Blogging: An Online-Marketing Workhorse that You Can't Afford to Ignore

Every website should have a blog, and yet, many still don't. Perhaps this is because of the technical jargon and IT terminology that often comes along with the industry. The terms search engine optimization (SEO), hyperlinks, and content creation just sound overly convoluted. While advanced blog marketing as a part of website development naturally involves some technical jargon, it doesn't take an expert in SEO to get started.

WHAT MAKES A BLOG SO VALUABLE?

Search engines give blogs preferable treatment over websites lacking a blog, as long as you update your blog on a regular basis. The upside of this is that a well-maintained blog will earn you a higher ranking among search engines.

Your visibility will increase as you go along. Feed your blog information that is accurate, interesting, contains breaking news, and is useful to its readers, and you will see your client base continue to grow.

Your credibility will also increase as your blog grows, which is paramount to your online success. People must trust you before they are willing to hand over their hard-earned cash. There are so many bogus websites and scammers in the virtual world that you have to prove to potential customers that you are reputable. The trust process will move much more quickly if you use your blog effectively. In fact, with its ability to reach out to people all over the world in a matter of seconds, your blog will connect with more people in a day than you could in a month, or even in a year.

KEYWORDS

In its simplest form, SEO utilizes keywords in a blog post. A keyword is what you type in your browser to get the information you are looking for.

Now think about your website. What word or words would you type in your browser to find the type of information that’s on your website? Those are your keywords. Put them in your heading and in your first sentence of your blog. Don't put too many keywords in your blog or you will lose credibility with your search engines and your ranking will suffer.

CREATE A CONTENT MARKETING SCHEDULE

There are tasks you need to perform on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis to obtain optimum online marketing results associated with your blog. If you aren't savvy about creating content, no worries. There are many excellent freelance writers waiting for the opportunity to write for you. Either way, here is the basic breakdown of your blogging responsibilities:

Daily: Involve your business with a social network aimed at professionals and offer at least one comment on each post. Give advice or intelligent insight relevant to your industry.

Weekly: Write at least two blog posts that are relevant to your area of expertise or product line and publish them on your site. If you can publish more than two, all the better.

The most important thing about a blog is to publish new material every week without fail. If you don't update on a regular basis your ranking will fall with search engines, so stick to the schedule.

Make sure that your posts are error-free, truthful, and accurate. Think of who your customers are and what kind of information they are searching for. Remember, this isn’t about what interests you, but what will get your potential customers’ attention. This is where the creativity part kicks in.

Monthly: Send out an e-newsletter to all of your customers and anyone who has subscribed to your website. Relevant news, sales alerts, events, and insights that your customers would find helpful and interesting are all good places to start.

Your blog will do a number of things for your business continually, as long as you feed it original, relevant, and interesting content on a regular basis. Blogging is an incredibly effective online marketing tool that is possibly more valuable than any other resource you have at your disposal, and you can't afford to ignore its powerful ability.