Start a blog
Why your company needs a blog & how to make it stellar
by Emanuela for 99designs
A blog isn’t only for freelance writers and journalists these days. It’s a necessary platform for all companies and brands of any size. According to HubSpot’s latest round-up of blogging statistics, businesses who blog get 67 percent more leads. Brands that blog also receive 97 percent more links to their website. Providing your readers with relevant and informative content on a blog is like taking someone out on a good first couple dates. You can’t expect someone to commit right away without wining and dining that person in beginning—right?
Think about it like this: as a consumer, when you’re researching a product, don’t you spend time browsing the company’s website—especially if it’s new? And isn’t it nice when you stumble upon their blog and learn more about their values, company updates and everything in between? Let’s think of a real-life example. Let’s say you’re trying to find organically grown food. Chances are you'd stumble upon the Whole Foods blog, which is full of useful information.
A common reason companies think they can’t start a blog is because they don’t have anyone at their company who can write or manage it. This should never be an issue with content writing services like Scripted around. Now that we’ve cleared up you don’t need a team of in-house writers to have a blog, let’s talk about why you need one.
Blogging drives more qualified leads
Many prospects end up going through over half the purchase decision-making process before reaching out directly to the company, according to Executive Board. Where are they getting their information before they make direct contact with the client's brand? Most like it’s from content that your competitors are creating.
Through blogging, you can control the conversation—instead of allowing prospects to consider third-party review sites, their social network and competitor sites as their only sources for information. Additionally, after marketing passes qualified leads off to sales, the sales department can also use these articles to answer questions, help the customer imagine the client's product or service in their life, and close the deal.
Blogging builds your brand
Blogging helps improve brand awareness and industry authority. Who's going to look more reputable to a consumer: a company that simply posts about its products and services, or a company that blogs about industry trends, offers an ebook and publishes thoughtful content on industry issues? Blogging also helps fuel your social media channels, which contribute to building your brand’s voice. It’s important to share content on social media that’s relevant to your audience, and hopefully that’s coming from your blog. You don’t want to only share your own brand’s content, that can come off as inauthentic. You should share a mix of both, but you can’t do that without creating some of your own.
These are the channels where potential clients can get to know you without directly communicating with you.
Blogging Helps Nurture Customer Relationships
Today's marketing strategies can't rely on a "one and done" strategy, as a competitor with a newer, shinier option is always out there. Winning customers over and over again is an essential part of business growth, and maintaining a blog can help keep customers engaged. Why do you ask? Well, a blog is a great way to gain a following without asking for people to commit. It’s also a channel through which people can build trust in you, which will make them more likely to think of you when they have a problem you can solve.
Now that we’ve discussed why you need a blog, let’s talk about to run one—even when you don’t think you have the resources.
How Often Do I Have to Update My Blog?
The first two things you need to figure out are who is going to write your content, and how much of it you need. A common question we get from many clients is “How often do I have to update my blog?” The straightforward answer is that there’s no one-size-fits-all answer that can be applied to every company. It truly does depend on your company size and resources. With that being said, there are a few important factors to keep in mind.
The More The Better, But Don’t Sacrifice Quality
It’s important to remember that typically the more you update your blog, the more traffic you’re going to receive. HubSpot released statistics that confirm this. They found that “companies that blog 3 to 5 times a month, or around once a week, have more than twice the traffic of companies that don’t.” Several other findings show the same general trend: blog more, get more traffic and leads. This makes sense as the most content that you produce, the more opportunities for your website to gather external links, social shares, and indexed pages in Google’s search results.
However, this can be a tricky rule to follow because you don’t want to create content just to create content. Publishing content that doesn’t reflect the integrity of your brand can hurt your reputation. Therefore, think about how much content your team can publish without decreasing the value of the content (e.g. grammar mistakes, low level writing, little research, etc.). It’s best to start off with one really awesome blog post per week. Depending on your resources, you can increase the volume from there.
Be Consistent
Whatever you decide, make sure to be consistent. If you’re going to update your blog only once a week, do it on the same day. In the beginning of launching your content strategy, play around with posting content on different days and see which one drives the most engagement and traffic to your site. If you build a loyal audience, they may be expecting a new post on a specific day or to receive a newsletter on the same day of the week.
Keeping consistency and quality in mind, it’s important to be realistic about what you can handle. It can be intimidating out there while brands are publishing multiple posts a day, but trying to keep up with the competition for the sake of staying in the race won’t get you very far.
Key Takeaways:
- Blogging is a very great tool that every company needs to embrace.
- You don’t need in-house writers to blog
- An article once a week is better than nothing!
This article was provided by Scripted. Scripted provides original content, writen by subject-based writers, on demand.
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