Why is a Blog Critical to Your Business Success?
Business blogs have become an integral part of business social media communication. A successful business blog can increase a company’s reach and visibility in search engines, strengthen its reputation, and serve as a content center for internal and external communication.
Business blogs can fulfill many corporate goals. With the help of a well-organized corporate blog, companies can:
- position themselves as brand experts,
- increase their reputation towards customers and partners,
- serve as an important resource for customers and targets,
- boost customer engagement and brand loyalty,
- support lead generation and conversion,
- and make a significant contribution to SEO and website traffic.
Why Are Blogs Important for Your Business
Blogs help establish your business as an industry leader. Blogs can also play a major role in lead generation, lead conversion, and customer loyalty:
- 81% of businesses reported, that their business blog is useful to critical for their business.
- 71% of business bloggers report, that they have increased their visibility within their industries.
- 69% of businesses attribute their lead generation success to blogging.
- The average company that blogs, generates 55% more website visitors, 97% more inbound links, and 434% more indexed pages.
- 56% of bloggers who maintain business blogs say it has helped their company establish a position as an industry thought leader.
- Companies that blog get 55% more website traffic.
However, business blogs can fall short of expectations for a variety of reasons.
5 Reasons Even Your Amazing Business Blog May Fail
Many business blogs may struggle with low reader interaction.
- 64% of corporate blogs Receive zero commentsl.
- 5% of corporate blogs have three or more comments per article.
Major reasons for low interaction on business blogs:
- Irrelevance of content.
- Inconsistency in publishing.
- Insufficient content distribution and promotion.
How to Match Your Content and Marketing
Low content relevancy is when your content does not match well with the interests and the search behavior of your potential customers. 75% of business decision-makers are looking for substantial business ideas and inspiration. 93% of marketers are searching for content directly related to their products and services.
Business customers are particularly interested in:
- Tips and advice (90%).
- Checklists or instructions (88%).
- Industry reports, studies, and trends (81%).
47% of B2B buyers read 3-5 content pieces before meeting or talking with a salesperson. If you don’t have a content marketing strategy, your content is likely to miss the target.
If your business blog is also your center of corporate communication, it can’t really serve as a content outlet. It can be your information center for content creation, content distribution, and social engagement.
If you use it this way, it will fuel your content marketing strategy and even save you time, money, and resources for content creation.
How Content is King of Your Marketing Strategy
Your content marketing strategy has to shift the focus from their content related to products, services or the company itself, to content that customers and prospects are actually searching for.
The purpose of content is to pull rather than push customers and prospects towards a product or service.
Content has also become a key factor for search engine optimization (SEO). With the growing complexity of search engine algorithms, the visibility of content primarily depends on the individual search behavior and current interest of users. Optimizing content for each customer’s search behavior must play a vital role in the content creation process.
A sustainable content strategy will provide a valuable resource of substantial, helpful content for customers and prospects. Content that contains:
- Answers to key questions.
- Solutions for common problems and challenges in the industry.
- Insider know-how, tips, and case studies from other customers.
How Often Do You Need to Publish Your Content?
Consistency in publishing new blog posts is key to increasing your blog traffic and retaining your readers:
- 24-51 posts will make your blog traffic generation start to grow. 52 or more blog posts will increase blog traffic by up to 77%.
- Companies that blog more than 4 times a week see the biggest increase in traffic and leads.
- Businesses that blog 16 to 20 times per month get over two times more traffic than those who blog less than four times per month.
- 89% of companies that update their blogs multiple times a day have acquired a customer from their blog.
Source: Dan Zarrella, The Science of Marketing
How Timely Do You Need to Publish Your Content?
Most blog readers are “morning people” and tend to read blogs early in the morning. If you publish your content during AM hours, you have better chance of getting more attention for your content.
Dan Zarrella found the following blog publishing and sharing patterns:
- Blog readers are 79% more likely to read in the morning.
- Blog reading peaks around 10 am.
- The best time to blog for pageviews is Monday between 8 and 11 am.
- The best time to blog for increased engagement is Saturday between 8 and 11 am.
How to Market Your Blog for Maximum Promotion
Social Media is the easiest way to promote your business blog content. There are social media marketing and automation tools and plugins to link your blog directly to social media. These tools give you the ability to easily distribute your content to social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube.
Successful social media marketing is not simply pushing your content out into the world. It’s also important to actively engage with the available and varied social communities you share your content on. Even if you share the same content across multiple channels, it’s important for you to address each community in a slightly different way to encourage feedback and interaction.
Ensure that you remember these essential criteria when selecting your social media automation tools. Each network provides different options for presenting your content. Every community reacts differently to specific content and formats.
Setting up a social media cross-promotion strategy can help you work out the best way to encourage engagement across all social channels. Sharing your content across multiple channels helps to increase its reach and lifetime considerably.
Social media, in particular, is also a valuable feedback channel and source of current issues and discussions. These insights frequently can serve as input for developing new content.
How Important is Your Amazing Blog’s Content?
Successful communication using business blogs often plays a pivotal role in establishing a company’s position as an industry thought-leader. A successful blog may attract more website visitors, generate more leads, and convert new customers.
Corporate blogs with a solid content marketing strategy can also create more inbound links and more indexed pages for increased visibility on the net.
