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Let’s talk about the importance of blog for your brand today, shall we? 

If you are here, I am guessing you must be a part of the marketing team of your brand. Am I correct? So as a marketer, it is important to be aware of the latest trends out there. It’s about adjusting and complying with the ever-changing landscape of marketing.

Now coming to the interesting part of it. The only segment of marketing that has remained consistent through all these years is blogging.  With some updates in the blogging strategy, it has been the most critical element for any brand or business out there. 

These days, there are numerous options in the digital space to engage with your audience. 

Video. Social media. Newsletters. You name it! But guess what? When you come to marketing a brand, the award for the best marketing strategy still goes out to blogs. You must be wondering how and why! Let’s talk about it, shall we?

Why a blog?

See, a blog is the best way to increase brand awareness. Don’t you see? You get to write informative content about the topics that are relevant to your target audience and their search results. Isn’t that something you would want for your business? Be it a large company or a small business, blogging remains at the top of all marketing strategies. If you don’t believe me, I am sure this blog will convince you right away! Follow up!

Blogs reflect the narrative of a company through useful content showcasing the nooks and corners of every service that the brand has to offer. It’s the best line of connection between customers and the company.

This is how and why a blog shines through all the other marketing strategies.

However, the most frequently asked question about this part is, “Does my business need a blog?”  The short answer to this is, YES. For the detailed answer, you have to stay with me till the end of this blog. Deal? You won’t regret this!

Statistics about blogging

Now let me reveal some of the most interesting blogging stats, to prove my point. Are you ready? Here we go! 

(Source: FirstSiteGuide)

As of 2020,

• Around 77% of people all over the globe, read blogs regularly.

There are people out there who prefer written, informative quality content over other sources of advertisement. Look at the number here!

• Each day, around 7 million blog posts get published globally.

With the advent of blogging as a career, business strategy, marketing strategy, 7 million blogs per day is not a surprising figure at all! What do you think?

• It is a fact that around 67% of bloggers who post consistently on a regular basis, are successful.

• Blog articles with a word limit of 2000 – 3000 get better results.

Statistics show that the longer the blog, the better are its chances of standing out. However, the preferred reading time is 7-9 minutes per blog. So, 2000 words are like an optimum limit. Are we clear on this?

• If your blog is informative enough, it can increase website traffic by around 2000%. Imagine!!

Organic traffic to blogs

Google decides on the organic traffic that your blog receives. Correspondingly, it focuses on informative blogs with quality content providing quality information.

Though there is a lot of evidence on the advantages of blogging, with the existence of Facebook and Twitter, many brands are unwilling to blog these days. You must be wondering why! Allow me to help you with that.

See, blogs can be a lot of work with all the ground level, gritty research work, and updating them from time to time. But you know what I think? It’s worth it. You need to understand that blogs provide the groundwork for information about your brand on the internet. It is more like a personal platform for all your social business. Why would any brand that aspires to grow and expand, not take advantage of that?

Is blogging still a thing in 2021?

YES! Yes, it very much is.

According to Mark Schaefer (author of the book, Marketing Rebellion)

“Blogging continues to be an essential communication channel. Blogging will only become unimportant when reading becomes unimportant!” 

Now you tell me, what does a blog do? Provides information, simple. Now here’s the catch! Providing quality information is the best way to earn the favor of the search engines out there.  As you already know, search engines have the capability to make or break a brand. Any business with some experience knows the importance of a good ranking on various search engines. 

Now allow me to tell you something very blunt and practical. 

People who look down upon the concept of business blogs are lucky in a way, I would say. Why? Well, I am guessing they have never experienced a corporate crisis since they started. When a crisis hits your company, or there is some issue that needs to be dealt with, isn’t it better for your audience/customers to know your part of the story? 

Of course yes! See how the blogs came up like a savior? It is so much easier to put up your narrative through blogs. These are the times when people start looking up about what happened and get stuck with other peoples’ narratives on your brand. How weird is that? You wouldn’t want that, would you?

AIB controversy

Wait, I have a real incident to narrate here. There was this Indian comedy group on the digital platform by the name AIB (All India Bakchod). It was doing really well and the whole of Bollywood (Indian entertainment industry) was working with them on several occasions as well. It is safe to say that they were a major hit at that time.

