What's the most cost-effective way to get found online? Blog.
According to HubSpot's research data, businesses that blog regularly generate 55% more web visitors, 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages. And those who blog 16 to 20 times per month get twice as much traffic as those who blog only once a month.
In addition, 57% of business have acquired a customer through their company blog! That's because more than 62% of U.S. adults use search engine results and consult blogs for information before buying. Compare that to 84% of visitors who have left a website because of intrusive ads!
All of which bring up the questions of: what do you blog about and how do you get started?
Provide Valued Content in Your Blog
What is valued content? Google looks for content that is useful, relevant, and actionable to a visitor. Google deduces this based upon the keywords used in your content, how often your content is viewed and shared by visitors, and especially by how many links there are to your content by sites that have been rated to be "authoritative" sites.
The beauty of blogging is that the more content you create, and the faster you do it, the more often Google will crawl your pages. The more often it crawls your site, the sooner your pages are likely to rise to the top of the search rankings. As this happens, your blog is working hard for you 24x7x365 -- and keeps on working forever. As people find, share and link to your content, your content's value increases with time. Like fine wine, your content gets better with age.
"OK OK. I get it. I need to blog," you say, "But creating content is hard, expensive and time consuming." Not true. Inbound marketing (in which blogging plays a central role) costs 62% less per lead! And consider that blogging, once you start and do it regularly, gets easier. There are lots of ways to create content inexpensively and quickly. So here are a few tips to get you started. You'll find that as you get into a rhythm, your blogs will almost write themselves!
Got existing content?
One painless way to start blogging is to repurpose content you've already produced. Grab your brochures, reports, research studies, FAQs, checklists, tips, instructions, press releases, etc. Re-use them for your blog by turning them into short 400-600-word tidbits of good stuff. Chances are you'll get multiple blogs from one source, stretching your existing content even further.
Great blogs include content from people other than your marketing folks
Blogs are a great place to show off staff expertise. Having staff members from different parts of your company contribute to your company blog offers a wider variety of even more content that will be valued by visitors.- Have other experts from within your industry write blogs for you.
- Your customers could write blogs for you on specific topics.
Using these "guest bloggers" adds variety, "spice" and credibility by offering different viewpoints, writing styles and takes the burden off having to create new content by yourself!
Bring your off line activities, on line.
Opening a new store? Hosting a conference? Launching a new product? You can use off-line events for blog material and kill two birds with one stone—write a blog article *and* promote your off-line event.
Another blogging perk is that as you publish quality, valued content, you build trust and credibility. Over time, your company will start to be viewed as the experts in your industry. People will seek your firm out for solutions and share your content with their social networks both on- and off-line—adding to the multitude of ways your site gets found.
