I’m sure you’ve heard about blogging but before you just dismiss it as something nerds do, think again. This is your “Owned Media” and you control the message.
As of February 2014, there were approximately:
- 172 million Tumblr
- 75.8 million WordPress blogs in existence worldwide.
- 180 million – Blogger, a Google product, is the most popular blogging service used today, however Blogger does not offer public statistics.
- Technorati has 1.3 million blogs
- Livejournal reports to have 62.6 million blogs
- Weebly states it has over 12 million blogs
- Blogster has over 582,754 blogs
There are 8 new posts to WordPress every second!
You get the picture. However, what you may not know is that a blog can also be a very powerful marketing tool for your business, and provide value and validity to your brand.
What it will do for marketing? – A good blog can:
- Drive traffic to your website,
- Generate more engagement on your site
- Create an additional cash stream
- Add validity to your website/brand
- Influence users to purchase
- Raise you organic search
Blogs are conversational in nature, opinionated and sometimes controversial. You can throttle the level engagement with your writing style. More importantly it can continue the conversation and support your marketing efforts in a way that other formats can’t.
The Basics
A “blog” (derived from the term “web log”) is basically just a website with two key differences: First, it’s extremely easy to add information to it. A blog is like an online journal, so you just log in, type your story, post it, and you’re officially a blogger! Second, you can add a simple little feature that automatically tells a whole bunch of other websites that you’ve made an update to your blog – every time you make a change.
Excited yet? You should be–blogging’s not just a winning strategy, it’s also a lot of fun! The beauty of blogging is that you can easily incorporate it into your daily schedule of tasks. You can even blog when you’re on the road.
Ready to get started? What does it take to become a really successful blogger?
- Great content: If your content isn’t interesting and relevant to your target market, your blog won’t work. It’s as simple as that.
- Updating on a regular basis: There are some days when I really find it hard to make time to post a new article, but people look to your blog as a subscription. Regularly adding fresh content to your blog also gives you a boost in the search engine rankings.
- Your voice: It’s important that you write in your own voice. A blog is no place for formality and corporate speak.
Check out David Risleys’ Coffee Break Blogging if you want to start one or market one.