23 Jul How Blogging Works

You may know already about the amazing benefits of blogging, but have you ever wondered how blogging actually works and how it can help build brand awareness, customer loyalty and increase sales? We break it down in a nutshell to help you easily understand why blogging frequently can benefit your business in so many different ways. 

What is a Blog?

In earlier times, a blog was more of a personal diary that people shared online about their life, opinions or things that they did.  It wasn’t long until people and brands discovered the opportunity to use blogging to communicate information about their brand, products and industry, and has since evolved to be a marketing tool of its own. Today, corporate blogging is seen as one of the most affordable and effective marketing efforts and can even be used to complement your social media, SEO and e-mail marketing strategies. Brands are starting to see that blogging is essential to build a digital presence, while also creating a relationship with their audience and expanding their reach.

Blogs vs Websites

We often get asked, “What is the difference between a blog and a website?” Honestly, these days it can be challenging to differentiate between the two as many companies are integrating blogs into their websites. 

• A blog requires regular updates and consistent posting of authentic and original content that provides the reader with an opportunity to engage, share and leave a comment. 
• A website has static content on their pages, but rarely gets updated.  An example would be the company’s information, services and contact details.

What Should I Blog About?

For brands and businesses, we recommend posting about topics relevant to your industry. As an example, if you own a guesthouse you may want to share fun and interesting things that can be done in and around your area as this is valuable content for anyone who is visiting or is thinking of booking your accommodation, and helps to improve your Google rankings for your local area.

Our client Supertubes Guest House has a blog post that lists Activities and Events taking place in Jeffrey’s Bay that is responsible for around 45% of all their organic traffic from Google. 

Remember that posting about unrelated topics might help to increase your website traffic, but it’s not the right kind of traffic. You’ve got to always keep in mind the likeliness of someone searching Google, finding your blog post and converting to a sale. So, if you’re a party-planning service, you may think that sharing a chocolate cake recipe would be valuable content, but it’s unlikely that someone is going to want to bake a cake, see your blog and book your service as chances are that if they’re baking a birthday cake, they’re already past the planning phase. However, blogging about trending party themes would be great because the sort of people who read those blog posts are still researching their party theme, so will see that you offer the convenience of a party planning service and reckon it would be easier for you to do it for them.

How Often Should I Blog?

The more the better! Frequency, combined with quality content, is key to increasing your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). We recommend posting a minimum of once a week, in order to see results. It’s also important to remember that every time you post a blog post, you’re forcing Google to relook at your website and the more you consistently deliver high-quality and relevant content, the better your Google ranking. 

Visual Content

Humans are visual by nature, and a picture (or video) is worth a thousand words! Readers tend to scan blog posts, and only read about 20% of the writing. So, it’s best to use a combination of text, photos, illustrations, infographics and videos, which will make your blog post more interesting and help increase your engagement dramatically.

Blogging is a fantastic way to increase your website traffic, brand loyalty and sales; however, it does take time and commitment to post regularly and keep your blog ‘alive’. Leave it up to the SOMS Digital Agency content team to research, write and post your blogs while you sit back and enjoy the benefits! Contact us today.