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16/03/2013 by
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Blogging Benefits And Checklist For Smart Brands

Blogging is an essential part of the content marketing strategy of all types of brands. Small, medium and large brands, need to maintain blogs to reach out to customers.

Blogging Benefits And Checklist For Smart Brands

Blogs help to increase traffic to company websites and build and maintain relationships with existing customers.

They are also excellent platforms to publish textual and visual content to make company announcements, launch new products and provide useful information to readers.

However, most companies have yet to get on the blogging bandwagon or just don’t know how to blog effectively.

Still not sure whether your company should start blogging? Here is a list of reasons that will help change your mind.

Blogging improves Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

blogging-benefits for SEO -ViralBlog.com

Search engine optimization allows search engine algorithms to find web pages on the Internet. If the company website does not show up in the first page of search results then it most probably won’t get any visitors.

Blogging is one of the best ways to optimize company websites for search engines. Relevant, well-written and keyword optimized blog posts can boost the rankings of a company website as search algorithms use various quality signals to rank websites.

High search rankings could help attract more traffic to a brand’s website. This in turn brings in more customers and increases brand awareness.

Blogging helps you become an industry expert

blogging helps to become an industry expert

A blog is essentially a platform for subtle advertising of the brand and its products.

When a company writes and publishes blog posts about industry trends, events and news related to the brand and products, it shows that the company is knowledgeable and is a reputed source of information.

When a company is able to offer valuable insights into the industry and expert opinions then it has the potential of becoming an industry expert.

Industry experts have the privilege of being cited by other blogs and this drives more traffic towards the company website.

Enhance your brand’s social media marketing campaigns

Blogging Benefits And Checklist For Smart Brands

According to recent surveys, 65% of people who receive recommendations for products from friends on social networking platforms end up purchasing the products.

Imagine the number of sales that will be generated if your blog content goes viral on social media platforms.

Blogs form the foundation for company social media marketing strategies. You can publish valuable content on company blogs and broadcast them on various social networking channels to widen the reach of your brand.

Allows you to manage brand reputation efficiently

Blogging Benefits And Checklist For Smart Brands

It has been said that there is no such thing as bad publicity. This however does not apply for brands that are trying to gain an edge over competitors.

Negative information about a brand can seriously hurt the reputation of the company and it could take years for the company to recover from the damage.

Unfortunately, a disgruntled customer or ex-employee can use the Internet as a venting platform, and potential customers can take false allegations and complaints seriously.

So how do you counter such negative and sometimes false allegations? A blog is a perfect platform to do so.

With a company blog, you can respond to negative press and present your side of the story. Readers can also report sources of negative information about your company on your blog allowing you to know exactly what is being said about the company online.

Helps build better relationships with customers

blog marketing fuels customer relations

This is probably the most important benefit of having a blog. The comments section of the blog allows readers or customers to express their opinions, offering valuable insight into the needs of the customers.

Blogs can also be used to gain instant feedback, to get initial product reviews, to solve customer complaints and to understand what they are looking for from your company’s services and products.

Essential checklist for company blogs

A blog that attracts no traffic is useless and does nothing good for the company – only sucks up a lot of time and energy.

How can you make sure that your blog content attracts readers in large numbers and is targeting the right audience?

Here is an essential checklist for business blogs that will help you do just that:

1. The content should be grammatically correct and should be broken down into small paragraphs to make them easily readable. The keywords that your company is trying to rank higher for should be included sufficient number of times in the content without sounding unnatural. The content should also have outbound links to other articles on the blog.

2. The posts should be easily shareable, so place social media plug-ins in your blog that allow people to share the content on social media platforms easily. You must also add plug-ins that allow readers to email the blog post easily to friends and contacts.

3. Any company blog should not be used for blatant marketing. Instead, it should contain tutorials, how-to articles, case studies, surveys, industry news, etc.

4. Include visual content like Infographics, images, charts, videos, etc. with textual content in the blogs. Visual content is much more appealing than plain textual content and combine this with catchy headlines and you will have winning blog posts.

5. Companies need to realize that most readers are not aware of technical and industry jargon and may be put off when reading a highly technical and detailed article that is hard to understand. Use casual language and simplify descriptions so that the content in the posts can be understood easily.

6. Author bios must be established and should explain the role of the author in the company with a clear picture of the author. This helps give a human face to the brand.

Summary

Without a blog, you are missing out on the opportunity to connect with a large percentage of potential customers online.

Blogs are free to create and maintain and is one of the most effective forms of marketing.

Creating content for blogs seems to be a major challenge for many companies.

This can be easily solved by handing over control to employees who are not only knowledgeable about the company, its products and the industry but they can also ensure that a large volume of high-quality content is being published frequently on company blogs.

Follow the checklist given here and you will be able to transform your blog into an effective content marketing and online advertising tool.

What About You?

What are company blogs that are very successful? We’d love to see your ideas and links in the comments below.

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About the Author
Jessica Davis is a Content Strategy Specialist with Godot Media. She has years of experience in working closely with online businesses, helping them refine their marketing strategy through optimum use of content. She works closely with other blog and eBook writers at Godot Media. Her other interests – besides online content strategy, internet marketing and search engine optimization – are technology, sports and fashion.

 

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