While many blogs are springing up every day, it is not always obvious what real impact the creation of a blog can have on one's professional activity. And yet, creating a blog is a real asset for any web marketing strategy. We present you the 5 advantages of creating a blog and how to optimize it to benefit from it.
Why create a blog?
Gaining notoriety
You have probably already heard of the natural referencing SEO ? This digital communication technique allows you to be visible on search engines like Google. Blog posts are powerful tools to increase your visibility on the web by positioning yourself on search queries. For example, if you have a website offering sports lessons for beginners, you could write articles on topics such as "How to start sports? "What sports to start doing".
People searching for this information will be able to find you on Google and click on your site to read your article. Bingo! You have attracted a potential customer to your site! So you can see how this is a great way toincrease your brand awareness in the long term by reaching your target audience. Promoting your brand and your products or services through blogging tips is the first step to attracting the customer to you.
Gaining traffic to the website
A blog can be a sub-domain or directly integrated into the main domain. In any case, the blog must also communicate your services and products. This means that the blog will inevitably send qualified traffic back to your website directly or indirectly. To do this, don't hesitate to talk about a product or service that you offer in one or two lines related to the subject of the article you are writing.
You can also put banners or action buttons in the blog post layout to redirect your reader to your presentation or e-commerce pages. And the more relevant traffic you get to your site, the more you will be highlighted in search engine results and the more you will increase your sales and turnover!
Proving your expertise
Reassuring your prospects and giving them confidence in you is a fundamental step in turning them into customers. Creating a blog and offering them good advice and reliable information will not only increase your goodwill, but above all prove that you are a real expert in your field of activity. By being able to answer their questions and needs through blog posts, you show that you are capable of accompanying them and solving their problems. Creating a blog is a very interesting web marketing action to optimize your conversion tunnel.
It is a great way to attract customers to you and to get yourself known. Imagine you have an e-commerce site for tools and DIY and you have written several articles on DIY.
An Internet user who is new to DIY searches for information on Google and comes across your blog. Several times in a few weeks, he comes across several articles on your blog giving him all the information he needs. He now knows your brand and what you offer and even if he hasn't yet converted, he already trusts you. The day he needs to buy a new professional drill, chances are he'll head to the site that has given him so much advice and help lately.
Especially if you highlight the performance of your drill in your article, they won't even need to look for which one to choose, they will trust your expertise completely!
Strengthen your brand image
A brand that has multiple channels with a professional look and feel builds trust. If you add a great blog to the good social networks, the nice website and the well-designed newsletter, for example, this will inevitably lead to the feeling that the brand is professional.
The brand image is also reinforced through the blog itself with a tailor-made editorial line corresponding to the company's identity. Will you use formal or informal language in your texts? Will you remain very professional and factual or will you add some humour? Are you aiming to gently reassure your readers or on the contrary to motivate and energise them? Your content will further reflect your brand's image, the messages and values you wish to convey, which will make a strong impression on your readers' minds.
Know your audience
We don't think about it immediately, but creating a blog allows you to collect a gold mine of information! First of all, if you activate the comments, your users will give their opinions and ask their questions directly on your blog.
It's a great way to understand what they're looking for, the problems they have and their needs. Plus, you can strengthen your bond with your community by providing quick and relevant answers, there's nothing better to increase trust in your brand and optimise customer relations! But statistics also speak volumes. By observing the number of visits to your articles, you will be able to conclude which topics interest your prospects the most and adapt your entire marketing strategy accordingly.
How to create a blog that pays off?
Working on your SEO
Even if your blog can get visits through your other communication channels, it would be a shame to deprive yourself of the power of SEO! So try to write as many of your articles as possible for SEO. To do this, find out what keywords are being searched for and what questions are being asked on search engines on a dedicated tool like Ubersuggest to write an article that will specifically answer one of these queries.
This technique will allow you to gain visibility on the web, to attract new internet users to your website and therefore to gain notoriety. The structure of your blog must also be worked on so that the user can find his way around, but also for your SEO. Think about creating relevant article categories with search terms.
Have an editorial line
As with all communication content, it must be possible to find the identity of the brand through its graphic charter or its editorial line. To create a blog it is exactly the same thing. The style must be the same from one article to another. You don't go from a light and funny article to a very informative and rigid one. On the other hand, this should not prevent you from varying the types of articles: tutorial, news, feature article, top 3... It is the writing style that should not change, whether you have a single writer or several. When reading you, the reader must understand that they are on your blog and not on another brand's.
Provide relevant information and good advice
This is probably one of the most important aspects of setting up a blog. One of the major assets of a blog is that it can give potential customers confidence. The worst thing to do would be to create articles that do not answer the questions of Internet users or, worse, give bad advice. This will result in a bad reputation and many lost visitors! So don't hesitate to give as much information as possible that will help the reader in his task. Also try to give your own advice and avoid copying your neighbour's.
There are more and more blog posts on the web, so much so that there is a lot of very similar content on the same subject. Create unique articles and differentiate yourself by providing real added value so that the Internet user is completely satisfied with his reading!
No spelling mistakes
This may seem obvious, but there is still a lot of content online with spelling mistakes. If these accumulate, it's a total disaster! Even if your content is interesting and relevant, it will immediately lose credibility if it contains spelling mistakes. So, take the time to proofread your articles and why not have them proofread by someone else to make sure you haven't made any syntax or grammar errors that could impact your professional image.
Communicating on your blog
Even though SEO is an excellent visibility channel, it would be a shame not to communicate about your blog via your other networks! In addition, your blog posts will be a great way to create content on your other channels. A new article has just been published? Promote it on your social networks, on your website and in your newsletter! Creating a blog also means giving regular information to your community and your customers to keep them loyal. Also think about highlighting your blog on your website by putting a link in your menu or by displaying the latest articles on the home page.
Creating a blog is an evergreen digital marketing action that offers many advantages, provided it is well optimised. And you, have you already created your blog? Have you applied all these methods to promote it?
