A good blog requires planning, hard work, and research. It requires different copywriting skills to other marketing collateral. But a blog can draw attention to something with greater ease, and more depth than, for example, a press release.
Blogging for marketing can be an effective way to bridge the gap between your company and your consumer with entertaining and educational marketing content. If it is well written, it may also become viral, and your consumers may share it with their friends and colleagues.
Blogging is becoming an extremely important part of a communications strategy for any online marketer. An effective blog can:
- Drive more traffic to your website.
- Generate more sales leads.
- Create additional advertorial exposure.
- Ideal customer communications and service tool.
Blogs are often written in an informal, conversational style, where readers can comment on each posting. You need to write them in the most appropriate way for your audience.
Effective blogging for marketing
An effective marketing blog can help you:
- Humanise your communications
A blog is much more informal than other communications, readers expect you to write posts in your own voice and give the business more of a human face. Remember, people do business with people. - Improve your customer interaction
A blog can provide product overviews, how-to articles, and other information that is relevant to your customers. Quick customer care communications are probably better undertaken with microblogging, such as Twitter. - Target audience delivery
Give your customers the information they’re looking for. Blogs provide automatic archiving so it becomes a fantastic content-management system. - Drive traffic
A blog can drive traffic to your website, and keep attracting them. Search engines love up-to-date and popular content. - Build thought leadership
Build credibility establish yourself as an industry expert, and allow your visitors to feel comfortable buying from you. - Promote your products/services
It is possible to sell products directly from your blog – or just send them directly to the relevant page on your website. - Earn extra income
Use online advertising programmes such as Google AdSense that allow you to monetise the traffic to your blog.
Tips for blogging for marketing
There are three elements you need to work on in your blog – the headline, first sentence, and image. More than any other form of writing, blogs only give you a brief opportunity to get and keep someone’s attention.
The key in choosing what to write about is to always remember your audience, if it appeals to them, people will want to read it.
You should post regularly. There does not need to be a fixed schedule, but new posts should be as regular as possible. Keep the content fresh, repeating yourself will most likely turn readers off. Repetitive content will soon lose readers.
Keep it short – it is a challenge for most writers and essential to engage your readers. Don’t rely on others to write the blog, unless you contract it out. Include hyperlinks to specific web pages or other content of interest.
To maximise your blogging impact for your marketing communications, contact Jack Marketing Solutions™ today at +44(0)203 397 3557.
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