Blogs

To Blog Or Not To Blog? It’s Not Really A Question

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Blogging and Vlogging have become more and more popular over the last few years. At one time, it used to be people talking about whatever was on their minds, but things have changed. Now, the blogging industry is huge, and if you’re not taking advantage, you could be missing out.

But where are the benefits? How can writing a post not necessarily pushing your products or services help increase customers? There are a few different ways, some of which you might not have thought of.

SEO

Providing a blog is written to be Search Engine Optimisation friendly (watch this space for a blog on the subject), then the SEO of your site will improve. Not only that but a blog’s content can be a way for people to find your website. So for example, if you run a fresh food business, then adding recipes could mean that anyone searching for recipes could find your blog. They haven’t searched for your website, but your blog has taken them there.

Social Media

By posting about a blog to tell people it’s there, they might take more of an interest in your brand. As mentioned in our previous post on social media, people aren’t going to engage with your content if it’s just pushing your products all the time. A blog adds variety. And, if there’s good content in the blog, then your audience who read and love it might be more likely to share it. Thus increasing the reach of your blog, social media accounts and your website.

Keeping Customers Interested

Far from a blog detracting from what you’re trying to sell customers, by posting relevant blog content they’ll be more likely to notice and remember you. That means visitors to your site will be more likely to buy your products or subscribe to your services in the future. Basically, a blog means people are less likely to forget about you because they’ve got your blog to remind them about your brand.

It’ll Strengthen Your Brand

A blog is one of those things which can help your brand in the long run – it means you don’t just sell products, you have an interest in customers. They might be more likely to engage with you if your site has a blog – meaning they might be more inclined to buy some of your products.

So we’ve established a blog would be great for your business. It’s is a key part to a website’s online content strategy in today’s world. There’s no doubt that it helps to gain website visitors – who might then turn into paying or subscribing customers.

But the problem is still that if you’ve never blogged before, where do you start? It’s not necessarily a case of just adding a blog page to your site and starting to type. There has to be some kind of strategy, and this requires planning and forethought before you even get to opening up that Word Document and typing. Without a plan what you want to write about, you’ll just be staring at the blinking cursor or using the backspace key a little too often.

In light of this, we at Teknet thought we’d share some tips with you if you’re new to blogging, or want to improve the views your posts get. So here we go:

Pick a topic

It’s not a case of just blogging about anything anymore. Whilst it certainly used to be way back when blogging was young, the fact is that everyone seems to have done this. So you need to pick a topic relevant to your business and stick to it. Own a fruit business? Blog about what’s in season or recipes for a particular ingredient. That sort of thing. It helps as well if you decide what you want to do – inform about new trends? Teach someone how to do something? It’ll appeal to people, and the consistency with what you post will keep them coming back for more.

Post Regularly

It comes back to the earlier point of blogs helping customers to remember you. If you post every day for a week but not again for six months, then they’re going to forget about you. They’ll move on. Which isn’t what anyone wants. So instead, try posting once a week, once a fortnight, or even once a month, so long as it’s consistent. Choose a peak time by looking at your social media Analytics accounts, and upload it then – or upload just before this so visitors will see it.

By being regular with your posting, customers will remember your blog, so they might know when to look out for your posts. So they do. And they’re on your website while they read them.

Be Consistent

I know, I know, it’s repetitive. But consistency is important in a blog – whether it be the regularity of the posting, or the topic of the blog itself (as previously mentioned). However, there are other ways this is important. You need to be consistent with the tone of voice you’re using, who you’re writing the blog for (as new customers might not like jargon although professionals might) – even the length of the posts themselves to some extent. Writing a 2,000 word in-depth post is great – and some research suggests longer posts are actually beneficial to improving readership – so long as it’s not followed the next week by a 400 word post trying to cover as large a topic. It won’t look as good, and can’t be as in depth – meaning readers might lose interest.

Don’t Plug

It might be tempting to plug you product throughout your blog, but don’t. Maybe mention it at the end of the post as a footnote, but not throughout the whole thing. The main reason is that it’s not so good reading. Blogs are supposed to be a side part of your business, not directly involved with selling customers a product. That’s what the product pages and homepage is for.  If you were reading an article about blogging (like this one), but all it did was mention how a site can offer blogging services, you might be less inclined to read it. But mentioning it at the end doesn’t detract from the article people want to read, and it means you still get to mention your product to readers. If you want to.

Finally, Promote Your Content

When you’re considering doing a blog post, mention it on Facebook. Send a Tweet at a peak time for your business’s account. It can’t hurt to keep potential readers in the loop. Then, when it’s online, post again at a different time. Let them know with a link what’s there and where they can find it. By making a blog easy to find by updating readers, they’re more likely to click. Then mention it again later. Just in case they didn’t see the first couple of posts. It might mean some people see you mentioning that blog post three times – but it might mean more people see it at least once. Make sure the times are varied too, to help reach more people.

Blogging might seem difficult, but once you’ve established a topic, how regularly you want to post, and the overall tone you use when writing, it’s not that hard. Just remember to redraft, and proofread the content before it goes live to make sure the posts you’ve spent so long working on are the best they can be.

Still not sure?

Teknet Marketing can help with blogging as part of an inbound marketing strategy (and this is a footnote, so it’s okay to mention). Just visit our Inbound Marketing page for more information. Alternatively, email us at hello@teknetmarketing.co.uk or phone 0800 488 0400.

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