There’s been a fair bit of debate over the years on the importance of blogging as an element of a business’ content marketing strategy and plan. Well let’s put that debate to bed – blogging is a very important and effective way to communicate with your clients and prospects.

Why Blogging still matters

What follows, in no particular order are the reasons why your business should include blogging as an integral part of your marketing communications plan:

      1. SEO

This is likely the one that’s familiar to most business people. Blogging on a regular basis, using the appropriate keywords relevant to your business and customers is indeed a very effective way to improve your search engine rankings with Google, Bing, etc.

But note the emphasis on being regular. Blog infrequently and you won’t achieve the full SEO benefits, and in some instances you might even get penalized for doing so.

      2. Thought Leadership

One of the most powerful aspects of social media is the ability for businesses of all sizes to communicate on a broad, even global scale. In doing this, businesses have an opportunity to demonstrate their unique capabilities that set them apart relative to their competitors.

Thought leadership indicates you’re a “go-to” resource for relevant and accurate information in your industry. For this to happen, businesses have to take great care when selecting topics for their blogs. Make sure these topics actually reinforce your core competencies. Of course these blogs also need to be well written!

      3. Controlling your message

The one element many businesses tend to miss when considering the benefits of blogging is the ability to control one’s message relative to one's communications plan, and to do it cost-effectively.

Recall that in the days before blogging and online marketing companies that wanted to ‘control’ their marketing message had to develop full blown advertising campaigns. And you still didn’t know if anyone would see, hear or understand it!

      4. Brand Awareness

Yes folks, blogging can build brand awareness and brand equity. In the same vein as developing thought leadership, businesses can help to create a very specific and clearly defined image for their brand through blogs. Again, this requires a well-planned and concerted effort to manage your message, voice and content so that it helps to reinforce the key elements of the brand.

It’s also important to note the effect a strong brand can have on customer perceptions, satisfaction and loyalty. Many brand studies have proven that strong brand stories tend to have a self-fulfilling prophesy with customers, helping to either establish or reinforce positive images they associate with the business.

      5. Revenue Growth/Enhanced Profitability

The final piece of the puzzle, the one many CEOs demand but many marketers fear is the impact this has on the bottom line. Again, when it’s well thought out and planned, blogging and content marketing as a whole can generate increased sales while improving profitability.

I’ll save this discussion for a future blog post, but suffice to say strong messaging, solid brand awareness and improved customer satisfaction and loyalty will usually lead to improved revenues and profits. How could it not?

If you need help with your blogging or content marketing needs, please contact us. We’d love to help you out!

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