It is no secret amongst the experts in the field of marketing that blogging contributes extensively to your online success and enhances your websites/business presence online. We ask is blogging still relevant in 2019, and how business owners and advertising agencies should utilise their marketing efforts and emphasise the importance in a successful blogging strategy.

Why Is blogging important?

Today more so than ever we see an abundance of video and other multimedia tools used on a variety of platforms. Social media has revolutionised the way people interact and do business, to such an extent it raises the question, is there still a need for a blog? The simple answer is a resounding yes! New businesses starting out and looking to develop a marketing strategy need to be made aware the importance of a successful blog. Blogging can be a highly effective marketing tool that business owners should utilise to make the most of their marketing efforts. You only need to look at some of the most notorious brands in the world today to see how their blogging efforts works as the perfect medium to engage with their audience.

A blog that remains consistent, informative and helpful is a sure-fire way to help drive the necessary traffic to your website, and as a result build on your brand. Main search engines like Google favours helpful, consistent blogging as their scans recognise websites which are active, and act as a place for users to acquire information.

A successful blog acts as an ideal way to engage with your target market. When done correctly, your consistency of helpful information will build a loyal fan-base that recognises your place in the market as the go to company for advice, and information.

New business is the lifeline of any successful company and recognising how this marketing tool can act as the gateway between you and new custom is paramount in building your brand. Developing your presence online is no easy thing to do, what businesses are continually learning is the importance of establishing a unique position in their market to help stay ahead of the competition. Furthermore, a consistent blog is not expensive, although when incorporated correctly it can be time consuming this will pay back in dividends for future business. The following are some key points to note on how a successful blogging strategy will benefit your business.

Blogging Improves Google Ranking

The very fact that you have a blog on your website is a step in the right direction. Just having these pages will show Google you’re a website that is keen to share information that is beneficial to its users. By becoming consistent with your blogging activity will certainly show Google you’re a site that needs to be taken seriously. Your ranking on search engines will significantly improve with helpful and sustainable blogging that provides high quality content.

These days simply having a website is not enough to compete online. Search engines like Google rewards sites that publish consistent and informative content which in turn provides value to its visitors. It is important to develop a strategy that is consistent and sustainable. Notably, being realistic with how often and how much you are able to post is the key to remaining a popular and likely site for people to follow. It isn’t uncommon for new websites to have mountains of enthusiasm at the start of their campaign by posting several blog posts, only to realise that consistently following this is unsustainable. By then, it is common for bloggers or owners to filter away from blog posts, as they are somewhat time consuming and demand effort to assure they are helpful and offer new insight into your industry. By taking small but effective steps is the best way to develop your marketing strategy catered towards blogs. After time has passed you are much more likely to reflect on your consistency to see areas for improvements, rather than an influx at the start to then tailor off to eventually nothing.

Blogging Is A Varied & Engaging Way To Develop Your Marketing Strategy

Today Blogging is an essential marketing tool that offers variety and flexibility in your marketing strategy. It is an ideal way for people to engage in your work, and perfect for looping in areas of your business you want to emphasise or promote. Should you have a new product or service, what better way to entice people in by writing exclusively about it?

With social media practically everywhere, this acts as the perfect platform to share your informative and helpful blog posts. What’s better, is that you’ll engage with your customers personally, and have a chance to see their feedback in relation to your blog. The likelihood of users passing through your blog post and landing on your web page increases with how relevant and informative the post actually is. Developing your skills here, is a great way to increase traffic to your website, and social media gives you that avenue for expansion, and supplies you great feedback. Once you establish yourself, your audience will soon learn that your business is one to follow and engaging with them through this medium offers that personal touch you can’t ignore.

A well thought out marketing strategy is made up of many variables, all of which helps tie areas into one other. As the world continues to evolve so to should your marketing strategies. Overtime, keywords may change, topics, products and services continue to evolve, meaning your blog posts can meet these topics and allows you to add your personal touch, adding a niche point of interest in your industry.

Blogs Are Informative & Helpful

When scrolling thorough social media, people can stumble across your blog posts and if produced well enough can gain knowledge of your topic or expand their thinking as food for thought. Your company may supply the very food they are looking for and acts as a great way to engage new custom to your website.

Shorter blogs are a popular way to share your unique look on a specific topic in your industry. Viewers can explore what you have to say or view a particular service or product and engage further with you. Well thought out blog posts are designed to be helpful and informative, but also refers them to your website to find out more.

Longer more in-depth blog posts allow you to go deeper and become a trusted spokesperson for whatever you are discussing or knowledgeable about. Blog posts that are well researched and designed to help the user acts as a tremendous vehicle to make your business stand out from the competition. This can make you the guru in your industry, and the go to place for opinion or information regarding related topics.

BLOG POSTS ACT AS A GREAT TOOL FOR INTERNAL LINKS

What better way to encourage user activity on your site by having links that refer them to other pages for more information. Your blog is the first point of reference as the hub for information in your industry. This is your opportunity to tie in related blog posts or link users to other areas of your website that offers your products or services.

Blogging has been proven to be the most effective way to encourage more time people spend on your website. This is due largely to the content being engaging and helpful allowing people to take something away from what you have published. This acts as the best way to give your customers value when they visit your website and gives great incentive to return for more.

