I hear the question all the time, "Why do we need a blog? I don't think it is bringing us business."
Or I hear, "People don't read blog articles."
That may be true for you, but personally, I rather spend 15 seconds reading a blog article than watching a 2-minute video. And I hear that from other people all the time too. They don't want to waste the time watching a video they aren't sure is going to tell them exactly what they want to know.
1) Search Engine Spiders Read Blog Articles
You may not read blog articles, but search engine spiders do. They give you credit for page density on your website, meaning your companies website has x number of pages so google will rank you higher in a search for a given keyword or group of words based on how many pages your site has, and the easiest way to get new pages with keyword rich content is to blog. They also give you credit every time someone shares, or likes your blog articles.
2) Tagging for Keywords in Blog Articles Gets Your Company Ranked Higher in a Search
Did you catch that word, "keyword" in the previous paragraph? Keywords is what SEO, or search engine optimization, and SEM, search engine marketing are all about. Coming up higher in a ranked search for a given keyword when your potential customers are looking for your products or services. You "tag" blog articles for "keywords" every time you post. The website with the most tags for your customer's keywords related to their search wins and comes up to the top of google and other search engines, right when they are looking to buy your products or services.
3) 20% of Your Sales Will Have First-Point-of-Contact Come from Keyword-Rich Blog Articles
It's called organic traffic when you come up when they are searching for you, and analytics have proven that will usually account for first-point-of-contact for about 20% of your sales given a typical digital marketing mix.
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to leave 20% of my sales on the table, just because I don't have a blog.
4) Demonstrate Thought Leadership
Blog articles also are a great way to show thought leadership. Your team is probably very knowledgable about how your products and services can solve your potential customer's problems. What better way to show that than pushing content out to social media. Analytics have proven that content (usually blog articles) pushed to social media will account for another 15-20% first-point-of-contact that will lead to sales.
5) Attach Educational Offers to Blog Articles
Blog articles are a great way to attract people to your site so they can download educational offers and therefore bring themselves down the sales funnel. Just put a calls-to-action at the bottom of each blog article. Put both "soft" callls-to-action such as your Sales Team's phone number and email as well as "firm" calls-to-action such as a button describing an educational offer that can be downloaded, which allows you to capture warm leads and later nurture them towards sales. The educational offer will also go a long way towards nurturing them towards sales by itself.
6) Push to Social Media for Brand Awareness
Blog articles have brightly colored graphics of your products or services that stand out from the rest of the traffic on social media so you can get the attention of your friends and family and they will know what your company does and will demonstrate that you what you are talking about when they read your blog articles. That is called "brand awareness".
When I look at my analytics and see hundreds and thousands of people coming to my website every month, and 14,000 people or more coming to my client's sites every month to read blog articles, I ask myself, "Why wouldn't you blog?"
For more information on getting traffic to your site and generating the leads you need, contact laurie@bayareainbound.com or 510-543-7593.
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