Blog Writing is Essential in 2013

Business blogs have always been a part of inbound marketing. Companies understand that blog writing is a great way to communicate with their audience. Engaging individuals on a business blog can help convert new customers and strengthen the relationships of existing customers. Recent studies have shown however, that business blogging will be more important than ever this year.

Engagement marketing is a concept that explains how modern day consumers like to learn about companies. People don’t want to be talked at with traditional marketing formats such as television ads, radio ads, or magazine ads. Instead, they want to establish a line of valuable dialogue with a company. They want to understand the human side of the organization and that the company’s values mirror their own. They also want to know that companies are listening to their opinions and consider them when crafting new offerings.

People want to be heard, and if they feel they aren’t being heard by one company they will go on to the next. It is important that content strategies consider how to engage people in their market. Social media marketing is only one aspect of the engagement process. Blog posts help to take individuals further along the sales funnel and encourage people to take that next step to becoming a lifelong customer.

Inbound Marketing Priorities

Inbound marketing helps to drive qualified leads to a company website. There are many stages in a sales funnel, and there are different inbound marketing strategies that help with each phase of this process. According to a recent inbound marketing study, 62% of marketers will focus on blog writing in 2013. Why? Because it gets results.

Blogs help increase new sales while decreasing marketing overhead costs. Marketers have found that they can use less time and money to create a blog post than other forms of marketing, yet conversion rates are higher than many direct marketing strategies.

This is fantastic news for small business owners. They can create an effective way to attract and convert new customers without having a marketing budget that makes their accountant cry. These owners can use blog writing to communicate with potential customers, explain more about the business, and address consumer concerns in an inexpensive format that will help create new leads.

Content Creation

This doesn’t mean that a blogger can just blather on about any topic, or create 500 word advertisements for their business and post them on their blog. This is not going to get the results they are looking for. Instead, blog writing needs to be a carefully thought-out process that includes many back end steps before beginning a post.

Some of the things that need to be considered before creating a post include:

• Topics: While each post will have its own subject matter, it is important to determine categories for your blog. They should be four main topics that you need to cover in order to educate your reader and gain search engine ranking.
• Keywords: You also need to look at the keywords that you will be focusing on for your posts. Do not include every keyword in every post, which will just annoy your readers and the search engine spiders. Instead, have a list of keywords that you will select from for each post.
• Stay on Point: You need to have a carefully structured post. This may mean that you need to create an outline as part of your blog writing process.
• Engagement: Engagement is an important part of blogging. You have to write a question to encourage readers to begin a discussion about your post. Don’t just assume that readers will automatically leave a comment.
• Blog structure: You also need to make sure that you are writing your post to take advantage of the way people scan online documents.

Promote Your Posts

You cannot have a high quality blog in a vacuum. You need to promote your posts. This can include promoting your posts on social media sites. Or, you can have your readers do this for you by encouraging them to share your post on their favorite social media site. Other promotion opportunities include guest blogging and article marketing. Drawing attention to your blog encourages readers to take the next step in the sales funnel process.

Think of social media as the equivalent of meeting a group of people at a party. During that party you may talk to a lot of people about yourself and what you do. While you may talk to as many as 10 people during the night, you may actually only give your phone number to 4 of them. Out of those four people, three of them will text you. Only one of these final three will begin a series of conversations with you that eventually develops into a relationship.

So your social media site is the party, and your blog is the equivalent of a texting conversation you have with those four people you gave your number to. The final person you develop a relationship with becomes a long-term customer.

This is the way engagement strategy works. If you think about it in terms of building relationships or networking, it takes a lot of the confusion and marketing gobbledygook out of the picture. You can’t just come up to someone at a party, club them over the head, and take them out on a date. You have to talk to them and find out if you have common interests. You need to find out if you have complementary personalities. Then you have to find out if you like the person enough to go out with them.

Blogging can be an essential part of inbound marketing and engagement marketing strategies. Many marketers have already realized this and that is why they are increasing their marketing efforts this year. Social media sites have become vital ways to show potential customers what your company is about. Blog writing can now be your next step in creating a strong relationship with your market.