What is Blog Marketing and How Can it Benefit Your Business?

Today, writing blogs is one of the most commonly used marketing strategies to give a boost to your website traffic. But it was not the case earlier as blogs came into existence some years back in the early 1990s.

In the beginning, people mostly used blogs as online diaries to share their day-to-day experiences. However, in later years, blogs came to be used as a platform for writing about food, music, news, politics, and even business. 

According to statistics, by 2022, there will be around 31.7 million active bloggers in the United States.  

But the question is what is making the use of blogs so popular?  In recent years, the number of people who have access to the internet has increased. This has led to an increase in internet searches. People use the internet to find answers and learn more about various topics. As a result, blogging has become the most popular digital marketing strategy. If implemented correctly, it has the potential to provide excellent results.

In this article, we’ll expand on how blogging is one of the most powerful marketing strategies in this digital age.  Let’s begin with understanding what blog marketing is and how it can work for your business.

What is Blog Marketing?  

Writing a unique blog to reach your target audience and engage them is known as blog marketing. Earlier business owners had their blogs separate from their business website. But today, they are integrated, making it easier for them as well as their visitors. They can efficiently manage their sites and the website visitors can have access to valuable information in one place.

Though blogs started as a way to document one’s personal life, marketers saw the benefit of blogging for businesses. They began using it to deliver information to their existing clients and attract new ones. This is how blog marketing became popular, and blogging evolved into a new and effective marketing tactic.   

8 Benefits of Blog Marketing 

It’s time to consider the benefits of blog marketing and find out whether it is worth the hassle or not. So, let’s get to it: 

1. Cost-effective Marketing Strategy: Blogging is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies. Through informative blogs, you can inform readers about your services and give them updates about your company. The more people read your blog, the more your business grows.   

2. Economical: Blogs are cheap and sometimes even free. It can be quickly built on an existing website and maintained at dedicated hosting sites all over the web for low or no cost.  

3. Simple to Use: Most blogging platforms are easy to use. You can create a professional-looking blog by using your creative writing skills and basic functions like copy, paste, type, drag and drop, and upload.  

4. Provides New Information, Tips, and Updates: Blogs provide readers with suggestions, updates, and other important information that encourages them to visit your company’s website often and make purchases.  

5. Improves Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs): Google, in particular, prefers to discover and rank new content. Thus, many businesses write fresh blogs to boost their search engine rankings.  

6. You can Gain Trust and Credibility: You can not just provide new and useful ideas through a blog but also position yourself as an expert. Thus, helping buyers feel confident in purchasing your product or service through your website. This is because they know who they are dealing with for business.   

7. Client Service: Although most businesses today communicate with their customers using Twitter and other social media platforms rather than blogs, blogs can still be used. They allow you to build trust and rapport with your clients.  

8. Increases Revenue Opportunities: With blogs, you can do advertising, promote affiliate products, and attract sponsors, all of which will increase the revenue for your company.  

Further Reading: The 6 Huge Benefits of Business Blogging

How Can You Do Blog Marketing?

It takes a few hours to come up with a blog and use it to market your brand. Let’s see how you can create a blog and achieve the desired results for your business:     

• Start with Strategy: What will you post on your blog? How frequently will you post to your blog? (Daily, weekly, and so on.) It would be best if you had a strategy before you even begin as it is a crucial step. 
• Decide on a Blogging Platform: Choose a blogging platform and set it up. You can do any appropriate customizations needed for your brand. To ensure consistency, use the same logo on your blog as you do on your website (if you have one). Get a domain name if you’re using a free blog platform (which isn’t suggested for business blogging). This will help the customers to find your business easily.  
• Get to Writing: Start working on your blogs. Readers ignore blogs with only one or two posts. Start by adding ten or more posts at once, then return to your regular blogging schedule.  
• Provide Unique Content: Search engines and audiences both love unique content. Start with research and provide new facts and details on existing topics. After finishing your blog, perform a plagiarism check for your content. This will ensure that your blog is unique and thus boost it greatly.
• Market Your Blog: Now that you are done with the blogs, it’s time to market them. Integrating your blog with social media and sharing it with your followers is simple but important. You can also share the blogs with people in your niche who might find them helpful. Another way to market your blog is to encourage people to sign up on your website to have early access to your blogs. 
• Check Comments: People will ask questions, provide feedback, and express their opinions on blogs because they can. Remember to check all this activity. You have an option to delete the spam comments that you might get. 

Further Reading: How to Start a WordPress Blog from Scratch TODAY!

Some Blog Marketing Strategies to Consider

Your blog is an integral part of your company’s marketing plan. It helps promote your products and services, but you must first know some blog marketing strategies to market the blog successfully as you cannot just wait for a blog to grow on its own. To ensure your blog reaches more people, you should be aware of the following blog marketing strategies:

1. Make a List of Your Competitors

Your competitors provide you with the best insight into what works and what doesn’t work with your target audience. Hence, one of the most important strategies is to keep an eye on your competitors. It will help you find out the type of content your target audience likes to consume. If your blog is about something that interests your target audience, chances are that your blog will reach more people. 

Moreover, you will get to know your competitors’ content that is performing well. You can get ideas from that and brainstorm to come up with unique and valuable content that your readers will love to consume. 