However, there was an alleged case filed against one of the cofounders of AIB and things were never the same since that episode. They did not have a proper narrative for the audience. There was negative news all over the media which swayed their audience as well. Eventually, AIB fell apart and the founders had to take it down. 

Till date, no one knows the credibility of that incident. See what I am talking about? I hope you do.

Okay, now I will move on to listing out the reasons for your brand to have a blog. Come on!

Reasons why every brand should have a blog

These days the customers expect to be educated about a product or service before they buy it. Personally, I do appreciate this behavior. Don’t you? Also, I am aware that education-based marketing has been here for some time now. 

However, today, it has become a non-negotiable element for businesses overall industries and in every market. Trust me when I say this, having a rigid blogging strategy is the best approach to educate your target audience and build authority in the market.

Check out the reasons to further validate my view:

1. Brand Identity

A blog adds so much to the brand awareness and brand identity of your business. How so? Well, with your written format of content describing the tone and purpose of your existence, the target audience finds it easier to connect with you. 

This is also what builds an emotional connection between the brand and its customers which further leads to brand loyalty. See how this rolls? Amazing, I know.

To get a better grasp on brand awareness and brand identity, you can also browse through our blog.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Blogs being a source of quality content and quality information, enable you to capitalize on burning topics as well as popular search terms.  

SEO uses this to help increase website traffic and expose your content, products, and services to the target audience.  Isn’t this the whole point after all! What’s the use of your presence on the web, if you don’t appear on a google search of your target audience?

Also, it is true that there are numerous ways to increase traffic to your website. You can refer to our blog increasing traffic through social media for this one. However, you cannot ignore the importance of organic website traffic to your site that happens through blogs and search engines, can you?

Being on the very first page of search engine results creates a good and strong impression of your brand in the eyes of the customers. Isn’t that pretty obvious?

3. Social Media traffic

Blogs provide content that you can use to pitch through your social media handles as well. Don’t you see how important social media marketing is these days? It’s a strong platform to gain website traffic and you surely don’t want to miss that.

I know what you are thinking! With Twitter and Facebook around the corner, why work extra hard for a blog to promote your brand! Valid point, I say. But tell me why should you depend on another media or platform to promote yourself?    

Both Twitter and Facebook have their own limitations. Why fall for that? Use them for sure. But have a home-grown stable base to promote yourself is something to look up to! You want it too, come on! The blog will provide a rigid platform to communicate with your leads and potential customers as well.

4. Lead generation

A blog post for businesses serving quality content and quality information is an extremely valuable instrument to increase traffic to your website. Using efficient SEO strategies like titles, keywords, Meta descriptions, and so on, blogging delivers powerful visibility for your business and brand identity. 

Wait, there’s more! With each blog post for business, the SEO enables the search engines to crawl to your website to get a new content index. Now the best part of having a good blogging strategy is the conversion of the organic website traffic to leads. There, we go!

This includes trustworthy leads, who have connected through the narrative of your blog. How cool is that?

5. Analytics

Now coming to numbers! Blog analytics help you get better with online communication strategies.  You agree with me, don’t you? The blog analytics reflect what your target audience wants to read and expects from your blogs. 

This further helps you channelize your efforts into making blog posts for business that are relevant to your customer base. Smart work, see?  

Once you get hold of the analytics, you know what to do and how to do it! There you go, you have made yourself almost invincible now!

6. Feedback from your customers

You know what? A well-designed website usually communicates all the information that a consumer probably needs. However, they miss out on the fact that consumers have questions too! See where I am going with this?

This is exactly why your business needs a blog. A blog post for business generates a two-way conversation with consumers, industry peers as well as leads. Sounds good? I guess so! A relatable tone cushioned with an interactive platform encourages worthy discussions and customer feedback on the WordPress comment section of blogs. 

Tell me a better way to build trust and authority for your business other than communication with the target audience? Is there any? Drop it in the comment section then! See what I did there?

Moving on, the discussions also allows a peek into the users’ perspective of your product/brand. Now that’s something, right?

