Blogging has been around for a long time. It’s one of the ways editorial tabloids have progressed over the years to suit the taste of an evolving audience.
But what exactly is blogging?
SoftwareFindr posits that at any given time there are about 500 million people online.
Blogging has made it easy for content creators to reach a wide audience while sharing their thoughts and professional opinion that simply cannot be captured in a single photo or short tweet and caption on social media.
What is blogging and how does it work?
Blogging has become a hot commodity in recent years. However, it has been around well before social media was even established.
In fact, blogging is one of the earliest forms of social media. It’s essentially a shorter version of a weblog. Think of blogging as an online journal or diary. It’s a platform on which you share content that is not centered on facts, but your opinion.
What is blogging all about?
Blogging helps boost brand awareness. This helps you reach your target audience more organically, and give them a means upon which they can connect with you and your brand outside of making a purchase or conversion. Eventually, the added exposure is expected to bring in more conversions for your business.
However, blogging is a means of passive marketing that is widely employed by many digital marketing specialists across a variety of niches and industries.
What makes blogs popular is that they’re more than just sharing information. Blogging allows the brand to share content by adding their own opinion. This further increases your trust ratings and helps you establish your business in the industry by giving people a sense of what your brand is about.
How does blogging work?
Blogging relies heavily on catching user interest. Therefore, it is essential to keep your blogs relevant to your industry and expertise.
For example, you shouldn’t write about plants when you’re in the business of selling digital marketing secrets. If there’s any form of disconnect, it would only lead to confusion and would cause a negative impact on your brand entirely.
Blogging works because it gives value to the lives of your audience. It’s important to be consistent with the type of content you’re putting out, and to take into consideration its importance to the lives of your readers.
For example, while clickbait headlines are popular, they’re not ideal for boosting your brand image. Instead, focus on a clear, but interesting headline. Make sure people who don’t even know about your brand will be interested in learning about what you have to say.
Blogging is geared towards forcing your audience to spend longer on your website. This will ultimately give them more time to scroll through your content and maximize the possibilities of making a conversion.
Blogging also boosts your SEO rating on Google. If you aren’t familiar with website authority, search engines rely heavily on it to determine where to place you on search results. This information/ranking is determined in conjunction with the search engine optimization on your website and increases your chances of appearing on more search results - or even as a top result.
Adding relevant content to your website increases your traffic and lowers what we like to call your website’s bounce rate. Websites that do better and have lower bounce rates are essentially given a higher ranking and are more likely to show up on search results.
Why should I start a blog for my business?
Starting a blog for your business is no easy commitment. In fact, many business owners choose to go without. While that might work for already established brands like Nike or Adidas, you still need to consider several factors when opting out of creating a blog for your business.
For starters, you should think about the benefits of starting a blog for your business.
What are the benefits of a blog for business?
Blogging is beneficial to any website for many reasons.
Quite frankly, blogging gives you an opportunity to connect with your customers and your audience in a passive way. This builds the idea that you are an expert in your field, and that you’re not only thinking about conversions or making a sale. It gives the illusion that you’re interested in giving value to their lives outside of the products or services you offer.
What’s more, blogging gives you the unique opportunity to tap into passive marketing strategies. Think about it: how much of your newsfeed on Facebook contains shared blog posts? I’m willing to bet you’ll see that over 50% of the content of your newsfeed is dedicated to shared blog posts.
This is important to think about because it solidifies one basic point: blogs generate organic traffic to your website. While you may not need to focus on highlighting your products or your services on each blog post, getting your brand out there and keeping it visible gradually conditions your audience’s minds to trust you and your business.
They will be then more likely to think about your products and convert when the time is right.
Moreover, the ability to share your content across a variety of social media sites will also allow you to save on marketing efforts. It generates organic traffic for your site and helps increase your website authority and SEO rankings the more shares and interaction you get on your blog content.
What are the advantages of setting up a blog?
What are the disadvantages of blogging?
Basically, blogging requires commitment. It requires a set plan that you have to stick to. But most of all, you need to make sure your content is 100% valuable to your audience. Your audience will only be interested in things that would add value to their lives.
Plus, you don’t want to cheapen the authority of your brand by mistakenly sharing content that doesn’t pass your standards.
While it’s best if you take on the writing aspect yourself, it’s not always possible. In some cases, you might need to look into hiring a writer to maintain your content for you, and to make sure your blog is as consistent as possible.
Tips for starting a blog
Should I start a blog?
The answer is yes! Starting a blog is beneficial for any business. In fact, it will help you tap into a majority of your digital audience.
Studies also show that businesses who utilize blogging for their business generally do better with conversions and website traffic. It may not be easy at first, and you may even hit a few rough patches. But it’s important to keep going.
A vast majority of the human population are online most of the time. Your blog will give your target audience a sense of solidity.
Think about it: would you be more inclined to purchase from a business you haven’t heard of before that doesn’t have anything else on their website except their products or services, or would you rather purchase from a business that has dedicated content showcasing their expertise?
Blogging is a great way to capture your audience’s attention without focusing solely on sales. This gives your audience time to warm up to you and your brand before deciding to either make a purchase or retreat. While the ultimate goal is to make a conversion, blogs give your audience a reason to stick around instead of just disregarding you the first time they decide they won’t be giving you a chance.
Think of your blog posts as your own personal salesperson who is online 24/7. Not only will it generate more interest in your brand, but it will allow you to build a better relationship with your audience.
Overall, blogging is highly beneficial to any business. If you’re looking for a way to boost your sales, website traffic and SEO ranking, then it’s something you should definitely look into. However, don’t go into blogging halfheartedly. If you’re not entirely confident that you’ll be able to produce valuable content for your blog, look into hiring a writer.
If finances are an issue, perhaps hold off until you’re comfortable enough to write on your own.
But overall, starting a blog is rewarding and a great, cost-effective way for you to organically increase your traffic and tap into a passive marketing scheme.
I really enjoyed this little article, it sure inspire me to start my own blogging in 2020
I’m glad it inspired you. Once you start it, let me know how it goes and if you have questions. 🙂