Since the proliferation of social media, online news and publications, blogging may appear ‘old school’ or a less valuable form of communication. However, this is a misconception.
Blogging is a powerful tool that businesses can use to drive brand awareness, through-leadership and generate conversations.
1. Creating Community
A blogging community is a collection of people who frequently read and engage with the content that you are sharing. With this in mind, it’s important to think about your target audience and the type of content that will keep them engaged and coming back to your blog.
For example, if you are a public relations and communications agency, blogging about key trends in the industry, events to look out for, or even the most relevant podcasts to listen to is a great way to keep your audience interested in what you have to say.
One of the biggest advantages of blogging over some of the more modern forms of communication e.g. social media is that you can keep it in long-form. For example, on Twitter, you are limited to just 280 characters.
Blogging allows you to take a deep dive and connect with your community on a more profound level, producing content that is much more informative, in-depth and thought-provoking. Your audience can also reply in long-form, facilitating a discussion that goes much further than a few emojis and a short comment.
2. Branding and thought-leadership
In a world where everything is increasingly done online, often anonymously behind a screen, ensuring your audiences and partners have trust in your business is essential. Blogging is a great tool to help you become a trusted thought-leader in your field.
Company blogs are a great place to showcase what your business has been up to and to demonstrate that you’re out and about and part of the industry conversations. Have you been to any relevant exhibitions or conferences recently? Or perhaps you have been nominated for an award. It’s important to highlight any public affairs engagement on your website to build legitimacy and position yourself as an expert spokesperson.
Companies can also use their blog to highlight positive reviews from clients and customers. With over 60% of customers reading reviews of a company before they decide to engage with them, this is essential for building trust.
3. SEO and Lead Generation
Blogging is one of the best ways to improve your SEO ranking (the position of a website on the results of a search engine). By doing proper keyword research, you can discover what topics your audience is interested in based on search engine data. This will help to ensure your content is relevant and on-trend.
Blogs bring in audiences that are interested in a particular topic and as long as call-to-actions are used correctly, bring in leads.
Think carefully about the title of your blog post as this can impact your SEO. For example, having a keyword in the title will make it more SEO friendly. Google Analytics should give you a useful insight into the keywords your website is currently ranking for. The Hubspot Blog Ideas Generator is also a brilliant tool for providing blog title ideas surrounding specific nouns and topics.
Similarly, it’s a good idea to link your blog posts to reputable websites as this will show that you have done your research, benefit SEO and provide a good user experience to drive engagement. This will help you build a more convincing profile and drive engagement.
Blogging, as an essential component of content marketing, can help a company stand out in its field and ensure you have a trusted and leading voice in your sector. At Sapience, our team has extensive experience in content and digital marketing in a variety of sectors.
Find out how we could help you via our contact us page.
