Your brand needs a blog. Regardless of what industry you’re in, you’d be stepping out into the snow with one shoe on by doing business today without one.
A blog is an essential part of any content marketing strategy that allows your brand to speak to your audience in a one-to-one manner. It will help get you get found, develop company culture from within and without, and help cement a truly loyal fan base.
The first thing you need your digital content to do is get found! Unless you already have the leading market share in your industry, you’ll want some help getting people to associate your brand with the top of the line in whatever you make. Publishing regular content that is rich in industry keywords will help your SEO (Search Engine Optimization, if you are new to this whole thing). The links between regular blog publishing and higher website traffic, better ROI and customer acquisition are crystal clear.
A company blog can also be a flagpole to rally around for company culture. Both internal and external company culture can get a positive mood swing from the incorporation of regular blog posting into the digital strategy. From the inside, there’s now an option on the table for employees to really “buy in,” to share their ideas and personalities, and consequently to feel that those unique traits are valued within the business.
Externally, there is an increased opportunity for your brand to create and display thought leadership. Though it can be an organizational challenge to integrate a new content marketing schedule that includes a new blog posting at least once a week, the potential rewards are more than worth it. This is your opportunity to prove you are committed to providing value for your customer base beyond the problem your product can solve.
The other major benefit awaiting companies who add blogging to their content marketing strategy is becoming more human. H2H marketing is the embodiment of everything we’ve learned about marketing activities and human desires since the dawn of the social era. It essentially says that people don’t want to be marketed to, they want to be cared for.
Neil Patel, one of the most influential online marketers, recognizes this in his own success. In this fantastic blog post he talks about and illustrates how he has committed to using his blog over the years to forge real connections with individuals, which in turn has tangible, monetary effects on his business.
His advice to be both open and generous is some of the most timely advice for content marketers available at the moment. At a time when skepticism of marketing is at an all-time high, a strategy that prioritizes openness and generosity will result in more trust. As John recently pointed out on the SMC blog, social selling just doesn’t work.
Instead, consider your audience and what they really value. Don’t just throw free stuff out the window, either. Though everyone loves free, that doesn’t mean it lines up with your consumer’s actual values. Dig deep into what their values actually are. Be generous with your time and information (Patel points out that he’s given away hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of information for nothing) and your customer base will thank you for it.
So have you added that blog to your website yet? When your audience sees it they will know it’s a great place to get a little bit of human-to-human perspective on your brand. When they see how often they can find new content there, they will be back to see what’s new. When they read a post that speaks to them, they will share it with their friends. Why else would Neil Patel’s blog post referenced above have been shared 774 times across three different social platforms?
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