In today’s world, it is vital to maintain a strong online presence for your business.
Through both mobile and desktop, potential and current customers are using the online space to research your brand, book and buy online, and to communicate with your business.
To compete in this digital world, it is vital to have an online marketing strategy in place. Your business ideally wants to show in the top place in search (either through Paid Advertising or Organically using SEO), with a fully responsive website and relevant and engaging content geared towards your customers.
A key component of any online marketing strategy is blogging. If done properly blogging is a great way to engage your audience, drive direct traffic to your website, create leads, and acquire new customers.
Here are just a few reasons to convince you that you should be blogging
WHY BLOG?
1. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
Search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo value fresh content and regularly updated websites. Search engines constantly crawl and index your website trying to understand its purpose. Those who update their website regularly will be rewarded and will show up higher in organic search engine results. Optimized blogs are a great way to do this.
Optimized blogs will contain relevant keywords– such as ‘Digital Marketing Agency Dublin ‘ – this will help potential customers searching for these terms to find your blog online and drive direct traffic.
Blogging is also great for link building both inbound (to other pages on your website) and outbound (other websites). For a refresh on the importance of link build check out our previous Sprint Digital Blog here.
2. CREATE USEFUL AND USEFUL CONTENT FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS
Many of your blog readers will be existing customers. Think about what it is they would like to hear from you and try to provide them with some value.
An example of a good blog topic for a hotel might be ‘The Best Experiences in Cork Rated by Locals’ or perhaps, ‘Our Pick of the Top 5 Pints of Guinness in Kildare’. This information will likely be relevant and useful to your guests – past, present, and future.
Blogs are a useful tool for interacting with customers. Depending on your business you might like to encourage the readers to comment or ask questions on a comment section within your blog, this creates conversations that will continue to be visible to others as time goes on
It will also prompt your readers to get involved. For example, the business could ask readers to ‘Respond with their favourite pint of Guinness or local experience?’.
3. BUILD YOUR BRAND AWARENESS
Blogging is also a great way to build brand awareness and tell your brand story. Show your customers who you are and what you’re about. It is an opportunity to show your personality and allow the customer to understand your work on another level.
Blogging can also allow for a more authentic and personalised voice to be heard directly from the brand. It allows for a different type of outbound communication to occur, one that’s not solely focused on transactions and selling but instead aims to create a connection with audiences and build favourable brand awareness and perception.
4. SHOW OFF YOUR EXPERTISE
Regular blogging about topical or relevant issues in your field can increase your clout and establish you as an industry expert. Blogs containing research are a great way to set you apart from the competition and show off your expertise. It also can build trust and a sense of reassurance for potential customers that the business has good industry experience and knowledge.
5. SOCIAL SHARES
And finally, blogs are also beneficial because they can be easily shared through links via email or social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. A business should regularly share their own blog on all these platforms to their existing followers and subscribers. This will hopefully lead to social sharing by the aforementioned to their social network.
Sharing links to blogs will drive direct traffic to your website and could potentially go viral (every digital marketer’s dream!)
