Did you know that 72% of internet marketers believe blogging is the most effective SEO strategy? In fact, according to OptinMonster, companies who regularly blog receive 97% more links to their business websites.
Considering that 77% of internet users regularly read blogs, blogging remains one of the most effective marketing strategies you can adopt. From building business credibility to boosting brand awareness, there is so much that your business can benefit from blogging.
In this guide, we will quickly look at why blogging is important for your marketing and SEO efforts.
5 Reasons Why Blogging is Important for Marketing and SEO
There are reasons why blogging can benefit your overall marketing efforts. Below are some of the main ones.
1. Blogging Helps Build Brand Credibility
Blogging is one of the most straightforward ways to get customers to trust and be loyal to you.
Here is why;
When you provide valuable and insightful information for your customers, you position yourself as an expert and authority in that field. According to Google, expertise and authoritativeness are important in determining whether customers can trust your business or not.
When people trust your business, you start to build credibility, which can then open doors for many leads. However, for customers to trust your business, you will need to create accurate and helpful content.
Brand credibility is important for SEO because it tells search engines like Google that people can trust your business. As a result, search engines will more likely rank your site higher on the search engine results pages (SERPs).
2. Blogging Creates Brand Awareness
When you establish yourself as a credible business and rank well in SERPs, you boost brand visibility. Yes, you can build awareness by advertising on Google or social media sites. However, according to reports, 86% of people ignore paid ads and only click on organic search results.
This means that if you want to build robust and long-lasting brand awareness, you need to start blogging. In fact, OptinMonster estimates that business websites that have a blog section have a whopping 434% more indexed pages.
When more pages on your site are indexed, you are more likely to rank higher in search results. This means more brand visibility for you. To use blog content to push your marketing efforts, you will need to create search-engine-optimized pieces. You can do this by answering important customer questions and using relevant keywords.
Blogging also creates brand awareness when people share your content on social media. This will widen your customer base and potentially translate to more leads.
3. Blogging Attracts New Customers
According to DemandMetric, companies that regularly blog receive 67% more monthly leads than companies that don’t have blogs.
What does this tell you? It all circles back to creating awareness and visibility. The more people interact with your content, the more potential leads you get. When people come across your content and like what you write, they will keep coming back.
With time, they will subscribe to your email list, and before you know it, they are buying from you. You can also use blog content to drive people to your key business pages. When they get there, you can easily take them through your sales funnel and turn them into long-term loyal customers.
This is easier and more effective than using advertisements which people find intrusive. When a prospect feels like you really care about educating them and not simply trying to sell something, they are more likely to trust you. When they trust you, they automatically become a lead.
4. Blogging Helps Drives Engagement
Gallup, an analytics and advisory company, reports that companies that effectively engage their B2B customers record 54% higher productivity with 63% lower customer attrition.
One of the most effective ways to engage your customers is through blogging. This will enable you to build valuable relationships with them and gain their trust and loyalty.
Your customers might not share your products or services. However, when you write a great piece of informative content, and they like it, they will most likely share. So to boost engagement, you need to focus on creating engaging and shareable blog content.
You will also need to focus on content that fosters discussions. One way to do this is to create content around current issues or growing trends within your industry.
With time, as you continue to build relationships, you will convert your readers to customers. This means that you can leverage blogging to create an engaging and efficient customer journey.
5. Blogging Helps You Identify Customer Needs
Companies that are more customer-centric are 60% more profitable than those that don’t focus on customer needs. That is according to cloud-based CRM company, SuperOffice.
What’s more, Strategyn estimates that 95% of business ideas do not come to fruition because they are not clear on what customer needs they want to satisfy. As you can see, identifying and satisfying customer needs is paramount.
Now, there are many ways you can identify customer needs, and blogging is one of the most effective. You will need to find content that resonates with your customers and focus on these.
Based on how people interact with your blog content, you should be able to figure out what interests them more. You can also directly ask your customers what kind of content they want to see more of. Encourage them to leave comments and provide feedback.
This way, you should know what they want and design products and content that meet these needs.
Conclusion
Remember that we have just scratched the surface with these five reasons why blogging is not just important but actually an “essential” component of marketing and search engine optimization.
If you want to maximize the return on sources you mobilize on putting the word out there about the product or service that you’re offering; blogging is absolutely worth it. It will help you win customer trust, build credibility, boost visibility, identify customer needs, attract new leads and build meaningful customer engagement.
Happy blogging!
