Blogging is no longer an option. It is a calculated business exercise to build a brand image and to develop long-term customer relations.
Your business might be on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In etc., but the eventual goal is to drive your followers to visit your website. Blogging provides a customized and unique approach to present content to your target audience.
While blogging is essential to drive the online marketing strategies of your business, focussing on content is integral to the success of the blog. Let’s see how it works.
1. Turn consumer needs into content for a blog
Marketing content should not be patronizing. It should address a particular need or desire of the target audience. Once that need is identified, design your content around that theme.
Build tutorial videos, walkthroughs, FAQs and visual images to maintain it in all your content marketing campaign. The content in the blog should be constantly evolving and updating.
Be in sync with the current technology and encourage two-way communication to keep your blog in vogue. Customer perception can be monitored or altered through content that constantly aims to address specific customer needs.
2. Incorporating a blog into your business website
You can send e-mailers or post tons and tons of costly paid ads to make your online presence felt, but an ideal way for businesses to build a direct sustained relationship with their customer base is via blogging.
Blogging creates more indexable pages that increase your search viability. Blog content can keep social media on the go, making a relevant presence online.
Content designed to develop trust between the entity and audience can mark the success of the blog. It can attract new visitors and aid in conversion. For all these benefits and more, it is imperative for businesses today to incorporate blogging and organize the content.
3. Support for search optimization by using keywords
Fresh content introduced at predetermined time intervals is a sure-fire way to beat your competitors in search engine rankings.
By listing out keywords, topics and categories, and designing content around it, your business can be in the online limelight. Unlike social sites, your blog can be easily found on the company website.
Blogging on a regular basis about your business, products or services with focussed content will only add more search keywords. This is bound to improve the SEO/SERP of the website.
4. Planning blog content to enhance communication
Creating a blog is a responsibility. And a growing blog requires intensive micro-planning.
You need to define your audience and go deep into their psyche. And all the content for the blog should revolve around them. It is imperative for the success of the blog that the content is mapped according to the buyer’s journey.
Depending on the target audience dedicate content at the most opportune buying cycle of the customer. The content can oscillate between articulate articles on your services or become a forum for consumer interactions.
Create a content matrix to and at every stage add predetermined links or informative pieces or ads to encourage the customer to the next stage of buying cycle.
Planning the content, its variation, frequency and event calendar drives the success of the blog. A blog that is gaining popularity must also assess and plan for scaling content usage to meet the demands of the consumers.
5. Personalized social media platforms
One of the advantages of having a blog is that the content in it can be personalized to suit your needs. In third-party social media platforms, you are at the mercy of any changes made by them. Also, the popularity of these platforms keeps changing, which requires you to constantly monitor where your audience is migrating.
A blog with strong content will help your business build its followers gradually and maintain popularity by constantly updating the content.
Targeted content on blogs built on trending topics, comments and sharing will help you position your brand in the industry according to your focus group.
The comments or articles on your blog will last longer than on Facebook or Twitter. With designer content, blogs can be your own social media platform with a gradually increasing base.
6. Platform for direct customer feedback and interaction
When blogs become your personalized social media platform and garner followers, one of the biggest advantages is direct consumer interaction.
A decisive customer engagement cycle needs to be put in action to positively reinforce the brand image to the consumers. You need to address the questions or problems of the consumer in their own words to resolve them.
Even the content for queries should be prepared using keywords that engage consumers and result in conversions.
7. Content promotion and distribution
Just posting content on blogs is not enough. A proper delivery channel needs to be determined to ensure it reaches the target audience. Businesses should leverage social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Linked In etc., by adding share buttons.
Developing a variety of content to deploy for various channels and devices is also a necessary exercise. Blog content delivery can be automated by sending posts via e-mails or newsletters.
Syndication with other blog posts also allows the content to circulate with new readers and add create an impact via popular websites.
Include an influencer or connecting with a peer group to promote your content, which can take your blog high on popularity charts. It also helps to establish further authority and increase awareness.
A detailed plan must also be laid out for the reuse of popular old content and integrating your brand image into every blog post.
Allocate human and financial resources to your blog to make it a successful content delivery platform. It is important to track the marketing results and identify any loops that result in loss of conversions.
Hitting on the right formula that derives extra mileage for the blog post is a tedious exercise. A certain amount of experimenting with formats and ideas to get it right. Ultimately, it is the content that drives your blogs and the quality that should never be compromised.
