The digital revolution that occurred in the recent decades led to companies thinking of transforming their work concepts so they can be in line with the current trends. This transformation covered every aspect of the working process including the communication tools that companies used as primary means for interacting with their target audiences. Therefore, turning to blog as a marketing tool for grabbing the attention of these audiences has become the new strategic tactic that has proven to be an outright success. Nowadays, blog writing has not only become accessible to anyone who enjoys playing with words but it is strongly recommended as part of the extensive marketing strategies that are adopted throughout companies worldwide.
But what exactly is a blog and when did this trend of writing journals start? Let’s dive deeper and explain a few things.
In essence, a blog is a website or a segment of a website that consists of posts and informative texts aimed to attract the attention of the readers and provide them with information about a certain topic. Companies are using these blog sections in order to promote their products and services, to share some news with the readers, but also to delve deeper in subjects that they consider relevant in their respective industry.
The Short History of Blogs
The whole blog frenzy started out at the beginning of the 90ties when internet users began uploading texts on websites, writing about their lives, and providing links to their favorite websites at the time.
Back then the word blog was still not introduced, so these big chunks of content were instead addressed as online journals or life diaries. Many of these blogs were also created by programming enthusiasts who wanted to share their knowledge and challenges while working on certain projects. Thus, a great portion of these texts contained mainly technical subjects intended to help other enthusiasts in this segment.
The first official name for these articles was created by Jorn Borger who used the term ‘weblog’. This term was used up until 1999 when Peter Merholz, started using the short term ‘blog.’ In the same year, various platforms for blogging have emerged and caught the attention of many internet users.
One of the first commercial blogs was Blogger, which was purchased by Google in 2003 and made available for free use. Google’s move was the beginning of the process of pushing the whole blogging concept into the mainstream.
Throughout the years the blog as an online segment has experienced many changes and has grown at a very steady pace.
Blog as Marketing Tool
Today, blogs are one of the pillars of a great marketing strategy. In fact, they are especially important for companies that want to sell their products and services. According to Growthbadger, 91% of the B2B companies and 85% of the B2C companies are using blogs in order to talk about their products. These numbers show that companies are trying to keep up with the fast pace of digital transformation that is happening worldwide.
According to Semrush Blog, 46% of people online are willing to consider a recommendation coming from a blogger. Of course, this number is constantly increasing and is expected to reach an even higher percentage in the coming years due to increased online activities.
Overall, blogs are considered a revolutionary technique in the marketing segment, used to get the attention of your potential customers. In terms of digital marketing, blogs are considered as part of the content marketing segment and are used as vessels for the promotion of the services and products the company has to offer.
In fact, blogs as marketing tools are an immaculate instrument for advertising and can help you create a strong brand that will surely get the attention of prospective clients.
4 Reasons Why you Should Include Blogs in Your Marketing Strategy
As we have mentioned before, using blog as marketing tool is more and more present in the digital world and therefore many companies are trying to get ahead of this trend. Despite the investments in the content for social media which is important for the company’s visibility, blogs are slowly getting an equal piece of the pie in terms of marketing strategy.
Namely, blogs can also serve as additional content which can be shared on social media channels. But now let’s dissect why blogs are a great addition to your online presence.
Blogs can help in growing your business
With blogging, you can easily increase your visibility record, and although it is an effective tool for small companies or startups, blogs can help already established businesses expand further and grab an even bigger piece of the market.
Create a valuable connection with your clients through blogs
Your clients will always be interested in what your company has to offer whether it is a new service or an upgraded package of services that was already purchased by them. Either way, blogs are probably one of the best ways of updating your current scope of services or presenting new ideas that might be part of your company’s culture in the future. Bear in mind that your customer will always want to know what your next steps are and what your company is working on at the moment.
Additionally, it is safe to say that blogs are a perfect place where readers can freely interact with the writer and even leave comments in order to drive discussion for a particular topic. Readers can also offer their suggestions or be even critical of the author’s point of view and all this brings an interesting enjoyable experience for every party involved in the process.
Essentially, by building a blog you are building a community that will serve as a safe haven for all those blog enthusiasts or intrigued readers that want to share thoughts and opinions on different topics.
Blogs can help you promote your business
Writing about your products and services and explaining them in detail can be a valuable asset in the fight for new clients. Many companies are constantly sharing news about certain improvements, discounted services that always perform well with the audience, and other posts that can be usually found under the blog category.
Additionally, writing an analysis, comparing your product or service with another similar one, or presenting a case study, can be great content for promoting your brand and getting the attention of potential customers.
Blogs bring more traffic to your website
A well-optimized blog post is certainly one of the most fruitful pieces of information that ultimately leads to a greater number of website visitors. Of course, in order to even become a relevant source, you will definitely need a period in which you will have to thoroughly build a solid base of optimized texts in order to present your business as a high-quality venture that is to be trusted.
Therefore, it is advisable to cover topics that will be interesting for the reader but also be careful to offer a high-quality take on these topics.
This strategy is important as it will better rank your content on Google, which in turn will increase your overall rating in the eyes of the readers and potential customers.
How to Prepare Your Blog Segment
Using your blog as marketing tool will definitely require detailed preparation in which you might have to closely observe your competition. You can start by reviewing your favorite blogs and writing down some pinpoints that might help you later in the process of creation. But what should be the focus of your observation?
