Have you started your business website and are still deciding whether to have a blog? You can easily give up that doubt, as you’ll only see a rise in your website traffic with blogging.
But traffic isn’t the only factor that blogging boosts. With a proper blogging strategy, you’ll become your industry’s go-to solution for customer problems.
Hubspot’s recent study on Marketing Trends 2023 shows that blogging has the highest ROI of all marketing channels. It should be because you won’t find any paid marketing channel that can beat the organic content marketing of blogging.
You can try—I’ll wait 😄
Here’s everything you’ll understand about blogging from this article so you can make it a prime marketing strategy for your business:
- Why blogging over social media content?
- What are the benefits of blogging for business?
- Emerging trends and future predictions for blogging
If you didn’t know the power of blogging, after reading this article, you will.
Is Blogging Dead?
Even before I start listing the benefits of blogging, it’s important I talk about the belief that blogging is dead.
With 2023 seeing AI emerging stronger than Alexander The Great, the fear of blogging dying is obvious. But it’s wrong.
Blogging is anything but dying. In fact, with everyone taking a chance at blogging with AI-generated content, people have already started craving authentic content they can rely on.
If you’ve used ChatGPT or Google’s Bard, you might wonder why anyone would read blogs when AI can summarize everything within seconds.
Well, your question has the answer in it.
AI can only summarize. It can’t create something out of nothing.
Imagine this: When making a purchase decision for a CMS for your business, would you rely on AI that summarizes pros and cons, or would you want to read actual case studies presented by the service providers?
I’ve used AI enough to claim that it can’t give you unique takes, real-life stories, results from real customers, and case studies. And you need all of that before making a sound purchase decision.
This post by Ben Goodey caught my attention while reading about AI’s impact on blogging.
The discussion in its comments perfectly sums up my thoughts.
Case study – Benefits of Blogging for Business During a Recession?
Recessions have been notoriously famous for taking down businesses in a single strike. We know how the great recession of 2008 and the recent one during the COVID-19 pandemic impacted businesses.
The first line of action is to reduce the business spent or funding. Everything you are pouring into paid marketing channels will halt. But what do you think won’t stop?
People search on Google. With everything outside getting costlier or shutting down, people will search for ways to do stuff at home.
- Homecooked meals
- DIY furniture
- Vacation at local places
You name it. People will search for it.
Now, imagine you spent money and time leveraging SEO for your business. Your leads won’t stop coming. You may close the paid channels, but your investment in organic marketing will already bear fruit.
Even studies show that Google remained unfazed, was profitable, and grew during the great recession between 2006 and 2008.
If you want a deeper understanding of this topic, watch this video by Ahrefs.
Why should You Choose Blogging Along With Social Media Content?
Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and now Threads—every social media platform has become a hub for organic and paid content marketing.
So why should you consider time-consuming and lengthy blogs with short and easy social media content?
Simply put, blogs are evergreen. You publish a blog on an evergreen topic from your industry and enjoy its results even after months.
That’s not how social media works. You need to put in effort on the content every single day.
Leave Instagram for a month; the platform algorithm will penalize you when you return.
Don’t get me wrong, blogging and social media both require consistency. But one generates long-term results while the other is temporary.
One successful blog post, and you’ll get traffic, leads, and businesses for months.
Social media marketing can aid blogging but can’t replace it. You can always repurpose long-form content on your socials and combine social content with blogging to create an omnipresent marketing strategy.
I’ve talked in detail about it in one of the coming sections.
Expert Opinion
Social media content creation is a great way to grab attention. But, from my experience, I have observed that you need blogs to build the foundation of your online presence.
Let me explain. So there are two brands, A and B. A brand writes well-researched blogs, has 100K+ traffic, and hardly posts on social media, maybe twice a week. There is no consistency at all. On the other hand, brand B is a startup that posts four blogs a week and five social media posts a week and is consistent in its efforts. While brand A’s long-term success is assured, initially, they can’t beat brand B because brand B already has a solid organic presence, which helps them to win in social media with little to no effort.
So, my point is that a blog and social media are great ways to boost your organic efforts. But abandoning blogs and focusing on social media won’t get you leads unless there are several viral posts (which we all know is difficult to achieve).
How can Businesses Benefit from Blogging?
Blogging for business can help increase revenue in these ways:
Boosts SEO and Visibility
Just having a website is not enough. Your audience needs to find you when they surf the internet, and they won’t always know your brand to search for it specifically.
Neither do search engines promote your website unless you give them a reason.
Search engines love fresh, relevant, unique, and helpful content. Regularly updating your blog provides exactly that. Incorporating industry-related keywords naturally into your blog posts increases the likelihood of your website appearing in search engine results.
Improved SEO means more visibility, which translates into increased organic traffic.
Connects with Audience
As I said, your audience needs to find you. And when they do find you, your blog content builds a connection with them.
The friendly writing style, personal tone, and problem-solving content make them see you as someone who cares for them.
The conversational tone shows your brand’s human side. This connection fosters trust, loyalty, and a sense of community, turning one-time visitors into loyal customers.
Hubspot has mastered the conversational writing style that makes you find an instant connection with them the first time. And that connection only gets deeper with each interaction with their blogs.
| Suggested Reading: How to outsource content writing
Builds Authority and Credibility
When you keep producing informative content day in and day out, it establishes you as an authority in your field.
Your unique industry insights, thought leadership content, and behind-the-scenes knowledge make you the go-to resource.
Add proof of work, real-life case studies, and happy client results; you’d have added credibility with authority. 70% of readers prefer consuming blogs instead of paid ads as blogs genuinely attempt to solve customer pain points.
