Blogs are no longer optional in a comprehensive marketing strategy. They demonstrate thought leadership in your industry, drive traffic to your website and build trust with your customers.
They also take commitment and a fair amount of work, and you may still have stakeholders who aren’t sold on the benefits. Here are a few ways to persuade them.
Blogs Contribute to Key KPIs
Monitoring your blog’s performance can help you see how your blog is contributing to such KPIs as social media shares, website visits, return visitors and potential leads generated from blog content. DemandMetric found that 67% of marketers who use blogs generate more leads than those who don’t, and Hubspot found that companies that prioritized blogging in 2019 generated 13 times the ROI of those who didn’t.
Much like you do for your website, you can track the analytics you care about to see how the blog is helping you meet your marketing KPIs. Use those metrics to help you connect the dots about how your content helped you gain a new customer.
Blogs Boost Traffic & Improve SEO
Including a blog on your website offers more opportunities to attract readers and generate repeat visitors to your website. Frequent posting supports organic traffic.
Hubspot found that companies with blogs have 55% more visitors to their site, and companies that publish 16 or more posts per month receive 3.5 times the amount of traffic as companies that publish four or fewer posts per month. They also found that companies that blog get 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed web pages—a key to ensuring your content is found by search engines.
Blogs Reach Prospects Throughout Their Journey
Demand Gen Report’s 2020 Content Preferences Study found that blogs are one of the most popular formats buyers engaged with throughout their journey. Over half (56%) said they read blogs, and over one-third (36%) said they share blog posts with their colleagues.
The report also found that buyers like reading blog posts in their mid-stage and late-stage research, not just in the beginning. If your company isn’t including blog posts throughout the buyer’s journey, you’re missing out on one of the most impactful and cost-effective ways to reach your audience.
With a blog, you can demonstrate thought leadership in your industry and address the pain points your buyers are experiencing at each step of their journey. They’ll come to know you as an authority in the field, ready to help them solve their problems.
Your blog can be a valuable jumping off point for readers to become customers. By including links to additional content, embedding videos and other media, and directing readers to other parts of your site to learn more, you give them multiple chances to explore your website and drive them further down their buying journey.
It’s important to help stakeholders understand that good blog content helps you build trust with potential buyers, because it’s another way for you to provide them with the information they need when they need it. And this is a critical relationship to maintain. If your company blog can continuously build trust with people who read your content, you have a better chance of turning readers into loyal customers.
Want to learn more about using your blog as part of your content strategy? Read more about why every B2B brand should have a blog, and find new ideas to rev up your blog output.
As a Content Strategist at Content4Demand, Toni Boger partners with clients to build successful content strategies that empower their digital marketing objectives at all stages, from ideation and creation through execution and promotion. She has a decade of experience in B2B content strategy and development across several industries. Outside of helping clients take their content to the next level, you’ll find Toni learning how to paint, reading a good book, taking aerial arts classes at circus school and watching classic films.
