Everyone blogs these days, but should you?
Depending upon whether you are a business owner working on branding initiatives or a consumer simply looking to express yourself to the masses, blogging is a worthwhile activity - so long as you truly have something to say and understand the best practices involved.
Let's break this down by commercial companies and ordinary citizens.
Businesses ought to blog
You have probably heard of content marketing and at least understand that many companies blog. However, if you expect to boost your brand's image, fuel revenue increases and improve your stature in your industry, you need to know how to execute.
Here are a few crucial matters to consider:
- Target the right goals: Forbes contributor Jayson DeMers suggests the top benefits of blogging includehigher traffic from search engines, leadership stature in the industry, higher conversions and more bountiful leads. Understand what you wish to achieve with the blog, and set firm objectives before beginning.
- Have a set strategy: Hinge Marketing, a branding service provider, urged companies to have a strategy in place to guide the blog over time. Without a strong plan in place, the content will tend to be disjointed and incoherent - especially when looking at postings across a given month or quarter.
- Follow best practices: Make sure every blog post adds value to the reader, is written as clearly and concisely as possible, and is shared on social media at the right times. Depending on whether you promote the blog on LinkedIn, Facebook or another platform, ideal times for those websites and your specific audience will vary.
- Measure: Pay close attention to how each blog post performs, specifically in terms of views, time on page, bounce rates and click-through rates (CTRs). Analyze what works and needs improvement to not only increase viewership, but also get conversions through those CTRs.
Businesses need to blog and must do it right to actually gain value. For personal bloggers, the story is a bit different.
The benefits of personal blogging
The best practices of personal blogging not only vary wildly from those of business posts, but also across various topics, subject matter and themes. However, the benefits of following the best practices of your specific content can be immense. For example, if you run a good personal blog, you can likely enjoy the following outcomes:
- You can network with like-minded individuals, potentially making connections that can lead to job opportunities.
- Your Story, a platform for entrepreneurs, argues writing in general improves communication skills and overall wellness, including mood and cognitive function.
- You can make money from blogging if you generate enough traffic to entice marketers to display their ads on your website.
- A Blog On Blogging, a site devoted to assisting bloggers, suggests those writing posts will learn a range of skills, including digital design, search engine optimization and data analysis.
Whether you are a business leader, marketer or individual, blogging certainly comes with a host of benefits.
