A large proportion of digital marketing is always going to be technical. Registering domain names, hosting and designing websites, ensuring that site is optimized for good search engine results — you’re always going to need highly developed practical skills in these areas to excel in drawing attention to your business through its website or through any other digital marketing campaign.
However, digital marketing isn’t all hard skills. Digital marketing is as much about content as it is about making sure that content gets the attention of prospective clients and customers. Static product and service pages will only get you so far; you’re going to need a steady stream of new, quality content to both build and keep an audience. One of the most effective ways to accomplish this is through blogging regularly.
The Many Roles Blog Posts Play in Supporting Digital Marketing
For many business owners or digital marketing agencies, blogging can often fall through the cracks or become an afterthought. Yet doing so runs the risk of losing out on the opportunity to support digital marketing campaigns in a myriad of ways.
First and foremost, regular blog posts provide additional opportunities to build positive SEO for your website. The ability to use targeted keywords in new content appearing on your site on a regular basis builds authority and can help you climb the search engine results page rankings to your goal. Higher page rankings lead to more traffic, and this, in theory, leads to higher sales conversions — even if your blog posts aren’t direct sales pages.
Secondly, blog posts provide opportunities to build authority in ways that don’t relate directly to SEO. Instead, providing attractive content on a regular basis can help attract visitors within your targeted customer demographics. Regularly scheduled posts build an audience, which, in turn, can lead to a community of individuals who are keenly interested in not just your business sector but the specific products and services you have to offer.
How to Craft Blog Posts for Maximum Impact
Establishing the importance of providing content through blogging as a digital marketing technique is easy. Creating well-crafted blog posts that have the most impact they could have? That’s more difficult. Underestimating the time and effort that go into writing blog posts can be a recipe for failure, which is why it’s important to grasp some core concepts when it comes to crafting blogging content.
The first thing to keep in mind is that you want your content to be connected to the goals of your overall digital marketing campaign. Your blog posts must relate to whatever products or services you’re marketing in the first place. The posts themselves can be varied — industry news developments, opinion pieces, customer or client close-ups, production method showcases — but they all need to reinforce what your business actually does.
At the same time, though, these blog posts cannot be simple advertising or marketing copy. Modern content marketing has moved away from advertorial blogging, instead adopting the “80/20” rule: 80 percent of your content should be entertaining, informative, or educational. The other 20 percent can be about your business in the form or more traditional marketing. This is especially true if you plan on sharing blogs or other content on social media sites, as users of these sites have a very low tolerance for traditional advertising and marketing.
Going Beyond Content
It goes without saying that the type of blogging content you post and share is a major component of your digital marketing efforts. Content itself is not enough, of course; it must also be presented in a fashion that maximizes its chances of reaching the screens of your target audience. In this case, the more technical aspects of digital marketing come strongly into play in platform choice and SEO.
With modern search engine algorithms prioritizing natural language, an SEO approach that embraces these standards will bear fruit. Standard optimization practices when it comes to keyword frequency are at play here. SEO titles and meta descriptions need to be tagged appropriately, inbound and outbound links need to be chosen carefully, and attractive images or video used to increase chances of click-through.
As mentioned earlier, choosing the appropriate platform for your content is also a crucial facet. Hosting your blog on the company website is just a first step. Sharing it to a social media platform increases your potential audience by a wide margin, but be aware that different platforms are more ideal for different types of content. Instagram, for example, is a good platform for image-based content and for targeting Millennials. Facebook, in comparison, is for less specialized content or demographic targeting.
Putting Things All Together
So you’ve finally painstakingly planned out your content, built it around your carefully selected keywords, and researched which secondary social media outlets to market your content on. Don’t hit that “Share” button just yet — there are still a few things that you’ll need to consider to put everything together when it comes to content marketing.
Scheduling your posts, for example, is one such subject. While search engine web crawlers work around the clock, there are peaks and troughs when it comes to when people use the internet. It’s advisable to pick a time when you know your chosen target audience will be at their computers or on their mobile devices. Best times are typically during morning and evening commutes, after lunch, and early evening, though this can differ.
Finally — and perhaps the most important factor — is the decision to have the burden of crafting a content marketing campaign yourself or having it done for you. Partnering with a professional web design and digital marketing company can provide you with the skills and expertise you need for a successful digital marketing campaign from registering your domain and building your site to writing SEO-friendly blog posts and posting them appropriately.
