By Natalie Colby
The short answer is yes.
The longer answer that’s actually valuable to your company is contained in this: a blog post. Blogging should be about providing answers and information that helps people. A company’s content is typically categorized in three areas: owned, earned, and paid. Blogs commonly fall under the owned content category. Owned content is content published on your owned channels, such as websites, social media, and email. This is content that is produced without additional spend behind it.
Blogs are a great way to market your business without being too formal or “salesy.”
The internet is overrun with blogs! We hear you, yawn! In order for your company’s blog to stand a chance in this already crowded space, you’ll need to keep your approach nimble and agile.
Blogging is about building relationships.
It’s about playing the long game. Increase your value to customers by positioning your brand as a partner they trust and rely on. This includes spending time communicating with them about topics that help them and give relevant advice.
Every day consumers make their choices quickly, especially about what they want to read. It’s only by offering your reader something truly valuable, that you’ll get the conversation started.
How consumers find your content will undoubtedly evolve. From links in bios to swiping up to see more, there’s no telling what the future of information sharing looks like. But what won’t change is what they’re looking for. We still need some of the same information we did two years ago, we’re just using different methods to find it.
The term ‘thought-leader’ is tossed about everywhere these days. Create content to share your expertise and knowledge with the information-hungry world without worrying about the label.
“Creating original, high-quality content is an important part of building trust with customers,” says Sparkpr content strategist Amruta Kulkarni. “When done well, blog content can demonstrate a brand’s industry expertise.”
Unique content isn't a nice to have, it’s a need to have.
3 things to consider when building your own blogging strategy:By 2022, the number of videos crossing the internet per second will approach 1 million, translating into 82 percent of all online traffic. (Social Media Week) Google’s increased focus on user intent with their BERT algorithm update means you should focus on user intent too. (Content Marketing Institute) About 87.5% of marketers use visual pieces in over half of their blogs. (Venngage) More and more end-users are hoping to get their answers in visual and engaging ways. You could miss valuable traffic if your content isn't available in both a written format and visual formats like video or graphics.
If you have a blog plan in place and aren’t seeing benefits, chat with an agency. A reputable agency can help bridge the gap between what you need in order to drive successful clicks and readers to your page. If your current content strategy doesn’t include the promotion of consistent, optimized, relevant blogs, along with an analysis of the results of those blogs, it’s likely you’re not seeing the full return and need a holistic marketing strategy.
Maybe brands aren’t blogging because they don’t have the time or simply don’t have the written skill sets. Even more, they aren't blogging because they think it’s a failed or old-school marketing strategy.
If you didn’t list blogging as a business opportunity in your marketing strategy, it’s not too late! Contact Spark to learn how we can help you design and execute your content marketing strategy.
Natalie Colby leads Spark’s South Africa office, spearheading our organic social media efforts, new business social strategies, social media audits, data-management and reporting. A social media specialist, she has a decade of experience championing social audits, social strategy, social media tools, reporting and data analytics.
