It’s seems like everyone is writing company blog posts these days: your neighbor, your grandma, your co-worker. While we live in the age of over-sharing and putting it all out there on Facebook, blogging can be a great and often overlooked marketing tool.
Not only does creating and maintaining a company blog boost your SEO, it’s a great conversation starter, a great place to post your thoughts and ideas in your related field, to connect with clients past, present and future, and document the life of your organization.
This post will look at the 4 main reasons you why you should start a blog for your company.
#1: SEO
Let’s get the nitty-gritty ‘tech’ mumbo-jumbo out of the way first and talk about how having a blog is great for your website’s SEO (and in turn great for search rankings, having your website show up when people search for your business or topics related to your organization).
In the blog Amyportfield.com, Rich Brooks answers the question, “Why are blogs such powerful tools for SEO (search engine optimization) and online visibility” with the folllowing reason: because every blog post you write becomes another web page, and every web page is another opportunity to rank well for a specific search your ideal customer is doing right now” (Source)
The whole point of implementing great SEO strategies is not just to ‘drive more traffic’ to your site (because that sounds complicated). The point is to give your website, aka your business, more exposure online which should result in a concrete and visible increase in leads and new clients.
As Rich says above, every new blog post is a new webpage that will be recorded and searched for keywords and other metadata. So your blog should focus not only on great content, but in that great content, relevant and powerful keywords that you believe your future clients will be searching for!
A great resource for keywords and getting an idea of which are most popular, which will work best for your target audience, etc use Google’s free adword tool.
The point of your blog, from an SEO standpoint is to get people coming to your blog or website. You want them to enjoy the content, yes, and I’ll discuss why content is important later on, but getting the blog “SEO ready” is an important part of a successful company blog.
Some bullet point tips below should get you started, but there is TONS written on the subject if some of what I’m about to say causes your eyes to roll back into your head:
- Prioritize your titles! Make sure your post title includes as many keywords as possible!
- Use a good SEO plugin in whatever blog platform you’re working with. Regpack personally uses WordPress and “All in one SEO” plugin. WordPress allows you to link your social media accounts, for easy and hassle free publishing to your other online profiles.
- Use your plugin to vary your title tag and meta description.
- Use social media sharing buttons to make it really easy for a reader to like and share your post instantly.
- Consider using post titles that number things, meaning “101 ways to save money” or “10 things not to do when doing [something]” (I want to read that!). These types of posts tend to grab the readers attention (say on Facebook or wherever they are browsing for articles, or in their search) and they will click on this article more than just “How to Save Money”, even if the content is identical. Just take a look at this post title. See, I follow my own rules!!
- Make sure your blog is using your domain name. Regpack doesn’t use www.wordpress.com/regpack as our blog url, we use www.regpacks.com/blog so all blog posts are a part of our website and therefore adds to our SEO viability.
- Link to your own articles and others, and try to have other sites or blogs link your blog or specific blog post in their blog post. Wow that was a long sentence! These backlinks as they are called are great for SEO! Guest blogging is also another great way to get yourself out there!
#2 Writing Company Blog Posts as a Marketing Tool!
Now that you have a basic understanding of how a blog works with relation to SEO, the next step is understanding how to market your blog AND how to use your blog as a marketing tool. We’re talking about them in one section since they are basically the same idea and achieving the same goal.
Your blog is a great marketing tool. So, market your blog by posting on your social media profiles, like Facebook and Twitter, with new blog posts to get the word out and hopefully encourage people to like and share your blog posts. But your blog is also your little space on the internet to showcase your organization and what you’re all about. When someone interested in your program or products comes to your website, and sees that you have a blog, they might check it out to get a better and bigger picture of your organization. That’s why a blog is a great place to post photos and videos of your programming, post about great recommendations you’ve received from clients, share your thoughts on topics related to and relevant to your client audience and just to be yourself.
Your blog becomes a great resume and portfolio for your organization. A camp for instance that updates their blog with photos, camper testimonials, reminders about registration, and issues parents and campers would like to learn more about is not only a great resource for your clients (which we’ll talk about below) but also gives a potential customer great insight into who you are as a business.
#3: Writing Company Blog Posts Connects You With Clients
Your blog is a great opportunity to connect with current clients and keep them up to date and informed about your business.
Reminders for upcoming events, where to register for those events and just general news to keep people in the loop are all great blog posts. You can also write about or post information about topics you know your readers will be interested in. You want your blogs to include keywords relevant to your business but you also want people to actually read and enjoy your blog! It’s an extension of your organization and you want to engage with clients on many levels – both in your programming but also passively through online content.
Interesting topics can generate shares on social media as well as comments which allow you to interact with your audience on a personal level and get your blog and therefore your business, reaching other people you might not otherwise have reached.
#4: Blogging and creating an online scrapbook and timeline of your organization.
We basically mentioned this in #2 but it deserves it’s own section since this can be a valuable tool for specific organizations: like camps, sports leagues and other organizations that are big on sharing images/videos on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. While these platforms are great for instant sharing and commenting/connecting with others it isn’t very searchable or organized content. A blog copy if you will, allows you to tag each post as say “summer camp”, “baseball”, etc so someone can view all content and posts related to their specific interest or inquiry.
Your blog can also become a space for building a history of your organization. Potential clients can see what you have been up to and what you’ve accomplished over the years and help paint an organic and natural picture of your organization for potential clients.
These posts also become great records for you! To publicize an upcoming event, link back to that same event last year, or 5 years ago, or 10! This becomes instant marketing material so people can see what you’ve done in the past and what to expect for the future!
Conclusion
The possibilities for marketing are endless when it comes to having a blog and what you can share. Next week I’m going to go into the nitty-gritty details of how to get started with your blog. Like what platforms are best and other details to help you get started.
Keep in mind that having a blog shouldn’t be just another ‘thing’ you feel you need to do on the internet. If you have the time and a great person to manage it, it can be a real asset to your organization, as well as fun place to let loose and be more ‘real’ with your readers. Share funny stories, fun office activities with staff and really, anything you want!