The answer to this question lies in examining the core elements around which one blog is created. Let’s explain.
Focus topic or Niche
The first core element of a blog is its focus or more commonly referred to as niche. In essence, there are hundreds of thousands of topics on which you can write about. Nowadays, people tend to talk about anything in a descriptive form to cover different topics. But a niche gives you a direction in which you want to point your readers to.
When writing in a certain niche you are focusing on one single subject and bringing extensive and quality content. Performing this action, you will successfully narrow down your target audience and offer relevant content. This will result in attracting an audience that is interested in this niche and establish your blog as an authoritative source of information valuable for the readers.
Quality content
Let’s be clear on one thing. The market for content, especially in terms of companies that use blog as a marketing tool, is oversaturated and you will need to follow specific guidelines in order to place your content high on the chain of supply. There are millions of blogs on the internet and only the ones that contain quality content stand out from the rest.
Of course, SEO can help you with better positioning your content, boost your visibility, and even reach the highest places on the Google Search Results. However, all of this would mean nothing if you do not provide content that will be relevant for your target audience and will motivate the reader to stay a little longer on your page.
Posting Frequency
Despite the quality content, another core element that you need to blindly adhere to is publishing consistency. In essence, readers want when their favorite blogs are constantly posting new content whether it is news, a case study about a certain project, guidelines, or long reviews.
Frequent posting is healthy for your blog and will even attract an additional audience. In the end, all that content will eventually prove your rating online and will increase your domain authority which is an excellent sign in terms of website traffic.
Target Audience
This element is tightly connected to the first one. We talked about niche writing and how narrowing down your topics can help you execute a specific targeting plan. Therefore, this makes the two, core values, codependent.
Practically, deciding on what niche your blog is going to cover will turn into an instrument for shaping your audience. Of course, despite the niche selection, SEO or Search Engine Optimization will also help you with the targeting, especially in terms of paid ads and promotion through social media.
Images and Paragraphs
Every blog that contains images is immediately more attractive for the reader. People will always react better to a certain content that they are reading if it has incorporated images. Visual stimuli are very important in order to keep the attention of the reader for a little bit longer.
By default, the blog as marketing tool tends to be pretty long and might have an overwhelming effect on the reader. However, by inserting images throughout the text along with providing a seamless structure that consists of many paragraphs you get a recipe for a successful blog.
Additional Tactics for Refining your Blog
So far, we have covered the technical elements that one blog needs to possess in order to catch the attention of a wider audience. But now we are going to talk about ways of refining the content you are planning to post on your website under the blog segment.
Set goals and objectives
When talking about blogs as marketing tool for exposure of your business it is safe to say that the best way of getting ahead of your competition, is setting objectives and goals, and reaching them. Say you want to expertly cover a certain subject, or you want to give an insight about a project your company has worked on, all this is performed in order to promote your company and make it visible to other potential clients. Therefore, you need to set goals that will reflect just that.
The best way to fulfill your goals is to materialize them into a plan more commonly known as a content calendar. Creating this calendar will give a clear vision of everything that you intend to post on the blog. You will also be able to establish a publishing frequency as an important feature of running a blog segment on your website.
Create Corporate and Collaborative Blogs
This strategy is well known in the marketing agency circles and is pretty much a prevalent method of content creation. You can add collaborative blogs, corporate blogs, PR texts, and other branding and marketing content in order to faster generate texts that can be used in your marketing strategy and also leverage your resources in the area of content writing.
Another well-known strategy is engaging the employees of your company in writing these kinds of texts. In fact, this is a very collaborative technique that can encourage workers to be more included in the work of the company. These blog posts can be divided according to everyone’s area of expertise and will definitely offer a fresh view on certain topics.
Provide a Personal Touch and a bit of Passion
The best way to place information in front of any audience is to tell a story that is captivating and use language that people can easily identify with. Many companies are scared to go out with personalized blog posts in which the opinion of the writer can be sensed through his words. Instead, they are posting rather boring and technical posts that won’t even drive a discussion.
If you want to use blog as marketing tool your key objective here is to touch on some topics that will incentivize readers to communicate with your post, leave comments, or even share it on social media. Passionate storylines and opinions will always drive more traffic than repetitive narratives that only present certain information without vigor.
Be Part of a Community
People are social beings that want to belong in certain groups. This definition can also be applied in the online world where people constantly form communities where they feel most comfortable in sharing their voices and ideas. Therefore, subjecting your blog to some of these communities might help you build a network and subsequently grow your business.
Nowadays, there are numerous social media channels that offer these types of groups, forums, pages, etc. So, becoming part of these communities should be a priority. If you do not know which channel is the best option, you can start with a simple competitor’s audit in order to determine how your competition has settled in this segment.
In a nutshell
In the marketing world, companies will always strive towards establishing dominion with their market presence. To get in line with this trend, you need to have a carefully crafted strategy that will incorporate every relevant means of action in order to get the results you have envisioned. In this article, we provided an example of how blog as marketing tool can serve as a crucial link in your strategy of conquering portions of the market share, and how you can turn a decades-long storytelling tactic into a powerful instrument for marketing purposes. With all this said, it is now your time to exercise what you have learned and help your company become a strong actor on the blogging scene.
