As social media grows and takes more of a stranglehold of Internet users’ time, the focus on use at the various networks and social sites becomes heightened. Yet, while those sites may or may not make or break your marketing and brand, the effect of having a business blog has never been greater, due to those social media sites.
Here are six reasons your business should be blogging:
1) Your Blog Is Your Hub
While you may be set up on Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, etc. and sharing different updates to different networks, your blog remains your hub – the one point where all roads lead to. Test and optimize conversions for lead generation (or whatever you’re focused on) at your blog and you’ll have a winner, in many cases, regardless of where the visitors first initiated contact.
2) Blogs Generate Leads
Your hub should be generating leads, which isn’t always easy via social media sites. Sure, you can get Likes, Follows, Pluses and all the rest, but those leads don’t convert like good ol’ email marketing. An email marketing list is still the most valuable digital asset that almost any online business can have. Your blog can generate leads better than any social media site, no doubt, because it can be configured specifically for this, whereas your social media sites are going to encourage following at that site.
To take it a step further, if you’re business is already using email marketing; the case for blogging is even stronger. Among those that use email marketing, companies that blog get twice as much traffic from their email than those who don’t.*
3) Blogs Are Great for Search Engine Optimization
Blogs still rank really well in search, and for this reason, should not be ignored. While social can give you a boost, and social elements can be added to your blog (such as Like, Share and Tweet buttons,) your blog is still king at giving away both content and context, which the search engines are always thirsty for.
4) Blogs Build Trust
Blogs are typically seen as sources of valuable information. They’re taken more seriously by most users than social media sites. Because of this, trust is an important reason to be blogging. In the digital world, trust is the hardest thing to come by because there is no face-to-face like in the offline world. Blogs can combine the social feel, at a more business-like level, that can crush both social media sites and static website, to inspire trust in your prospects and customers.
5) Blogs Sell Services
Leveraging the trust that can be built and value that can be given away at a blog, there can be solid conversion and sales of services through a blog that won’t happen the same way elsewhere. If nothing else, it’s high-level lead generation, but combining all fronts and your blog is moving the prospect closer to the sale.
6) Blogs Enhance Reputation Management
The perfect balance of social and corporate, a blog that publishes regular content is magnetic to search engines. If what shows up in search when someone searches for your brand name matters, then a blog would benefit your business.
Business blogs have been proven to deliver immense value, as demonstrated by the 81% of companies that consider their blogs “useful,” “important” or “critical.”** I encourage you to take a look at Proforma’s Social Media White Paper that showcases the 21 lessons we learned in our 12 month journey to growing our social media reach by 12 million users, including some of the tactics we’ve used to grow our blog viewership beyond 100,000 in just three years.