Blogging – Making Your Efforts Sustainable

So far you will see how important blogging actually is to businesses, especially in 2019 as the more tools available to scrape information and data telling us this is the case. What’s essential for us to relay, particularly to any new business starting out, it’s not the quantity, it’s the consistency.

Blogs will ultimately be a reflection on your business, and therefore needs to be drafted out with care and attention. However, as previously mentioned well designed blog posts are demanding. They take time to research, and even longer to write about. Whilst it is imperative to do your due diligence, it is also important to note that taking too much time on a blog post can be detrimental to your overall goal. Firstly, if a blog post takes too long to draft and write this will kill your enthusiasm to do more, the exact opposite of what your trying to accomplish. Secondly, you’ll need to find a formula that works, and is sustainable.

There is no doubt that quality is paramount when releasing a blog post, the obvious to mention here is punctuation, spelling etc. however, if the post is very in depth and demanding this may have an impact on your frequency which is also considered to be of premium importance to your marketing goals. So there for it is of importance for the two to co-exist without inflicting too much stress on the other.

The following highlights some key reasons why we think it is essential to maintain a consistent and effective publishing routine that keeps your content fresh and current.

Help Boost SEO & Your Page Ranks

The more frequently you update your site with fresh content, the more opportunities you have to strengthen your SEO and be indexed higher by search engines.

Search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. use algorithm-based web crawlers to site and index over one-billion websites that currently exist online today (2019). These sites are ranked based on several variables such as inbound links, user time/ engagement, mobile compatibility, backlinks and much more.

Search engines are very active in crawling websites, in an attempt to look for new content. This is also true to websites who don’t publish any new content, search engines still do their due diligence and crawl your page. If your actively posting new information regularly, your chances to rank even higher the next time your site is crawled stands to increase.

There are other factors to mention that also build the SEO & page ranks which includes building a network of inbound links from outside sources. By obtaining other reputable sites to link to your website is an empowering sign to search engines like Google that the information on your website, blog post or web page is credible. One of the most successful ways to achieve this is by publishing content that other websites will want to link to, consistently.

New content keeps your site fresh, informative and allows Google to place your efforts in alignment with their policies and deliver the very best information to their users.

Keyword Profiles

The SEO (search engine optimisation) benefits of consistent blogging for businesses are more in depth than the results of site indexing and website crawling. By writing consistent blog posts, you stand to increase the likelihood of being found for the keywords in your industry. For example: If you are a mobile physio therapist looking to help and attract local people to your website, there is a high chance that people looking for your services will be typing in key words such as local physio, or injured shoulder.

Should your blog posts be frequent enough, you will find that it will make sense to cater your blog posts to these individual key words. This way people are able to find relative information regarding their query and stand a much higher chance of finding your services through the main search engines, Google, Bing, Yahoo etc.

Social Media Content

There is a high chance that if your business has a website your also likely to have been actively involved with the well-known social media platforms. Updating content, new campaigns or promotions, content will be funnelled through these avenues, but it is just as important to promote your new blog posts through this method as well.

Social media has a tremendous impact with the volume of people seeing your content. Stories, blog posts or informative content have one thing in common, they all tend to have high share counts which facilitate their popularity.

In a nutshell the more frequent your posts are visible on social media, the more opportunities are apparent for engagement. Frequency as related earlier is of significant importance, as user engagement is heightened when a loyal fan base is created and opportunities to grow become apparent. This can be measured with social media's analytic reports which highlight how many have viewed, liked, or shared your posts.

Creating meaningful, high quality content is no easy task. Being creative with your blogging and marketing techniques are the perfect remedy for content being read, liked and shared. Blogging and social media are closely entwined with each other, as your blog is the hub of where your content is created, and your social media profiles are where you share your blog posts to your target markets.

Blogging Consistently

Blogging consistently is easier said than done. As mentioned previously writing an effective blog takes up time and requires substantial effort that many business owners are already short of. Well prepared, researched blog posts are becoming a fine art that business owners are taking seriously. By incorporating certain techniques, we can identify ways forward by creating an action plan that’s sustainable and effective for your business.

Scheduling time to brainstorm topics or posts that you plan to write and stick to them for the coming months. Like with most things in life experience is a great teacher, and sometimes you’ll know how long a blog post will take to write based on how long previous ones have taken. Certain topics or other variables will influence the time it takes however managing your time this way by scheduling in slots to write blog posts will be less stressful and more sustainable in the long run.

We recommend setting up a list of articles/ posts that you want to write about each and every week. We advise you start small and base your results more on consistency rather than volume at this stage. This will make the workload more manageable, and you’re your incentives in check without getting wiped out with an unrealistic workload. As stated earlier, try to base your topics around the keywords for your industry, this will help your organic SEO from your blog post and website, as well as issue helpful advice to your potential customers.

The demands of everyday life can be tough at the best of times, but for business owners the idea of writing your own blogs on top of the daily goings on in running a business can be overwhelming. At this point it is important to know if your blog posts need to be outsourced to a writer. Due to this area alone, there has become a demand in recent years for blogging experts to write articles for businesses as the importance is paramount to a website’s success.

Today and likely to be for the near future, blogging is a vital component to any businesses marketing strategy and an area not to be overlooked. By investing the time into blog post creation your setting up the foundations that can take your business to where it needs to be. A business that informs, educates and facilitates their customers’ needs stands the best chance in establishing themselves as a key player within their industry.