Ahrefs nails authority and credibility with each blog. Their blogs share never-told-before industry information coming from experimentation. Their blogs have a section showing the monthly traffic the blog fetches.
Everything is open for you to check.
Guess what? They’ve become an authority in the SEO niche.
Generates Inbound Lead
Consistently publishing blogs will solidify the audience’s trust in you. With targeted content, attracting a qualified audience who actively seeks information related to your industry becomes easy.
You can convert these visitors into leads by strategically placing calls-to-action (CTAs) within your blog posts.
This organic approach often results in higher-quality leads without spending a penny compared to traditional outbound marketing strategies. Proof of this is studies showing businesses that blog produce 67% more leads.
| Suggested reading: Learn more about strategies for every stage of the buyer’s journey
Showcases Products and Services
While traditional advertising can feel intrusive, blogging provides a subtler way to showcase your products or services.
Through well-crafted product-led content, you can highlight the features, benefits, and real-world applications of what you offer.
This informs your audience and demonstrates how your products or services can address their specific needs, subtly influencing purchasing decisions.
Creates Familiarity and Reduces Objections
Businesses encounter objections on customer calls and discovery calls.
Objections are opportunities for blogging topics. You can now take the common concerns and address them through content.
It gives you new and different content, and your solutions create a positive perception of your brand.
This familiarity and transparency help overcome barriers to purchase, making it more likely for prospects to choose your business over competitors.
Evergreen Content generates leads and revenue for years
Unlike some forms of marketing with a short shelf life, blogs are evergreen assets for your business.
Evergreen content remains relevant and valuable over an extended period.
It means that even months or years after publication, your blog posts can continue to attract new visitors, generate leads, and contribute to your revenue.
You only have to keep the content relevant to reflect industry updates and trends. Keep updating the evergreen blogs; you’ll only see your traffic and sales grow.
Promotes Events and Offers
With regular traffic, blogs become a valuable place to add events and offers. Your new offers and events mostly tie up with the content you already have created. Adding a call to action leading to these events and offers gets you another property on the internet to promote apart from social media. It also gives you a chance to increase and use your email list to increase sales and, ultimately, leads.
| Suggested Reading: How to succeed in blogging
Helps better Understand Customer Behavior
Analyzing which topics resonate the most, the duration visitors spend on specific posts, and the conversion rates from blog content provides data to refine your marketing strategy.
With this data-driven approach, you can tap into the veins of your audience, their likes and dislikes, behavior, and preferences.
It only helps cater to the audience’s needs better with a well-round approach.
Expert Opinion
I would like to name brands like Cognism and Sparktoro. I follow their strategy closely, and the major learning is – the way they repurpose their content. Instead of creating too much content across websites and social media, we must prioritize and repurpose it.
- A social media post goes viral, picks it up, expands it, and converts it into a blog and vice versa.
- Is a blog bringing high traffic? Break it into multiple content formats – small videos, carousels, infographics, etc. and share it on social media.
- Convert webinars and podcasts into blogs and social content.
Content repurposing is the key to combining social media and website blogs for the win.
Suggested reading: Key Strategies for Blog Rebranding
Future Predictions and Upcoming Trends in Blogging for Business
Now that you’ve seen how powerful blogging can be for businesses, you might also want to know the future predictions and trends for blogging. With changing marketing practices, blogging will keep evolving. Here’s how blogging will change for the better in the coming years:
1. Video Blogging:
Hubspot says video is the most popular content format for the 4th consecutive year. 90% of marketers who invest in videos will continue or increase the investment.
Benefits of adding videos to blogs:
- Better SERP ranking.
- Increased impressions as the audience gets an additional medium of listening.
- Better YouTube SEO, as you can repurpose the same video on YouTube.
- The use of video snippets will ease blog promotion on other social media platforms.
2. AI Integration:
AI is transforming content creation. ChatGPT and other AI tools have contributed greatly to saving time and increasing efficiency.
AI can’t take away writing from humans, but it has simplified the ideation and research process for blogging.
Many leading blogs are implementing AI to save time spent on content research, topic ideation, and other repetitive tasks so writers can enjoy more creative time.
3. Long-Form Content Dominance:
Long-form content has ruled first-page results for long, and it won’t change in the future. Audiences demand comprehensive content. It also tells search engines that the blog deserves a higher ranking.
A study by Backlinko shows that the average first-page results on Google contain 1,447 words.
Semrush’s study echoes that of Backlinko. It says articles over 3,000 words get three times more traffic, four times more shares, and 3.5 times more backlinks, emphasizing the dominance of long-form content.
4. Niche Expertise Collaboration:
Collaborative content is becoming popular. As you gain popularity in your niche, collaborating with niche experts and peers increases your business’s touch points and target audience.
5. Podcast Integration:
Podcast popularity is on the rise. According to Statista, the USA will have 164 million monthly podcast listeners by 2024.
It’s another form of video marketing. Adding podcasts relevant to the blog topics helps increase search engine rankings. It also opens up a new avenue of content marketing.
At the end, the best blogging practices will help you stay strong through all evolving phases of blogging.
| Suggested reading: Best blogging tools
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How do businesses use blogs?
Blogs help attract and retain the target audience through relevant, informative, and engaging content. They help establish the business ans an industry authority, increase sales and enhance brand visibility.
2. What types of businesses need blogs?
Virtually any business can benefit from having a blog if it has the need to generate traffic and generate sales from search engines.
3. Does a blog directly impact a company’s sales?
Through it’s content, a blog can attract potential leads and guide them through the sales funnel. Informative and persuasive blog posts can influence purchasing decisions.
4. How does blog help in marketing?
Not just for search engines, but blogs also provide sharable content for social media. Creating content for blogs serve the content marketing need for multiple social media channels.
