Blogs in Bloom: Growing Your Brand Through Content Development

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Whether you’re talking about a boutique in the heart of a thriving open-air shopping district or a company selling its wares or services on the internet, it’s not always easy to stand out in a busy marketplace. While you can place a sandwich board – festooned with balloons and displaying the day’s specials – in front of your store to draw the attention of passerbys, one must be a tad more creative in the digital space in order to increase impressions and drive traffic. When it comes to growing your brand online, the production of well-written, renewable content can prove a real game-changer. If you’re not already producing a regular stream of blogs for your company’s website, here are a few compelling reasons why you should start…

Blogs are Great Tools for Positioning Yourself as a Thought Leader: Do you fancy yourself or your company as the best at what you do? Then why not tell the world?!?! Instead of in-your-face marketing plugs, you should supply news and information your target audience will want to read. For instance, if you’re a builder, your blogs should relate to topics such as “5 Ways to Find the Home of Your Dreams” or “Ten Easy Tips to Preparing for the Big Move”. If you do a REALLY good job of positioning yourself as a thought leader on engaging topics related to your industry, your content may be shared – revealing to you that OTHERS now consider you a thought leader, as well.

Well-written, Renewable Content Can Help You Rise in the Rankings: Quality content is one of the best drivers to your website. This isn’t only true for the copy on your webpages, but also for the regularly updated content you add – in other words… your blog. Set a goal to create a set number of blog pages filled with unique content (let’s say… 50 pages with AT LEAST 500 words each is a good place to start). Avoid any and all use of duplicate content as it could work against you in a big way where search engine rankings are concerned.

Blogs Make Great Fodder for Social Media, Driving Traffic to your Website: If you’re positioning yourself as a thought leader and regularly creating quality content, you should use this for your social media. Promote a link to your blog across all social media platforms with a compelling post to make prospective readers click that link to drive traffic to your website. If they like what they’re reading, they may explore further than just the blog itself, potentially visiting the About Us or Contact Us pages to learn more about your company and reach out to work with you!

Blogs Can Be Repackaged for E-Blasts: The great thing about a good blog is that it’s a link in the chain. You can post the blog to your website, promote it on social media – driving traffic back to your website, promote the introductory paragraph in an e-blast with a link that suggests “Keep Reading” – again driving traffic back to your website, and promoting the link to your e-blast on social media – driving traffic to your e-blast and subsequently back to your website. Just seeing your company’s name in the inbox creates impressions, further fueling the argument for e-blasts – as well as awesome content to include in your e-blast… your blog!

Ready to get started? Here are some tips for creating a great blog:

  • Choose your headline carefully – You want it to state what the blog is about, but you also want to use some creativity to make it stand out. Headlines should be no more than 70 characters long. And don’t forget to really reel your readers in right off the bat. That first paragraph – really the FIRST SENTENCE – should sell them on the concept that this article is one worth reading.
  • The question of blog length isn’t an easy one to answer. Google LOVES content that’s rich with information (to the tune of 1,500-2,500 words), although busy web visitors may not have the time or attention span to devote to reading long, in-depth articles. Ideally, blogs should be between 700 to 2,000 words, depending on what you have to say. It’s really about QUALITY more than QUANTITY. Remember, you want your readers to visit you time and again – so grab their attention and keep them coming back for more. If you can do that in just 700 words – more power to you!
  • Make your blogs rich in content – statistics, cool graphics, compelling images, and professionally produced videos IN ADDITION TO well-researched, well-written copy. Do your research and include links back to the pages from which you draw your information.
  • Spell check and grammar checking software are your friends. Even one misspelled word or misplaced comma in a blog could potentially HURT your brand image.

If you have a copywriter on staff, blogs should definitely rank high among their list of duties. If you DON’T have a copywriter on staff, consider partnering with a freelance writer or creative agency that provides copywriting services as a service. Remember the adage that “you get what you paid for” – which can prove painfully true where copywriting is concerned. You COULD farm your blogs out to a service overseas for a fraction of the price, but you may find that they are fraught with grammatical errors or unnatural speech patterns – certainly NOT a good fit for the brand image you’ve worked so hard to build.

Thank you for reading OUR blog… we look forward to reading (and potentially writing) YOURS!

With an impressive arsenal of award-winning results amassed over a quarter of a century, Marketing, Design & Digital Agency – Woodall Creative Group – invites you to propel the growth of your company brand to new heights! To learn more, call us at 706-658-0244 or contact us.