Despite the fact that blogging began in the Jurassic era of the internet (1994 by most estimations). Despite the fact that content marketing has changed dramatically in the past decade. Despite the many funnels available for implementing a successful online marketing campaign, the value of blogging has never been greater.
“Why is this true?” you ask.
In a nutshell, it’s because access to your audience is shrinking, making the information you share with them ever more valuable. It was inevitable that corporations would finally discover the value of online marketing – and they have. They are now eating up more bandwidth than ever, leaving reduced access to online markets for smaller businesses and entrepreneurs.
For example, back in the day, your Facebook News Feed was dominated by information sites; often individuals who were sharing high-value data and facts that interested you, based on your search history. Now, however, that same feed is dominated by advertising, often from companies you’ve never heard of.
As these businesses buy up and dominate the bandwidth, smaller voices are being drowned out and silenced. As a result, the search engines have fewer opportunities to present you to your audience because the Big Boys are dominating access.
Despite this trend, all is not lost. You still have access to your audience, IF you offer valuable information that is easy to find: using your website, social media platforms, video channels – and your blog, which remains the most important of these.
Why Blogging Has Value
First, blog posts remain the purest, most accessible form of online content. Despite the amazing advances in technology, as well as the refining of search algorithms by the search engines, written text remains the easiest form of content for Google and the others to crawl, index, and rank in their search results (SERPs).
In fact, because the written word is so easy to read, blog posts are the most valuable content published to the internet – and always will be.
Next, weekly blogging gives you, and your business, a voice; an opportunity to be yourself and share what matters most to you. Whether you share personal stories and experiences or the latest updates and news about your business, writing a blog provides you with a fantastic opportunity to build your reputation and generate trust – which leads to loyalty – which will ultimately generate leads and increase your potential to make sales.
Blogging provides you with the opportunity to let your personality shine online, while offering your target audience the chance to learn about your business.
Finally, blogging is an easy way to establish yourself as an expert in your niche. Because it’s easy to share, your blog is a powerful tool for word-of-mouth marketing and viral marketing to promote your products or services more efficiently than many other marketing methods. And, adding a blog page to your website is easy, while publishing to your website is simpler than ever – no coding needed!
Blogs remain one of the most popular social sharing funnels on the internet, so taking advantage of this phenomena makes sense as part of your online marketing strategy.
In short, the value of blogging has never been greater, for the following reasons:
- Blogging keeps the search engines interested in and ranking your site – they exist to catalogue valuable new content for their customer, the searcher. As long as you provide them what they’re looking for, your ranking will improve.
- Blogging keeps your visitors interested and engaged – while building your online reputation as an expert and enhancing your brand.
- Blogging is easy to do, with little technical knowledge needed to publish regularly.
If you aren’t blogging as part of your online marketing strategy, now is the time to start. Now that you know the incredible value of blogging, whether for personal or business reasons, you do have an audience who is just waiting to hear from you.
Looking for more online marketing tips and ideas? Get in touch with the YOMT Team today.
Thank you for standing up for blogging, Jama. I started a business blog in 2011 before I got active on social media outposts for my business marketing and its still my favorite marketing tactic. Besides one can repurpose the content.
I’ve reduced my blogging from weekly to fortnightly while I focus the other weeks on updating existing posts and giving them a fresh lease of life.
Vatsala – Great to hear you’re still blogging! It takes some time, but like you said, you can repurpose the content, too!