10 Ways Blogging Benefits Your Business in Brand Building
When it comes to accommodation for budget trips, Airbnb would always be the first few brands that pop up in your mind.
Have you ever wondered what drives Airbnb to establish an authority in the industry? 🤔
Building its culture through belonging, Airbnb uses blogs to bridge the gap between hosts and guests. The aim is to attract more travellers with useful content, such as guest experiences and destination reviews.
One question many people might ask is whether blogging is still relevant in 2022? The short answer is YES! ✔️
Branding is more than just your business logo or tagline; it also includes how customers and prospects are emotionally connected to your brand. ❤️🧠
Many businesses now actually employ a strategy where consumers come to them for information, rather than pushing sales via outbound marketing.
In fact, 89% of marketers list blogging as their top 3 content marketing priority. So, if you’re a business that wants to be heard globally, you can’t possibly ignore blogging as part of your online strategy.
Today, we’d like to expand on the benefits of blogging for brand building, demonstrating why business owners just like you should have one. 👍
If you’ve been working on it, then that’s great! We’ve got tips later in this article that will help you get the most out of your blogging efforts.
What is Blogging?
Derived from the words “web” and “log”, blogging is the art of writing content where you share your thoughts about a specific subject on a website for the general public consumption.
If you’ve spent time on the internet, you’ve probably come across blog articles. Think of them as mini e-magazines. It often consists of text, pictures, videos, and even animated GIFs. After all, you’re reading one right now. 😊
Back in the 90’s, most blogs were merely online diaries where internet users share their personal lives and thoughts. In today’s increasingly digital era, the entire perception has changed.
Whether you are a small business or a multinational company of any industry, blogging has become one of the most effective platforms for brand building and growing online sales. 💲
Why? Well, there’s a fair bit to cover, so let’s dive right in!
How Blogging Benefits Your Business in Brand Building?
Blogging is an exciting, creative process to build a successful brand and grow your business. It is one of the brand-building strategies that has been proven to deliver results.
Now, I’ve got your attention right? 👀
Let’s take a closer look at the 11 benefits of blogging, so that you can best leverage this revenue-boosting marketing tool.
- Inexpensive
- Gain Visibility
- Build Trust and Authority
- Bring Your Company Purpose to Life
- Signals that Your Business is Alive with Fresh Content
- Create Opportunities for Sharing
- Indirectly Promote Your Business Online
- Develop a Relevant Content Marketing Strategy
- Build an Online Community
- Convert Traffic into Leads
- The Awareness Stage
Create content that helps potential buyers understand whatever issues they’re
facing. - The Consideration Stage
Create content that offers to guide them to choose the best solution.
Example: Things to Look for When Choosing The Perfect Brand Agency in Malaysia
- The Decision Stage
Incorporate social proof into your content to persuade prospects to purchase your solution rather than the competitors.
Example: How Professor achieve 80% more leads on Instagram
Blogging makes an essential investment into this lead conversion process. Now, how do you make sure your content is working?
Imagine not having to spend a single cent on digital ads or posting regularly on social media, and still be able to increase your website traffic. Blogging allows you to do just that. 😍
While it takes time to show real results, you’ll be able to depend on consistent traffic and leads for your business as blogs help enhance your inbound marketing efforts in an inexpensive way.
Since business owners are more careful with the marketing channels they invest in, blogging can be a game-changer for those who are trying to maintain budget-friendly marketing costs. This is especially true for small business firms.
Every day that your competitors are outranking you in search, you risk losing website traffic and potential customers! 👨🏻👩🏻
Blogging is a way to build brand awareness for your business. How? Thanks to Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
For example, if you search for “Brand agency” right now, you’ll see Brand360 ranking on the first page of Google for that keyword. That’s how SEO works when done right!
With SEO best practices for keywords, title tags, meta description and more, blogging becomes a long-term strategy that helps you rise above your competitors and brings more visibility for your brand.
The higher ranking your website appears on search results, the stronger online presence and higher potential to attract organic traffic. 📈
Nothing beats a solid reputation. Before trying to sell anything, make sure you build customer trust and confidence in your brand first. 👍
Consistently publishing well-written blog articles allow your company to assert authority as a subject matter expert. You can read more about how to build thought authority here.
When you post articles that are valuable enough to your potential customers, they might get picked up by other companies of the same industry. This means it’d be easier to gain backlinks!
Backlinks, also known as inbound links, serve as a vote of confidence or recommendation from other sites.
It signals to Google that you’re a power player in your industry, helping your brand to stand out from the rest. ♟️
Your blog is a reflection of your business. It projects your brand identity and speaks to the group of target audience who have similar characteristics.
By maintaining a consistent language style and colour scheme in your blog, you’re solidifying your company’s branding with the overall content marketing strategy. 🎯
Prospects that have been reading your articles will get to know you as the trusted and knowledgeable source. 📌
Over time, your brand will make the top of mind when customers are looking for a particular product or services that you offer.
