Why is Blogging so important for professional and business success

blogging content marketing strategy

Why is Blogging so important for professional and business success

“Blogging is not a one time strategy. It is a daily effort with a sincere idea to add VALUE to readers”

digital strategy blog content

It’s great that you have a website, may be even an app, wonderful that you are constantly posting content on social networking sites etc. But if your Digital Marketing Strategy does not include Bloggingthen you are LOSING OUT on Prospects, Customers, Brand Loyalty, reach, targeted audience and yes, power packed SEO for your top page ranking of core keywords!

Here are 7 reasons why ‘Blogging is crucial when it comes to Professional and Business success’ today:

1) It Humanizes Your Brand:

That’s right.

Brands today have a role much more responsible than ever before, i.e. to connect with the customer within.

Social media or digital marketing is no longer about hits, likes, follows, website traffic etc. It was, is and will always be about People. People buy from People they TRUST. So it is core to Humanize Your Brand. Which is why it is important for brands to understand the importance of moving away from VANITY METRICS and focusing on Real ROI results as a Business or a digital marketer today.

Blogging unlike a website has a much more user friendly or personalized features, functions to connect, have conversations with readers in real-time.

To give you a simple example, you could add a face to each post and give the readers an opportunity to know who the writer is, to connect or communicate with the writer or author of the post in real-time, share comments, views, suggestions about the article, get response, reply and or feedback too for the same without having to drop a mail or post in a form with details etc.

Blog offers readers a simple and easy way to have a two-way connect, communication and conversation from a prospect or a customer to the brand / organization easily.

The moment you are able to add a face, profile details, email to connect, social networking links to engage in real-time, users feel more comfortable as they get a sense of familiarity with the person they are reading from or planning to write to!

This is specially true in the case of conversations in a B2B environment. Blogging helps you break distance and unfamiliarity barriers easily and build trust.

It feels more genuine, sincere and in other words, humanized!

 

2) SEO:
Even though, in reality, SEO as in Search Engine Optimization is just a small part of Digital marketing or social media,  it’s significance cannot be undermined. It’s value for sure cannot be ignored in the long run.

Blogging consistently, using content that is both valuable for end users or customers and interesting helps you to not only reach out to targeted audiences, but also helps your blog site to be searched and discovered by users who are eagerly looking for related information or services or products.

A good content marketing strategy integrated with your blog will empower your Search Engine Rankings to a great extent. Thereby focusing on organic reach and leads / enquiries on your site.

 

3) Third party sites VS Owned Blogs:

It’s a great strategy and idea to optimize promotions on social networking sites today, there are no two ways about it. But let’s be realistic!

What if tomorrow these social networking sites suddenly decide on what type of content or how frequently can you update and scores of such similar restrictions?

Already they restrict creative, types of messages, text or amount of text etc.

They have been known to have changed more than hundreds of times there “SECURITY SETTINGS” their “GUIDELINES AND POLICIES” etc which have caused brands great deal of pain in terms of being able to organically reach out to their own brand followers and fans over the years.

So having your own website and blog is always a must-have today!

It gives you control and access to what type of information, what time, who are your real interested and targeted users etc and reach out to them accordingly when they are online and active.

Plus, it empowers your organization to have a database of actually interested users sharing their email or phone numbers for you to be able to reach to them directly.

 

4) Security and Competition:

Let’s say you are coming up with offers, deals, etc for your brand or business or products / services and your prospects try to reach out to you enquiring more information for the same.

Now on social networking platforms, all this information is by default on a “public domain” which means, your competitors can also see these users and may be even engage with them or try to sell something unique or even a better offer.

Similarly, there is a possibility that the information you are asking from your end users is more sensitive and needs to be on a much more secure platform for them to have a comfortable and trust worthy conversation with you.

Having a dedicated blog allows you to do all of this and more.

 

5) Maintenance:

Maintenance of a blog in comparison to a website is definitely much more easier and convenient. Also, in the long run, the costs comparatively are much lesser in terms of the functionality, features, widgets etc which blogs allow you to easily integrate within your platform as compared to a website. Which means, more interactions, more real-time engagement, lesser long term costs and much more user friendly tools to maintain the same.

