Content marketing is a big part of digital marketing. Publishing blogs is a form of content marketing. The google definition for content marketing is “a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.” Content marketing can come in a variety of forms, from video, podcasting to infographics and email. This blog is dedicated specifically to blogging.
What are the benefits of blogging?
Blogging is great content as it is easy to manage and accessible on multiple platforms, whether you’re on a phone, tablet or a laptop, blogs can be accessed easily on all. Blogging can also help with SEO. Using Keywords is a perfect opportunity to get your blogs higher on the search engine results page (SERP). It is one of the key factors used for driving organic traffic towards your page. You also have the ability to add alt text to images which not only help with SEO but also help with accessibility. Alt text isn’t visible to us but is read by screen readers for people that may not be able to read the on screen content.
Drive organic traffic to your website
Blogging is a great way to drive organic traffic to your website. You choose what you post and only people interested in the topic will click and read. You can optimise these blogs by using heatmaps and analysing where customers read up to or start to stop reading. Hotjar is a great software for utilising heatmaps. Heatmaps show you the number of people that scroll to each part of the page, cold meaning not many people, hot meaning a lot of people get to that section. Hotjar also allows you to see where people navigate their mouse and click on the page the most using the hot-cold method. This is perfect for possibly changing the length of the post and it gives you an idea where you should place your call to action.
Utilise your social media platforms
Blogs are great ways to share information with your customers, especially through your social media platforms. If you have a strong following on social media that engage with your content often, that is a perfect opportunity to link your blog. For example, if you have a post on Instagram promoting your new service and people would like to read more, you can add a call to action under the post saying “Click the link in my bio for more information” and leave a link in your bio. Alternatively, you can post an Instagram story and ask people to “Swipe up” which will direct them to whatever link is given. You can set these links up at UTM’s which is a tracked link and track their activity to see if it leads to a conversion.
Collect data from your customers through e-mail
Collecting data from your customers, more specifically email addresses is another reason to post blogs. After someone has finished reading your blog, you don’t just want them to leave your website and never come back, asking them to sign up for email alerts is a great way to send outgoing communications to potential customers to entice them enough to come back to your website. This can be done by sending a newsletter, offering discounts or suggesting similar products to what they have already viewed.
Conclusion
Writing blogs is just the tip of the iceberg when talking about content marketing. Blogs are great because they have multiple uses, and the ones listed above are just some of the creative ways you can use blogs in your digital marketing strategy. Content marketing goes further than just blogs, next week we will be uploading a blog in regards to video so make sure to sign up to email alerts to be notified when the blog has been published.