Regardless of your industry, you need to be blogging. It’s just that simple. Companies that blog on a regular basis can not only dramatically increase their traffic, but double their leads.
If you think you’re in an extremely technical industry — such as manufacturing or MEP — and blogging won’t make much of a difference, please allow me to show you otherwise. If you have a website, you need to be have a blog.
Choosing Topics
Know Your Audience
You can’t execute effective marketing without knowing who you’re marketing to. And you can’t write relevant, engaging blog posts if you don’t know who your target audience is and what they’re looking for.
This is where is all starts. Buyer Personas are representations of your “ideal customers,” and they outline the various needs, wants, goals, and challenges of your real and potential buyers. These insights drive every component of Inbound Marketing, from keyword identification to content creation. Let your Persona be your guide, and create blogs centered around the topics, issues and challenges that are already on the minds of your target audiences.
Project Updates
Keep your readers informed about your current projects. Take them inside the process; show them you’re proud of your work. This helps to highlight your experience and abilities.
Industry Trends
This is another topic aimed at establishing your expertise and trustworthiness. Show your audience that you’re up-to-date with innovations in your industry and theirs.
The Benefits of Blogging
Rank Higher with Search Engines
Every time you post a new blog to your site, it pings Google and other search engines to let them know that your site is active and continually updating its content. Including internal links within your blog posts that link to other pages on your site further ups your SEO worth.
Generate Relevant Traffic
With an increase in your SEO rank comes an increase in relevant website traffic. By writing blogs on topics that are meaningful to your target audience, you’ll attract relevant, high-quality visitors to your site.
Lead Generation Tool
Your blog posts should be full of useful information for your target audience, but blogs can also be a valuable lead generation asset. Add an option to subscribe to your blog, as well as a Call-To-Action (CTA) on every blog post, offering additional free resources in exchange for visitors’ contact information.
Establish Yourself as a Thought Leader
Writing about relevant, valuable content that is of interest to your audience not only gets visitors to your site, but it shows them that you know what you’re talking about. Your blog is the perfect place to show off your industry expertise and gain trust from potential customers.
Strengthen Customer Retention
Keep your current and previous customers engaged by giving them an ongoing reason to keep visiting your site: new blog posts on topics they care about.
Highly Shareable
Blogs are prime original content for sharing on your social channels. This will drive people back to your site, and it has the potential of being shared by others far beyond your own social reach.
And be sure to repost blogs with LinkedIn Publishing. If your post is relevant and valuable enough, it could get featured in LinkedIn’s Pulse, showing up in the social feed of thousands of potential customers.
Conclusion
If you don’t have a blog on your site, it’s time to get on it. If you do have a blog but you’re not updating it regularly, it’s time to up your game. Building a blog takes time. Building an audience takes time. Don’t get discouraged – get started now!
