What's All The Blog About

A blog is defined as ‘a regularly updated web page, typically one run by an individual or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style.’ They have a variety of purposes from demonstrating your expertise to creating leads for your business.

In the digital age, lead generation is a crucial part of your online marketing strategy. Basically your blog lives on your website and the mission is to produce interesting and valuable content for your target market. Once readers land on your website the challenge is to set up a system to capture their contact information. Visitors will readily exchange their email address to tap into your knowledge and insight and once you have their contact information, they have effectively given you permission to contact them again.

Your blog can position you as an industry expert or authority in your field so you can attract more of your ideal type of customers to your website and potentially boost sales. In fact, the statistics around blogging are compelling with a report from the marketing gurus, Hubspot, suggesting that businesses that publish 15 or more blog articles per month experience (on average) five times more web traffic than businesses that don't have a blog. Businesses that publish blogs 9-15 times per month generate (on average) three times more traffic than businesses without a blog.

Published content like your blog drives website traffic because the content is indexed by the search engines and can be shared through other channels such as social media. If you commit to regularly publishing blog content you are effectively adding to your website content. Each article then provides another inbound link to your website. The more blogs you produce, the more content you have to promote through other marketing channels and therefore the more potential touch points you can have with your target market. Just make sure that the quantity of blogs doesn’t compromise the quality of the content.

The Hubspot report suggests that the volume of web traffic increased when businesses increased the number of blog posts:

• On average, businesses experienced a 45% lift in web traffic when they increased the number of published blog posts from 11-20 articles to 21-50 articles.
• Business to company websites experienced a 59% increase in traffic after growing total published blog articles from 100 to 200.

Blogging efforts also appear to impact lead generation:

• Increasing the number of blog posts from 3-5 per month to 6-8 per month nearly doubled monthly lead numbers.
• Business to business companies blogging once or twice per month generated 70% more leads than those that don't blog.
• Businesses that have published more than 200 blog articles generate 5 times more leads than those with 10 or fewer blog posts.

Increasing the number of blog posts is only part of the marketing equation because unless the content is educational or thought provoking your readers won’t share your content. It is often the posts where the blogger says something controversial or ground-breaking that is clicked on, shared and commented on. All this activity around your blog posts then increases your search rankings as the search engines are looking for interesting, current content as well.

One of the secrets is to plan and schedule your editorial calendar. Create a list of potential blog topics with the keywords highlighted for headlines and focus on producing quality content. Your website traffic will increase and you can then convert the new visitors into leads for your business.

Click HERE to download the full edition of The Business Accelerator Magazine for  December 2014.

Other articles in this edition:

• Business Start Up Corner - What Is A Good Age To Start A Business?
• How To Enjoy Your Holiday Without Worrying About Your Business
• Marketing Has Changed The Business Landscape
• Pivot For Profit
• Superannuation & Retirement Updates
• There's An App For That - TrackMySPEND