Blogs have become a cornerstone of any content marketing endeavor. The blog is nearly ubiquitous, and the statistics back it up – a study done by the Content Marketing Institute shows that nearly 65% of all B2B (that’s business-to-business, for those of you keeping track at home) businesses used blogs as part of their content marketing agenda. For those who’d like a quick and dirty list of tips on how to make a business blog great, check out this uniquely formatted post by Lee Odden at Top Rank Blog.
The same report from Content Marketing Institute also showed that there has been a not-so-inconsiderable increase in the popularity of blogs among B2B businesses – between 2010 and 2011, there has been a whopping 14% increase in blog adoption. So no matter how you slice and dice the numbers it all comes up the same – blogging for business is big.
Of course, the next question would be why. Why is it that blogs are becoming so popular among more and more marketers as the years go by? As somebody who has been in the business of blogging (and many other writing endeavors) for the past couple of years, let me lay some insight down – you might be surprised how many conversions and clients you’re missing out on if you dodge the blog.
Get Talking
One of the greatest advantages that a blog gives a company is a chance to interact with the consumer directly through the website. While social media allows companies to interact through social media platforms, having the visitor on your site and reading your information is worth its weight in internet gold.
Why? Well, first it’ll send your site analytics through the roof – not only does Google pay attention to how many hits you get, but also how long that they stay on the page. The longer that a visitor stays on your page, the better your ranking will be. So the question here is: how do I make the visitor stay on my page?
With compelling content, that’s how. Another advantage that a blog gives you that other forms of content marketing do not is the constantly updated nature of blogs. Of course, there are a variety of different opinions regarding how often you should post, but for best results I generally recommend to clients that they put up a post at least three times a week.
Keep in mind that there’s nothing worse than a dead blog. If you’ve got a blog on your website that hasn’t been updated for months, it signals to the visitor that your site is inactive – and maybe the business is, too. Never let a blog post linger!
Another great thing about blogs is how utterly sharable they are. Blogs are best paired with social media – this way what you say doesn’t just get picked up by your own website, but others can Tweet it or “Like” it on Facebook! The more exposure your blog gets, the more traffic will come to your site and the more conversions you’ll see.
Building a content strategy often involves pairing blogs with a number of other content sources to build a comprehensive campaign. In short, don’t expect the addition of a blog to revolutionize your conversion rate in and of itself.
But a blog is an important stepping stone for getting there – blogs show your audience that not only are you an information source, you’re an updated and “living” one, too. Blogging for business is powerful – for maximum fun and profit, start today!
This post is part two in a series of primer. Check out yesterday’s post Content Primer #2: Like a Little Black Dress
Read more: 11 Amazing Reasons to Start a Blog for Fun and Profit