In the last installment of this blog series, we discussed what blogging is and where it stemmed from. But, we didn’t touch on the reasons why you might want to use a blog or how to do so effectively. Blogging is not just for someone who wants to share their results with the world as they work their way through a famous cookbook. Although it can very successfully be used for that, blogs can serve as a useful tool for companies who want to generate leads, spread awareness of their company or products, and build consumer loyalty.
According to Demand Metric, when compared to other forms of marketing, content marketing like blogging can create three times as many leads for a company. This is because blog posts make it so there is more content relating to your company available for search engines to index and present for those searching for related topics. With more content available for related topics, there is more possibility that people will read about you and want to do business with you or remember you for a later date. That is why it is also a great way to build more loyalty for your company as a whole. Demand Metric reports that reading forms of content marketing like blogs makes consumers feel closer to your company 70% of the time. Thus, blogging opens the door for your company to grow their brand, client list, and overall presence online.
As mentioned in the last series post, the blog format is fairly fluid. There is no strict rule for the length or style of writing. Because of this, blogs and blog articles come in many different forms. This also means that numerous statistics and tips for writing the perfect kind of blog article have been created depending on the goals of your company. For example, it has been reported that longer articles are better for generating leads. Above everything else, the most important aspect for successfully running a blog is regular content. The more posts you make in a month, the more traffic and potential leads you will generate for your company. The content for these blog posts can vary, as long as it is somewhat related to your company, brand, or service.
The ways in which you present the content to your readers can vary greatly from scholarly research articles to graphic-based statistic posts. It has been reported that ‘listicle’ and/or ‘how-to’ formatted blog posts are preferred by readers because the bulleted or numbered items make it easier to skim to the information they want in the post. You can expect that nearly half of your potential readers will only skim posts and articles anyway. With all of this variety, starting a new blog for a company should involve a fair amount of trial and error experimentation with your blog posts to see what works best for your goals. It is generally a good idea to vary the length and style of your articles, titles, and even graphics/images while paying attention to reader response, leads, and traffic to your website to detect any correlations. But again, the one key component you need for a blog is content. No matter what, content will almost always bring traffic. After that it just becomes a matter of how much or useful that traffic becomes. For more information about blogs, stay tuned for the rest of this blog series.
Direct Placement, LLC is a digital marketing agency dedicated to helping you with your digital marketing needs. We offer a range of services from website development to social media marketing to SEM. We are a Google Partner and Bing Ads Accredited Company with a team of trained and experienced Marketing Advisors and Account Managers ready to help you meet your
marketing goals. Contact Direct Placement, LLC today to learn more about our services and start increasing your presence online now! Follow us on Twitter or Facebook for more digital marketing related content or to find the rest of this blog series.