Blogging is Your Marketing Foundation

The past couple of years have been dominated by businesses emphasizing their social media presence; but in a recent New York Times article, author Melinda Emerson reminds us that it's blogging that builds your business.

The ROI battle

While it is true that social media can drive traffic, a blog is essential to building your content platform. Debate continues over the ROI for the amount of time spent on social media, and tracking performance can feel like trying to nail Jello to a tree.

The metrics and measures around blogging are precise. You can easily measure and evaluate unique visitors, comments, interactions, and time spent on your site. These metrics also give great insight into your customers’ interests and their needs.

Industry expert, industry advantage

The power of blog content for your business is measurable and can do more to engage consumers than just social media. Blogs indicate a level of dedication and commitment to your customers. Blogging showcases you as an industry expert and boosts SEO.

There are far fewer regularly updated blogs on the Internet than there are regularly updated Twitter feeds or Facebook pages. Use this to your advantage.

Having an informative and current blog indicates that your business has invested heavily in its field. While those businesses recognize this, most importantly, customers recognize this. Social media is a great way to promote the content that you write on your blog. It’s a great way to engage with your customers. It just shouldn’t be the center of your strategy.

Your blog is branded in strategy

While blogging has an established history, it is constantly evolving. Looking to the future, there is now more emphasis on brand focus. Companies have produced branded content—volumes of it—but the results have lacked a clear and evident strategy.

Taking the time to develop a clear content plan and editorial calendar based on defined objectives will deliver a long-term benefit for those companies that plan and execute accordingly.

By establishing the primary content and writing tone of your blog, you will be less tempted by hot topics and current trends. While these subjects are temporarily engaging, you want to attract a larger audience, one that will utilize your blog as a resource over and over again.

Meet the challenge

Blogging consistently is challenging, and developing a focused strategy and sticking to it isn’t easy — which is why there are so many company blogs that haven’t been updated since 2009.

Content is critical to online marketing success. It takes practice and continued dedication, but can bring your business big rewards.

Related articles

To help you build your blog, we’d like to share the following:

• Why Dropping Your Blog for Facebook is a Bad Idea
• Blogging Ideas: What to Say When There’s Nothing to Say
• 12 More Great Blogging Ideas

[Image: Nicki-G]