If a visitor finds your site and sees outdated content with the latest article from 2018, do you think he’ll stay or leave? 😥
Well, consumers want to buy from a business that is active, alive and worthy.
If you want to grow your retail or e-commerce website, for example, write articles about your business offerings. When your customers trust you as their knowledge source, they’ll enter the sales funnel for your products.
If you’re in B2B, focus on publishing articles around a specific topic that matches your brand voice and core values. Become the go-to expert in your field. ✅
Google loves frequent updates, and providing valuable content will dramatically boost your search engine rankings. 📈
The benefits of blogging don’t just stop after you post it on your website.
Repurposing blog content is a fantastic way to keep your social media presence going. Also, you’ll save tons of time from having to constantly create new content. 🤳
Every time that you’ve written a new article, you can turn it into various formats, such as infographics, podcasts, videos and more.
Easily manage and improve your online presence by posting share-worthy contents on social channels — Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, TikTok, Linkedin. This helps expose your brand to new audiences that may not know you yet. 😉
Did you know that 70% of people prefer to learn about a company through articles rather than an ad? 😮
Being overly salesy can kill a deal before it starts. Consumers usually don’t follow brands with heavily promotional content, because it leaves a negative first impression that these companies only care about profit.
Educating before selling is always a good tactic. With blogging, you’re giving your customers free information before they make a purchase.
Presenting your business offerings through blog articles, over time, helps create value that indirectly leads consumers to choose your brand. 💎
Perhaps the most significant advantage of blogging is that it gives businesses an opportunity to structure relevant content for your target audience.
With this in mind, the best way to skyrocket your website traffic is to make your blog the foundation of your content marketing strategy. 🔑
Just make sure the content is of great quality, because that’s the only kind that works! Think about turning your blog into a multimedia experience with your videos, podcasts, interviews, and more!
For future marketing touchpoints, you can also use blogging to build an email list of interested prospects by asking website visitors to subscribe to your email newsletters. 📧
Sharing blog articles via social media brings a steady stream of new visitors to your website. 😍
Blogs focused on your business’s topic of expertise are generally more successful in cultivating an online community, as readers develop a deeper bond with your brand.
When you concentrate on building relationships with these influential individuals, soon you’ll see greater brand loyalty.
They’re more likely to start conversations and spread positive word of mouth about your brand. With this completely voluntary sales force from your online community, your business has a greater chance at increasing revenue. 💲
Blogs are prospect magnets, it’s an incredibly useful tool to convert blog traffic into customers. 🧲
Let’s say, you’re a brand agency and your prospect needs help with Instagram marketing for their business.
To nurture and acquire a customer through blogging, it’s beneficial to map out your targeted content with the 3 key stages of the buyer’s journey as shown below:
How to Measure Your Blog’s Success?
As your business grows, a deeper look into your data can be really helpful to better identify marketing strategies and evaluate business decisions. It may just be what gets you to the next stage of your brand-building process! 👍😊
Google Analytics offer a wealth of information. We’ll guide you on how to navigate this website tracking platform, and here are the 5 common metrics you should monitor:
- Pageviews
Navigate to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages
Website traffic is represented as pageviews. It’s simply the total number of views on a single page. Repeated views per page are also counted. This metric is pretty straightforward, where higher pageviews contribute to how popular a post or page is.
- Average Time on Page
Navigate to Behavior > Site Content > All Page
By measuring the time users spend on a single page on your site, this metric can be helpful for gauging whether the readers are actually consuming your blog content. According to Contentsquare’s 2020 Digital Experience Benchmark report, the ideal average time per page across all industries is 62 seconds across all industries.
- Average Pages Per Session
Navigate to Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages
Average pages per session is a good indication of how engaging your website is. This metric is simply the average number of pages a person views in a given session. A survey of 6,654 sites by Littledata survey shows that your blog is performing above the norm, if your average pages per session is more than 2.6.
- Returning Visitors
Navigate to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages. Next, click the Secondary dimension dropdown, and select User Type.
Returning visitors are a good signifier that people have visited your site and are back for more! This shows that they are interested in the content you are providing, creating opportunities for conversions.
- Goal Conversion Rate
First, set up your goal in Google Analytics. Once done, navigate to Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages
Goal Conversion rate is the percentage of the visits resulting in a conversion based on your goal. This powerful metric tracks activities you want your visitors to perform after reading your blog post. The desired actions may be newsletter signup, filling out a form, or making a purchase.
In Conclusion
There you have it. 👏
We hope you find this article useful and realise how crucial blogging is for your business.
If you’re looking to build a unique and memorable brand, blogging is a must in your content marketing strategy.
Blogging helps build brand awareness, grow online traffic, increase sales and more!
Our team of content wizards have worked with a number of clients across multiple industries, and we believe we can help you unlock these benefits. You can reach out to us here, anytime!
For now, I wish you all the best in building your brand! 😊
