Have you heard of “The Rise of Big Content?” Gartner, the marketing industry’s most reputable statistics company recently released a survey of the industry’s top marketers and content marketing is seen as one of the top five rising trends in digital marketing.
Are you prepared to provide engaging content that delivers value to your customers on a consistent basis? If not, you aren’t alone. Gartner also found most small businesses are ill-equipped to provide the content they need.
The Business Blog
We all know that writing regular blog posts is one of the most effective means of providing engaging, relevant and consistent content. You might even be aware that it helps drive traffic to your site and increases the level of trust you are given by potential clients.
What you might not be so sure of is whether it’s worth all the effort involved! If you are not 100% certain that blogging is the way to increase your inbound marketing, then you are likely questioning the relevance of blogging. So let’s look at just what business blogging is, and how it’s intended to work.
Defining the blog: The first part of this discussion is about establishing the parameter of a proper business blog. A well-constructed blog is a column of articles that is updated frequently about specific keywords or topics.
There are two things about that definition that should jump out at you. First, you need to update your blog often, and once a month is not “frequently.” Aim for at least weekly at a minimum. The second is that the blog needs to be focused. If you are a supplier of home contracting services, for example, your blog needs to be focused on solutions for the clients who may be searching for you.
Writing articles on interior design, landscaping, the rise of specific construction materials may all be related, but your most effective content will be posts focused on home contracting solutions such as:
- What are the best options to redo your Bathroom or Kitchen cabinets? Should you reface or replace?
- How to get more living space for your family? If you add a spare room, there’s no need to move.
These topics provide answers directed at many of the home renovation or remodeling projects that your audience most likely are searching for.
Every time you write a business blog you’re helping to build your personal brand. You want your potential audience to connect to you and your service as an expert and authority. When they want a quote or job done, most likely you will be on their short list.
The Power Behind Blogging
Why is the business blog so important and indispensable to your business? The simple answer is that it can grow your site traffic and build trust. There’s much more to it, though:
- Blogging helps to improve your optimization for search engine indexing. Web crawlers, software programs that read, scan and evaluate content on the web by the big search engine sites like Google, continuously crawl the internet for recent and relevant content for searches.If your website does not provide recent and relevant content, it will not show up in search results.
- The more content you have, the more chances you have to show up in page rankings and the higher the rankings you will have. The higher the rankings, the better chance you have of getting click through from Google for free; organic traffic.
- Blogs also provide you with an ideal chance to steer your readers to pages where you can capture their information, such as downloadable content in the form of white papers and ebooks, fill out contact forms for a consultation or sign up for your newsletter.
- Then there’s social media: You know how difficult it can be finding material to post on your social media profiles, right? Well, regular, freshly-published blog posts give you something to share. Not only that, but they give your readers something to share. And a better testimonial than that you can’t buy from any advertising medium.
By ensuring your blogs are written properly, providing smart inbound links you can grow your conversions and build thought leadership. Trust is something that is hard to measure, but be sure that if your potential client does not trust you, they will not hire you to come into their home. By proving you are an expert in the home contracting field, by exposing your knowledge, makes it easier for them to believe you know what you’re doing.
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