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Brand awareness in the digital age means trying to stand out despite being a needle in a stack of needles. The Internet is awash with information overload. Companies are eager to distinguish themselves in search results need the right content to capture relevant users. Here are some reasons why brand blogging should be a focused part of your content marketing strategy.
01) Building Brand Awareness With A Company Blog
Raising brand awareness in the age of the Internet might seem easy. Or at least a lot less costly than traditional advertising methods. Tweet for free. Promote on a Facebook page for free. Self-build a website with Wix for a very little cost. But the way search engines now work means there’s still a lot of time, effort, and money needed to build brand awareness.
New businesses only have to look at well-established companies to understand how brand awareness on the Internet is an ongoing, evolving and dynamic activity. What is clear from established brands is that relevant, value-adding content is crucial to sustaining an acknowledged identity in the digital age.
If you don’t already have a company blog, start one now. It’s a lot of work, but the results are well worth the effort.
02) Solutions Focused Content
Earning a good page rank in the search results is vital to commercial success. That means not only “being seen” but offering solutions and value to users when they browse the world wide web. Whether they’re searching for cheap flights, how to fix their computer, a fun gift for a loved one or how to bet on a football game, your blog content needs to be helpful.
03) Focusing Your Content Marketing Efforts Around Your Business Goals
Blogging, opinion pieces and up-to-date news within a business’s niche are some of the leading ways to stand out. Brand blogs can incorporate opinion pieces and news that reinforce a business’s authority within a niche. Your blog can be valuable for not only building brand awareness but positively engaging with customers.
Blogging also establishes your brand as knowledgeable within a market niche. A great example of this is IBM’s blog and how it integrates into their thought leadership strategy. Their blog is not only exhaustively detailed, but it’s split into various categories encompassing the breadth of its market position while crucially remaining relevant to IBM‘s products or services in both a direct and indirect way.
Credibility can be harnessed through the content a company produces. This evokes trust from customers who recognize expertise. This, in turn, produces greater value in the products and services available, leading to higher conversion rates after reading.
Content can also create customer engagement opportunities. Savvy brands like Airbnb and Jet Blue can utilize blogs to engage with customers.
A marketing plan that incorporates a business blog will provide useful exposure for a brand that has instant access to various platforms including social media. While it is a time-consuming activity, blogging is relatively inexpensive and simple to do, complementing other marketing strategies.
04) Blogging’s SEO Value
Of course, creating unique content and publishing it through a business blog is vital to boosting your SEO. Fresh, up-to-date content is one of the factors behind ranking highly in search engines. It can also help to drive traffic to static pages that promote products or services that a company sells.
Such content can also be used to develop the structure of internal links. This helps to enhance the connectedness of a company’s website and drive traffic to pages where products/services are sold.
The nature of blogging also lends itself to a range of topics, while remaining relevant to a company’s niche, thus such content can cover many different topics. Utilizing different keywords will broaden the reach and make it more likely to appear in an increased number of search results.
It’s not only about using the platform as a mechanism for building a strong presence in search engines, such as Google but interacting with customers in a way that gives them value and encourages the sharing of information (such as linking to such content on Facebook, Twitter or from other blogs/websites).
Also, social media is increasingly important to your content-based marketing strategy. Blogging increases engagement with customers, all of whom are likely to have social media profiles and could potentially promote such content to potential new customers. Just as having a social media profile for the company itself is crucial for developing brand awareness, so is creating content that catches the eye, offers unique insight, and encourages sharing as well as boosting SEO.
05) Content Can Help Bring Customers Closer To Your Product or Service
Content can offer customers the solution far removed from the hard sell. That’s an important part of developing trust with both established and potential customers. However, it isn’t as easy as simply inundating a company blog with lots and lots of information. You need to be strategic in approach.
This comes down to such key factors as defining your goals, developing topic ideas with keywords in mind, and market research to better target potential customers. Businesses should ask themselves why the content is being created in the first place, what content is needed, and how will it be generated to achieve objectives.
TED, the non-profit organization that promotes innovation, is a good example of a strong content strategy. In its blog, it covers the various areas of its industry focuses, with value-adding information. This content complements its chief objectives as a platform for “spreading ideas” in an insightful way. Topics range from science and business to global issues.
What’s evidently successful in the way that TED uses its blog is how its strategy incorporates a number of ways to engage with users. This includes offering news, as well as engaging articles such as interviews with key speakers and thought-leaders, exclusives on TED activities, and specialized content curated for certain demographics. The blog offers valuable insight that provides users with information that is purposeful, unique and shareable.
The blog is a solution that drives traffic to a business website that then generates commercial conversion. For TED, it’s about selling books, training programs, and keynote speakers. For ESPN, it’s about blogging about the latest baseball results to sell TV subscriptions, and for Nestle, it’s about building brand awareness (and selling more chocolate) through its push towards ethical business practices.
Brand Blogging And Your Content Marketing Strategy
Brand blogging should be a critical part of your content marketing strategy and business plan. Trying to stand out in the digital age is a challenge. Developing content that builds brand awareness by offering readers shareable insight is an ideal way to increase traffic and drive sales.
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