7. Helps you build your email database

Email marketing is a pretty effective marketing strategy these days. However, making people sign up is not at all easy. This is again where you need a blog. It makes sure that your brand reinforces the need of the consumers to stay updated.

See it’s simple. Once your audience finds your blogs to be relevant and informative, it eventually makes them trust your email newsletters as well. Are you getting me?

You can also do another thing. Include some internal links in the blog posts and newsletters to push them for signing up. How is that for an idea? It will also make it easier to advertise various promotions, newly launched products, or business updates through your blog post.

8. Structure your relevant content

Promoting and advertising your products and services isn’t that easy. This where the blog can help.  You can structure up relevant content through your blogs to keep the target customers interested in your product. Simultaneously, you are promoting your business as well. How smooth is that?

But remember one thing. Quality is the need of the hour. Don’t just scribble something because you have to. It may do more harm to your brand identity than anything else out there.

9. Formation of a community around your website

Let me tell you a way to create a solid bond with your customers and avail great prospects. Shall I?  Okay, so start sharing your blogs on social media to target a wider customer base. Create a community around your blog posts of business, your insights, and your perspectives that are relevant to your brand. Soon you will start noticing the traction that a blog can bring through social media. You have got to try this!

10. Hold on to a particular field of your interest and build authority around it

Nothing shines better than confidence! Just narrow it down to your USP, show the audience why you are the best at what you do! Give them a reason to look up to your brand when it comes to that particular field! Are you getting my point here?

For example, at TheCodeWork, our field of interest is MVP or Minimum Viable Product. If you go through our website or blogs or even social media handles Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Tumblr, you will see how we have built an authority around MVP on every platform!

Start with your blogs! The written format is everything when it comes to building trust and authority. I am sure you are with me on this! Address every issue related to your niche market and industry.  All you need is to connect with the audience and nothing better than blogs to do that for you!

Why do you need a blogging strategy?

Just like any business activity, blogging also needs a specific strategy to grow and expand. A decently built blogging strategy helps you achieve your business goals quite easily and I am sure that is all you want!

A blogging strategy is a perfect plan which summaries the basic steps to create your business blog and any other quality blog post. Want to check them out? Of course, you do!

• Define your business goals.
• Develop your buyer persona.
• Keep an eye on your competition.
• Develop a keyword strategy. (This is the MOST important one.)
• Create a content calendar. What is a content calendar?Well, it’s just a social media publishing schedule for better management.
• List out the channels you want to use in order to promote your blog.

I hope these pointers are enough to communicate the skeleton of an effective blogging strategy. 

A little bit of scheduling hurts no one, right? This will also help you keep a tab on what blogs you publish and when you may need to update the older blogs as well.

Overview

No matter what industry your brand belongs to, a blog is imperative for organic website traffic and much more. So what are you waiting for? Get on with it as quickly as possible. You will soon begin to reap the profits of delivering quality content via blog posts for business. 

Wait, let me share with you the benefits of blogging that we personally experienced as a company at TheCodeWork.

Our blog posts have helped us create a groundwork for our marketing strategies over all platforms. Be it social media, or email databases, or YouTube, our blog posts have helped us direct traffic into these social media handles and vice versa. At the end of the day, we have decent organic website traffic which is a win for the whole of it! Not just that, we were also able to channelize audience from various niche markets into our site! Isn’t that cool enough? 

And how can I leave out SEO? With the quality content fed into our blog posts, we have a better ranking since the day we started and I am sure, there’s no looking back!

So what are you waiting for? Take inspiration from the enlisted reasons and go ahead with it! Trust me, the benefits of business blogging are enormous. Just the catch is to have a proper blogging strategy and maintaining a blogging schedule or as we call it, a content calendar. 

To wrap it up, having a business blog not only delivers a strong groundwork for your marketing strategy but also helps you share a part of what you are with your customers. Soon you will build a community of like-minded people to engage and discuss your ideas and views with. Till then stay tuned and keep writing!

Also talking of business and brand identity, if you happen to be new in the market and in need of help to build strategies around planning action, feel free to reach out to us at TheCodeWork. We are here for you!

Happy blogging!