Blogs have become increasingly popular over the past decade, with a large proportion of websites and businesses having a blog area.
A blog area is different from a news area, in that the pieces tend to be much longer and written to provide education or guidance on a topic specific to the industry. News pieces, however, are about the company themselves and what they have been up to. We believe blog posts are a crucial part of a marketing strategy.
What are the advantages of a blog?
- Provide marketing material – Blogs are great for using across your marketing. For example, share them on your social media accounts and within your eshots.
- SEO – You should always be reviewing your SEO and adhering to best practices to keep your website performing well. Adding new and editing old blogs is a great way to improve the SEO of your website.
- Explain your products – Writing a blog gives you an opportunity to speak about your products in a much more detailed way than what you would put on a product listing. It gives you chance to really show off your expertise.
- Share valuable information – Creating a blog that contains valuable information is the perfect opportunity to show to your audience that are are well-informed about a certain topic relevant to your business, which creates trust.
- Communicate your business values – People are caring more and more about business values. It is important to communicate these well, and also add a tone of voice to your brand that people can relate to. Whatever tone you choose to go for, make sure this is continued throughout all of your marketing content.
- Drive traffic to your website – This is more of a long term goal, as it can take a few weeks to over a year for a blog to start ranking well within search engines, but a blog can help bring in traffic to your website that may have never found you otherwise. More traffic = more potential customers!
What should you consider before starting a blog?
There are many things you should consider before you decide to start a blog area on your website. Firstly, for a blog to be successful, it should be updated at least once a month. It can be a big commitment in your already busy schedule to find the time to create a high-quality blog posts that’s going to give you results. You should make sure you have the time to keep up with the demand, or find someone that can help you do this.
Another thing you should consider is whether a blog will generate more business for you. In our experience, it usually does, but sometimes it helps more to foster customer relationships that you already have. If your blogs do attract more customers, are you in a position to handle the workload?
Blogs are something that customers want, and often look for on a website. The information provided (if written well), should be informative, interesting and fun for the customer to read. They will find it helpful. Remember to write your blogs in a way that will be attractive for your main target audience, not yourself!
Our top tips for putting blog posts together
- Aim for a 600-800 word count
- Keep your target audience in mind at all times
- Keep 1-3 keywords in mind across the blog for SEO purposes
- Always include at least one call to action
- Use only high-quality copyright free images
- Try to include one internal link (your own website) and one external link (another website) in every blog
- Never plagarise any content – you can quote sources, as long as you include the source (but keep this to a minimum).
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