As social media gets more and more clogged with ads and mysterious algorithms that change weekly, newsletters and blogging are having a resurgence as a method for content marketing and establishing brand niche. A blog is a great way to share ideas, promote your expertise and increase your SEO, as search engines favor active sites that have new and unique content. We generally don’t encourage clients to get a blog if they don’t think they will write in it, but if they do, that blog content can do triple duty in newsletters and social media posts as well, so that everything can work together. But as with all marketing, consistency is key, as well as sticking with it through the beginning phase.
Informative relevant blog posts are a great way to share information and get regular followers visiting your website. For the past few years, people have been seeking more authentic content and more meaningful perspectives than quick social media posts, that are based on getting likes. Writing in a blog is the easy part, with very little learning curve. Also, the more relatable content that you have on your website the more likely your search results will improve. It also helps to create a specialized niche and an identity for your brand and get back and forth traffic between your site and the outside world.
A custom blog does add a few hundred dollars to the price of a website, as it is intricately programmed so as to allow posts to be searchable by categories, tags, dates, etc. and in a way, it’s your own channel, controlled by you rather than by a social media company. As great as all of that is, a blog is an activity that does take time and effort, and it’s very important that you enjoy writing in it, and do it regularly, and share it widely. Maybe dedicate a few hours a month to writing on topics relating to your area of expertise and finding royalty free images online or taking photos to share along with it. Optimizing the images and putting them into the Featured Image section of the blog post can help to automatically generate a thumbnail image when shared on social media.
As far as content, you can write blog posts off-topic, but it’s always best for SEO to use relative content. The more you write in your blog, the more you’ll want to, and you’ll have more engagement with comments from followers and better reach through sharing of posts. Since blogging gives the website more searchable text to increase your rankings, it’s usually a good idea to include about 800 words or more in each post. Your blog can be even more effective for SEO by adding backlinks. We’ve known many clients who have used their blog as a way to interview others in their field and generate searchable text in Google, as well as create backlinking that helps both parties in the rankings. Once you are comfortable with the ins and outs of creating an effective blog post while talking about your interests, this will be a great piece of the puzzle to increase your marketing.
