Why Blogging Should Be a Part of Your Content Marketing Strategy

In times when 87% of businesses are using video as a marketing tool and social media is the main channel of communication, including blogging in your content marketing strategy might not seem to be a win-win solution. However, blogging opens up a lot of opportunities for marketers and remains a worthwhile investment for companies that aim to establish a strong brand image and eventually, boost sales.  

Not convincing enough? Did you know that marketers who put significant efforts into blogging are 13 times more likely to see positive ROI? These stats are just one example of how your business can benefit from having a blog. 

In this article, we give you three main reasons why blogging should still be a part of your content marketing strategy in 2020 and share tactics that will help you make the most of actually having a blog. 

Why blogging should be a part of your content marketing strategy in 2020

1. To drive more traffic to your website

Blogging is a surefire way to drive more traffic to your website simply because 77% of internet users read blogs. Moreover, websites with blogs have 434% more indexed pages. What this means is that blogging makes it easier for people to find your website on the web provided that your blog posts are not only well-written but also well-optimized. 

To succeed in both of these endeavors, you should create a separate strategy for your blog that would be SEO-friendly and be in line with your content marketing strategy. It should include at least these five things:

• goals you’d like to achieve and indicators that will help you measure results
• audience you’ll be writing for
• formats that would help you present the content in the best way
• editorial calendar to indicate the publishing frequency and themes 
• list of channels that would help you spread and promote the content

However, creating a blog strategy is only half the battle. Writing good copy is extremely important to engage your target audience and convince your potential clients to convert to new ones. To find out more interesting and useful information on copywriting for blogs, explore these platforms: Copyblogger, Convince & Convert, Grammarly.

Promoting your blog through social media is another way to give your content a boost. It is beneficial to both social media and content marketers, as the first ones won’t have to create content from scratch (they can simply share a blog post with a compelling caption). Meanwhile, content marketers will get more traffic to blogs and consequently, to websites.  

You can also go further and set up a subscription to your blog to track the number of subscribers (in addition to unique visitors) and send them a daily, weekly, or monthly a digest with the content you’d like to promote via email. 

All these tactics implemented together will help you drive more traffic to your website. However, the amount of effort and resources you put in blogging will definitely depend on the general marketing goals you’d like to achieve. 

2. To increase brand awareness

As your blog and website will be getting more traffic, more people will learn about your business, its products or services. However, you need to make sure you’re addressing your potential customers with the right messages. This is the stage, where you need to ask yourself a couple of important questions. 

What makes people choose one brand over another and spread the good word about it? Why do people become fans of particular products or services? Most likely, the answer will highlight reasons such as the best value for money and positive feedback from their friends or colleagues. But you shouldn’t forget about brand awareness – a crucial factor when it comes to a client’s decision-making. To put it more precisely, establishing brand awareness is important because people prefer buying products or services from brands they are familiar with. 

In light of this, you should devote more time to establishing a tone of voice for your blog posts, as well as the types and formats in which you’ll be presenting the content.

Establishing a tone of voice

In short, a tone of voice is the way your brand communicates with its audience. It helps you better deliver your message and express your brand’s personality. Having established a particular tone of voice, you can share what you think about one or another subject and how you feel about your customers. The tone of voice can slightly vary from channel to channel but in general, it should correspond to the style in which you conduct marketing communication with your customers.

Ask yourself this question – if you were to get rid of your logos and branding and send out an article to clients, will they know it is your brand? This is key to finding a tone of voice that is particular to your brand and it is the one strategy that will help you differentiate yourself on the market not only with blog posts, but the website and social media copy.

Deciding on types and formats of content

According to the tone of voice, you can define types of content for your blog. Ideally, it should be diverse – educational, entertaining or engaging. If you publish articles three times a week, you can write educational posts on Mondays. These could be guides on how to find the perfect products on your website in a matter of minutes, get a membership and discounts or become a contributor for your blog.

On Wednesdays, you can share engaging content with appealing in-text CTAs.  For example, we recently presented the Depositphotos face filters on Instagram and on our blog, we encouraged people to try these face filters and share which ones were their favorites in the comments section. 

On Fridays, you can write entertaining and fun articles, of course, if it fits your brand’s image and tone of voice. But honesty, a little fun never killed nobody and if you know your audience quite well, you can easily make jokes or tell stories that would entertain them on the last day of the working week. This is exactly what we did when on Friday, February 14, we published an article with Valentine’s Day memes.

In addition to posting diverse content, your blog posts should be easy to share. You can integrate share buttons on your blog so readers could send your articles to their friends and subscribers directly on Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp or any other channel that is your audience’s favorite. 

What’s even more exciting, great content on the blog helps increase brand awareness but also it also provides opportunities for new partnerships and collaborations. However, you should remember that blogging is a long-term strategy and it might take time to see noticeable results. 

3. To generate more leads

When you publish regularly, people tend to come back for great content and engage with your brand more often. Here, your task is to make sure that you’re using tools that would help you generate leads.  

Use CTAs

We have already mentioned that most of your posts should include CTAs that would encourage people to visit your website, buy and try products or services. In addition to in-text CTAs with a hyperlink, there’s an option to make CTA-buttons that stand out. 

Here’s an example from us. 

A couple of weeks ago we launched a non-stocky search filter that allows you to quickly find unique images among 145 million files in the Depositphotos library. We created this filter because authentic images are a major trend in visual communication and they help businesses effectively appeal to audiences. The message was simple – we want your experience with Depositphotos to be as flawless as possible and we suggest you try the non-stocky filter that will indeed will cut down the time you spend searching for the perfect image.

Try Non-Stocky Search Filter

Offer perks and exclusive content

A great way to convert your readers into leads is to offer them some perks. You can give them a discount on their first purchase in exchange for their contacts such as email address, phone number or any other relevant details. You can also attract them with a lead magnet: a downloadable ebook, a video or a checklist for free. All these things won’t require a lot of effort but bring you results you’ve been aiming for. 

Hubspot uses lead magnets like pros. When you surf their blog for a while, you see a couple of pop-ups that offer you free downloadable files in exchange for your email address. And let’s face it, you just fall for that because the useful insights outweigh something so small as sharing your email address.

If you want to make the most of blogging, you should also keep an eye on other blogs. You can get inspired by their content, analyze their tactics, and see which tools help them reach wider audiences. Try to steal like an artist instead of copying and you’ll see that your efforts will bring you great results. 

For more insights and useful tips, explore these articles:

1, How to Use Photography to Influence Consumer Behavior

2, How to Use Pinterest for Your Business: Tools and Tips that Really Work

3, Let’s Talk About Copywriting: Email Subject Lines Pleading to Be Opened