followers about how your company, industry, or product works.
Yet, despite this, I still have people asking me why blogging is such an important part of building a healthy web presence. As a result, I’ve written this post to provide something of an education. Uninitiated – Prepare to be enlightened…
Blogging helps you to Increase Traffic
Raise your hand if you want more people to visit your website.
Of course you do. More visitors means more chances for conversions, and more conversions means more money for your business, company or cause.
Think about the various ways that people find your website:
- They could simply type in your website name, but the chances are that these people are part of an audience that you already have. That’s great – but it doesn’t help to give you more
- You could shell out extra cash for paid advertisements, and find that as soon as your funds run dry, your traffic goes missing too.
- You could try illegal methods that end up getting your website kicked off the internet altogether.
The best option for driving traffic, is to use blogging, social media, and search engines. Every time you write a new blog post, you’re adding yet another indexed page to your website, giving Google and other Search Engines a cue that your website is active, engaging and ready to be seen.
Every new indexed page you develop gives you another opportunity to show up higher in the search engines and push people towards your website in an organic and natural way. Blogging also helps you to become more socially active, as you’re actively producing content that can be shared on networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook.
Develop Customer Relationships
Okay, so you’ve gotten your traffic to come to you – what’s next?
In short? – Keeping them there.
Blogging gives organizations an opportunity to connect with the people who visit their site. This can be achieved by asking questions at the end of posts to get conversations flowing, or simply by allowing interested parties to get in touch with their requests, feedback and comments. By listening to your audience and seeing what they care about, you can create a relationship that builds trust and offers a valuable insight into improving your company.
Blogging Demands That You Learn Your Business
Whether you are simply writing blogs yourself, or accessing a professional writer to do it for you, you’re going to need to think about the topics you want to cover, and review the information that you’re giving out. If you need to come up with some ideas on what your audience might want to read about, or review the facts given in a post for relevance, you’ll have to learn about your business or industry along the way.
Keeping up with a regular blog can help you to improve your understanding of your own business, meaning that you can offer more valuable information to your target market. Blogging also ensures that you’re regularly updating your knowledge of the latest technology, trends, and news that is relevant to your company.
Establish Your Authority
The more you know about your business, the more you can define yourself within your industry as a source of valuable, expert information. If your readers can trust you to consistently produce accurate, helpful and informative content, you will become a go-to resource for them – which then actively increases consumer conversion rates, and helps you to make an impact in your sphere.
Why Bother Blogging?
From a practical perspective, blogging in today’s marketing world just makes sense. With minimal effort, you can take steps to build the ranking of your website on search engines, increase your active traffic, improve credibility and foster relationships with current and potential customers.