If you are a small or medium size business there is no reason why you can’t have great brand recognition and wide brand awareness. One of the most effective ways to build brand awareness, communicate what values your business stands for and who you serve is to provide relevant and useful content to your target audience.
Regular blogging is a low-cost, high impact way to do just that.
Greater Exposure
A blog or series of informative blogs can be shared across a variety of social media platforms and via your mailing list.
A recent marketing report showed that 77% of companies have a content marketing strategy and more often than not that includes blogging, which for 94% of marketers is distributed via their social media channels.
Marketing new content to your existing audience means you can further educate and enlighten them about your brand, your products and services, without a salesy phone call or follow up, but rather by being of service to them in a friendly relaxed manner.
Drive more Traffic to your Website
Blogging is a great way to drive organic search traffic to your website. Search engines love fresh, relevant content so blogging is a great way to keep Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines driving people to your website.
Blogging gives you the opportunity to insert keywords which your target audience are using in their search activities. Once they are on your website, you can invite visitors to engage further with your brand by offering a free service, or downloadable which then puts them on your mailing list.
Strengthen relationships
Blogging gives you the chance to ‘chat’ to your target audience in a relatively informal manner. You can showcase your expertise, show you understand their pain points and how your product or service can help them resolve those pain points in an indirect, friendly manner.
It is a great way to build trust with your audience as they get to know you through blogs and email marketing content – which can in fact be the same content, presented in two formats.
Show your Personality
Creating a blog which you add to regularly helps people to hear your ‘voice’ as if you were with them in person. It will help others to get a glimpse of the standards, business character, values, vision and personality of your business.
When people understand your values, what you stand for and how you can help them, they are more likely to recall your business when it comes time to access products or services like yours. If you have been a regular on their social media feed with added value, then their awareness of your brand will be valuable to them and to you.
Sharing
Having your blog out there means others can share your value and wisdom with the people they interact with. With so many different social media and email sharing apps available, people can tweet, share, or forward it to a colleague. That amounts to free advertising and creates the potential for viral traffic and growth.
How to get started with Blogging
Getting started is always the hardest part of any new activity. Once you start and you set aside some time to meet the new commitment, you will find it gets easier (like anything!) with time.
9 Steps to Get Started
- Get your website setup ready to blog – contact your web designer and they will be able to help you to do this and get them to teach you how to use it.
- Create a content schedule which identifies 5-6 themes or areas of interest around your core business offerings.
- From each of your 5-6 themes, generate 4-5 ideas of blog posts you could write – remember you don’t need to know all the details when you come up with the idea – just jot them down in any order. If you have 5 themes and 5 ideas for each that’s 25 blog topics right there.
- Create a blogging schedule – decide how often you want to or can blog. Don’t set yourself up to fail. Be realistic about how long it takes to write a blog (and it will be different for every person and every topic) and how much time you have to blog.
- Set aside time to blog – and commit to it.
- Get started – like anything when you start you may feel clunky or awkward (remember how you felt when you first started your business and everything was new?).
- Find a few blogs that you really like and start following them. As you read, consider what you do and don’t like about the blog, the layout, the language, the content, the style.
- Practice – the more you write, the better you will get – keep practicing.
- Keep a list on your phone for adding blog ideas – you will be surprised where and when inspiration strikes!
How I started ...
When I first started my business blog I committed to blogging once a week. And I failed.
Now I blog regularly once every two weeks and that seems to work better for me. Sure, I don’t produce as much content as some other businesses, but I do produce valuable content and I can make that happen once a fortnight. In the space of one year I could potentially write 26 blogs.
This last 12 months I wrote 20 blogs, because I don’t blog when I am on leave and sometimes life just happens – but I meet the commitment regularly enough to not have to beat myself up over it!
And now I have 20 pieces of content from the last 12 months to drive traffic to my website, help my customers learn more about good website ownership and digital marketing and I often refer customers to information that I have written about to answer their questions. And next year I will most likely write 20 more …
If you are interested in increasing your exposure in the online world, showcasing your knowledge and expertise, and need an effective marketing strategy that is simple and cost effective then consider adding blogging to your marketing tool kit.
P.S.
Found a spelling or grammatical error in this post? Then contact me as soon as possible and let me know. In return for your super proof reading, I will offer you a free 30-minute review of your digital presence and some fresh ideas you can try out for free.
Get in Touch
If you’d like help with your website, blogging or email marketing, then make a time to chat by using the big orange button below. I can help you to:
1. Clarify your target market and work out what you want them to do when they get to your website.
2. Help you nut out what you might blog about and how to schedule that up
3. Create keyword rich content for your blog to drive more traffic through organic search to your website.
4. Get your digital presence ranking up in Google and other search engines.