Does Your Brand Need A Blog?

Ali Glemser

Not every brand needs a blog, but if you have the time and resources to maintain one, you should consider starting one today. Blogs are a prime example of content marketing that most any business can leverage. Content marketing is the abstract term for strategically delivering valuable, relevant, useful and consistent content to attract and maintain a clearly defined audience – and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

Thinking of that definition, can you start to see how a blog fits in that category? The nice thing is that a blog can develop your brand’s voice, too, and allow you to be conversational with your readers. You can speak to your blog readers like you would to your potential and current customers because hopefully that’s who is reading it. 

Once you’re on board with adding a blog, you should make space on your website and start writing one or two posts per month. In your posts, you can talk not only about your products or services but also about industry trends, company accomplishments and common questions you receive about your brand. Customer feedback, both positive and negative, is great inspiration for blog posts, as well. When addressing points from negative feedback, you can focus on the solutions being implementing to address the issues, as well as educate readers about how to avoid unfavorable situations or what to do if they do find themselves in one.

Photo Courtesy to Flickr User Dave

Now that you’ve got this great stuff going, you have to determine how people are going to find your blog. There’s a lot you can do to help drive your potential audience to the blog, such as send out monthly email blasts with a link back to the blog, post about it on social media and incorporate consistent blog language into your Google AdWords campaign to increase the blog’s search engine optimization. If you feel like you’ve created a post that’s worthy of a bigger audience, you can submit it to local newspapers or trade publications that welcome guest columns. Be sure to research each outlet’s specifications before doing this, so that you deliver the best submission possible.

It’s so important to stay timely and consistent with your blog content. A great way to ensure that you can maintain content for the blog is to create an idea bank for blog posts topics. And, round up some assistance - get your employees involved, if time allows. It can be tough to be the sole author of the blog at all times, and mixing in different voices can also help keep the content fresh and engaging.

Overall, remember to be informative and relatable, and let that brand personality shine through. Starting a blog may seem like a scary adventure, but when you weigh the benefits and greater uses of this avenue, it’s hard to deny the value it can bring to your brand.