It's time to take business blogging seriously

Many small firms are turning to business blogging as part of their lead generation process.  Not only do blogs allow complete control over the editorial content, but business blogging can also produce sales leads up to 60% cheaper than traditional marketing activities.  

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In the US and, in all likelihood, in Europe too, small firms are turning to the creation of blog content to help generate new business. Heidi Cohen outlines some of the key reasons why business blogging is now such an important marketing tool.  Businesses that are quick to understand the benefits will be better positioned to reap the rewards as industries in general embrace new digital marketing techniques.  Let’s look at the benefits.

A media platform you control

Unlike press releases which are exposed to the whims of editors, with blogs you have full control over the content that is published. Provided your blog is well written and not an overt sales pitch, you'll be able to create marketing messages and calls-to-action exactly as you want them.  And, as blogs have the option for readers to leave comments, you also have a great way to interact with and influence your customers too.  

It means you can actually demonstrate things like customer responsiveness, integrity and industry competence. In fact, your corporate blog can very much determine a major part of the customer experience and, being social in nature, word-of-mouth about a good experience can travel fast.

Integral to your search and social media strategy

The way most blogging platforms are created means you can write content that search engines will utilise for search queries. The more your blog site and content is set up for SEO, the higher your search rank and the greater the probability that your blog content will be found by the target group you are aiming at.

The social nature of blogs is a key ingredient that businesses need to understand too. The blog itself can highlight your industry expertise, customer ethos or corporate personality. Your task then is to extend your audience reach through other social media platforms.  Linkedin, Google-Plus, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and others, effectively become your advertising medium.  

By building-up a following, you'll be able to drive traffic back to your website. If you make that experience meaningful to your business audience, word will spread quickly to others. Compared to traditional print publications, business blogs are a much cheaper and more targeted way to reach your audience.

Content that drives lead generation

With complete editorial control over your content, you are able to exploit links to other related content too. So long as you have aligned your web content to the right buyer persona / stage, you can create content that systematically moves visitors along the sales lead funnel process.

That's not something you’ve been able to do so comprehensively in the past. As Heidi Cohen highlights, your blog archive is effectively a content management system.  Each item can have links that help your audience navigate towards sales engagement. What’s more, as most blog platforms have some form of analytics package, you can track, monitor and enhance performance to make the whole process very effective.

It's time to take blogging seriously

As the digital marketing landscape evolves, more and more small firms are recognising the potential of the corporate blog on business performance.  Not only can they generate leads up to 60 per cent cheaper than traditional tactics, but with careful planning, business blogs can become part of the lead generation process itself, helping you to nurture and qualify new sales opportunities.  Being dismissive of corporate blogs could be a very costly mistake!

Business blogging is fast becoming an integral and cost effective part of the marketing toolkit.  If you can’t find the time yourself to create blogs, consider making it part of an employee’s job description. Alternatively, hire a marketing copywriter to write them for you.  Once you have established an initial archive of material, you’ll be able to exploit the “linkability” of your content to generate high quality leads more consistently.

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Marketing copywriting for business professionals short of time