Pro tip: Create a list of at least 5-7 of your closest competitors and closely monitor the types of blogs they publish. You can also use a tool like SEMrush (they offer a 7-day free trial) to spider your competitors and uncover their content and SEO strategies.

2. Write Content for People, Not Google Bots

Do you know that Google’s algorithm keeps on changing and now it gives importance to content that people find relevant. The old tactics of forced keyword insertions might just hurt your SERP ranking now. But you can rank higher by writing content copy that engages audiences first and search engines second. If people find your content useful, so will the search engines.  

How to start? You can start by typing your keywords in the search bar and looking at the People also Ask section of the Google results page. It will give you a few topics that people are searching for. You can use your keywords in your copy.

3. Share Content in Your Network of Bloggers

Once you have written a valuable blog, it is important that it reaches a wider audience. After all, there is no use in writing great content if it doesn’t reach your target audience. One way of increasing the reach of your content is sharing it among your network of bloggers. You can share blogs among your network of bloggers. If they find it useful, they may share it further on their social channels. 

Further Reading: 11 Expert Blogging Tips to Take Your Blog to the Next Level

How Blog Marketing Can Help Your Businesses Succeed   

Now that you have written the blog, you should know how it can help businesses succeed.  Basically, the more people you reach, the more the conversions will be, resulting in increased revenue. Let us find out how blog marketing can help your business:  

1. Improve Traffic to Your Website; Attract More Visitors

You can increase your website visitors by posting educational and entertaining blogs consistently. Companies that submit blogs frequently have more people visiting them. More people on your site may bring more reservations/bookings, submissions to your contact form, and more potential client inquiries. Data shows that companies who blog frequently get 97% more links to their websites.

If the content on your blog can give people what they were searching for, it’s a great thing. Having more people relying on your blog will support your business. So, create content that touches your target audience’s problem areas, and make sure the title describes your content.  

2. Grab the Attention of New Customers  

All businesses that blog frequently and consistently get the most attention whether you’re into camping equipment or clothes. More attention = more new clients (provided the content is excellent, of course!).   

A company that stands out in this category is Roland Sands Design. This particular company’s blogs are updated regularly and feature valuable and fascinating content that suits the demands of searchers.  

3. Reach More than Just Your Target Audience

Many corporate blogs are need-based, which means they address issues and point readers to solutions. However, there are other blogs that focus on developing demand for something that your readers didn’t realize they needed in the first place (think natural relief products, food, clothing, and wellness products).  

Such blogs are for people who enjoy reading in their leisure time and want to be entertained. The trick is to make these blogs look fascinating enough that people would like to read them. If you need corporate blogs for your business, write engaging blogs centered on your product or service. But also write fun blogs once in a while, so that you are providing not just information but also entertainment to your readers.

4. Benefits Your Business in the Long Run   

One of the most overlooked benefits of blogs is that they continue to attract new leads and customers for months, if not years. Old blog posts that have built up authority/ranking over time generate a fair amount of organic traffic.  

These blogs can be easily updated to support current campaigns/goals. For this reason, it’s a good idea to add new information and links to your older blogs. All it takes are a few tweaks for the blog to remain relevant and generate qualified leads.   

5. Makes You an Expert Within Your Niche    

Consider the hundreds of digital marketing blogs you come across; every niche has a few reliable and valuable blogs. Many businesses monitor what their competitors publish. 

For example: Gym owners look out for their market competitors who are using Gym access control system. The most straightforward approach to knowing what others are up to is by subscribing to their blog feed. Keeping track of other blogging websites in the same niche might help a company stay competitive. However, it can also result in developing significant relationships with other companies in the niche. Let’s talk about a specific niche, for instance custom cosmetic packaging, here you can see how a blog page can further make your niche and brand look more valuable and useful.

Further Reading: 5 SMART Blogging Goals To Set

How to Ensure Your Blogs Stay Relevant?

If you think merely publishing a blog is enough to make you win the online battle, you are half-informed. Because, the truth is, it requires quite a lot of hard work to maintain the quality of your blog and keep it relevant. But if you succeed in doing that, it will be worth it. Since generating quality blog content involves a lot of effort and time, you should make sure that you update them so that they remain valuable long after they have been published.  It might not just save you time and energy but will also give you the desired results to help you rank better.  

But why is it needed? 

The reason is that a published blog will take more time to rank in the SERP than updated blogs. You will achieve the right results once you start repurposing your content rather than just creating more and more content. 

How to do it? 

Start by auditing your existing blog posts to check what part of the content can be repurposed or updated. You can include infographics, quotes, and service or product details to your outdated content and reconstruct it the way you want. You can also add keywords that might be missing already. 

Further Reading: 15 Blog Writing Tips for Before, During, and After Writing Your Post

The Final Word on Blog Marketing   

Today, every competitive business must have an online presence. There is no better time than now to use blog marketing and set your business for a big win. Additionally, knowing how to optimize your content will help you stand out from the crowd and rank higher on search engine results pages. Good luck!

Author Bio

Sakshi Bhardwaj is a digital marketing expert and is currently Digital Marketing Manager at Knotsync. She passionate about everything Digital Marketing and loves to help businesses grow, scale and launch new products.

Photo by Daniel Thomas on Unsplash