Will A Blog Help My Business?
If you have met Ann, you have heard the story of the swirl in the ASMM Digital logo. You have heard Ann say that marketing isn’t one thing, it’s everything. You have probably even gone through the service packages with her and heard her explain how each service builds on the next and when you mix everything into the pot you get the best bang for your buck. Blogs are the best example of this. Blogs are offered in our most comprehensive package because they are how you stir the soup that is your digital marketing plan.
Why blogs help your business?
Blogs show you are the expert.
Let’s role play for a minute. Pretend you are one of ten local plumbers. You have a website that is simple and direct. It has your phone number at the top of the front page. It lists your services. It shows your credentials as a “Best Of” in the area. It even has a section about your company and what makes you stand out. Unfortunately, all of this is true for 8 of the 9 competitors in your market. So, what will truly make you stand out? Becoming the expert. If your customer is able to come to your site to learn what is making their water feel gritty or why they are feeling a shock when they take a shower, they will begin to see you as the expert and will be more likely to call you to fix these problems.
Blogs help your SEO ranking.
A blog can help your ranking. Because it keeps people on your website longer, search engines will rank your site higher. But there is more to it than that. Google wants to know you are the expert. They want to know they are sending people to the right place and if you are using the right keywords and long-tail keywords throughout your site you can prove to Google that you are truly the expert. A blog keeps your site up to date. Stagnant websites are easily ignored by the search engines, pushing the to the second, third or even last page of results.
Blog allow you to link back to other sections of your website.
A well written blog will always link to other pages on your site. This is a great way to keep people on your page but also a great way to show off the services your offer. Going back to the example of the plumber, if you are a plumber and your blog post is about sump pumps and making sure they are working correctly, your reader may find they need service. Luckily, you have included a link back to your “contact us” page and they can simply click and schedule a service appointment.
Blogs can be repurposed to make for a more robust marketing package.
As a digital marketer we should probably not have favorite clients. But if we were to have a favorite we have to admit it is the company that has a blog. Whether we are writing it or not, we love blogs because they allow for repurposing throughout the client’s marketing plan. We can make graphics that go with the blog, often several graphics to cover different areas of the blog post. We can post these on social media platforms and create entire campaigns around that particular blog. We can include short blurbs in a newsletter that leads the customer back to the website. And we can link back to these posts in future posts creating the opportunity to keep the customer or potential customer on the site longer. In other words, we can stir the marketing soup.
Blog writing is time consuming. It take a degree of talent and it takes a willingness to stay consistent, but it is effective. It can change the way your customer looks at you and change the way search engines look at you.