Marketers who blog have a distinct advantage over those who don’t blog, and we have cold hard data to prove it. According to at least one study, 43% of marketers generated a customer from their blog this year alone. And 79% of companies who keep a blog report a positive return on investment for all inbound marketing. If that doesn’t convince you to start a blog or pick up where you left off, there’s probably not much that will. Blogging is still crucial to marketing in 2013 and for a variety of reasons; a few of which are listed below.
Visibility
The truth is running your own blog is a great way to get noticed in the search results. Google, Bing and Yahoo are constantly on the lookout for up-to-date information in order to feed a growing and hungry audience. When you produce regular content, you give the search engines, and search engine users, exactly what they’re looking for.
To help your blogging posts stand out even further, connect your blog to your Google+ Local account. Then, each time you post a new entry, your photo and Google+ information will show up right in the search results. Having your photo posted alongside your title gets your listing noticed; and sometimes that’s all you need to entice the click.
Authority
You can tell people you’re an expert, or you can prove it to them. A blog allows you to do just that.
Some marketers use their About Us page to toot their own horn and to try and convince their target audience that they’re the best in the biz. They may even put images on their site to show them in action. All of this is just smoke and mirrors and will do little to convince your audience that they should listen to you.
Running your own blog is a much better indicator of your education, training and experience. With regular tips and advice, instruction and even anecdotes and warnings, your audience will know that it’s clear you know what you’re talking about; and they’ll likely start following every post you create.
Personality
Customers today don’t want to deal with faceless companies. They want to do business with people. At the very least, they want to know that an actual person will listen to them and respond in case they have any questions or concerns. More than that, customers want to know that the person behind the company has their best interests in heart. If you’re looking for a platform to show your personality to your audience, blogging is where it’s at.
Regular blogging, if executed correctly, allows you to make your viewpoints known as a company and as the person writing the blog. You can inject humor, ask readers personal questions and you can make your voice heard. Whatever you want to say, you’ll be able to say it. And your audience will appreciate the personal touches, but that personality also serves another purpose.
Your customers will connect with your company much more if they know that there’s an actual person behind the curtain, and that you actually care.
Blogging Tips
Follow these tips to become more effective at running your own blog so that you can beat out the competition in blog readers, comments and in the search results.
1. Publish Often: Multiple times per week is best, but at least once a week is the very minimum rate by which you should be publishing blogs. There is far too much competition out there for you to loaf around. Make a list of subjects ahead of time and start writing; but what should you write about?
2. Pertinent, Unique And Valuable Information: Choose subjects that are really interesting to your audience. Use your competitors for inspiration and hit up message boards to see what people in your field are discussing. Try to give tips, tricks, advice, and anything else your target audience would find irresistible; and make sure the information is correct and the best of its kind online.
3. Share and Respond: Every time you publish a new blogging post, spread it far and wide on Facebook, Twitter and any other social networks you use. And when readers respond in the comments section or when you get a response on one of your social channels, respond in kind. Try to get a conversation going to truly solidify that bond between customer and the blogging author.
The data is in and bloggers everywhere are experiencing the proof – running your own blog is still crucial for all successful marketing campaigns. If you’re not keeping a blog or if your blog has been dormant for some time, it’s time to wake up the author in you.