 

6) Expertise:

Let’s say, you want to prove your worth as the best digital marketing professional or the most influential digital marketing leader in your organization or industry or country or even globally for that matter. Having a dedicated blog wherein you share useful tips in the form of a blog’s knowledge resource center (KRC) wherein you can share power packed resourceful, insightful information which not only your customers, prospects will find relevant and valuable but something that even your peers, colleagues would find extremely useful will help you establish yourself as an expert and a leader in your field of work.

Also, in the long run, your brand and organization will definitely benefit from it as it will send a clear message that your idea is not merely to sell all the time, but that you care for your end users and are here to consistently provide great value!

 

7) PPC, Email marketing, Content, Analytics, Digital strategy … all in one:

  • Pay per click campaigns i.e. PPC, helps you generate traffic, leads, enquiries, engagement, etc for your organization. In the long run, a Blog does that and so much more.
  • Email marketing helps you share updates, latest news, offers, deals, with users whose email database is with your organization. Today, a blog allows you to get users email and create a power packed database of targeted users who can be sent such emails in the form of blog newsletters and kept updated on a regular basis and that too with ease.
  • Content is core for digital marketing. Let’s be honest, a blog is all about it’s content. Thus, if you have a blog that has a great targeted audiences as your end users or readers, you can be sure that you as a brand have great content for your customers and prospects. In other words, a blog showcases your clear focus, sincerity, trust and sense of discipline as an organization.
  • Analytics is what will help you create custom designed customer journey, customer experiences. Blog statistics helps you do just that. They way users engage with your blog, communicate, share responses, feedback, etc helps you understand which content or menu or post or link or page within your blog delivers better ROI and accordingly allows you to use analytics within the blog further to create customized digital touch points for brand sales or engagement.
  • Digital Strategy: No blog can sustain with random content. In other words, having a well planned content marketing calendar and a clear focused digital strategy is most relevant in case of you as a brand or a digital marketer running a professional blog.

Data is the heart of a digital marketing campaign and content is the soul of a brand

There are so many more reasons that will encourage you to ensure that you create, design, plan, maintain a power packed professional Blog for your brand or organization as a marketer or a business.

Are you planning to start your own blog for the very first time? Well, here are simple steps to help you get started: 7 steps to starting your own Blog – Click here to read

blogging content marketing strategy

Hope you found this article useful.

Feel free to share your queries, comments with me here. Would love to hear from you.

Have an amazing day ahead.

For customized Digital Marketing Social media ROI campaigns or Corporate Training Digital marketing Workshop Programs Reach us HERE NOW

Be Well

Ananth V

Let’s Connect – Facebook Twitter LinkedInSocial Media Book Learn Digital marketingCorporate Training

5 ways to avoid failure, boost ROI success using Analytics

digital marketing social media ROI Success

5 ways to avoid failure, boost ROI success using Analytics

Failing to plan is planning to fail ~Alan Lakein

Analytics in the form of Google Analytics, Facebook insights, Instagram insights, Twitter Analytics, LinkedIn Analytics, WordPress statistics, Sentiment analysis, brand monitoring, trend & hashtag tracking and management etc today are core aspects of digital marketing which cannot be ignored while designing a social media or digital campaign strategy today.

ROI is core and crucial for businesses and brands.

digital marketing social media ROI Success

Remember:

Data is the heart of a digital marketing campaign and content is the soul of a brand

Understanding who has viewed your information, at what time, from which source, the demographics, their affinity, their buying behaviors online etc are information that will help you design and map customer journey and customer experience.

But the problem is, today, we live in a world of information overload. There is so much data in this fast paced world, that even living in the moment is getting difficult.

So it’s natural for organizations and even marketers at times to get overwhelmed with so much data and insights.

The idea is to ensure that you not only avoid digital marketing social media failure but also achieve digital marketing social media brand ROI success across your goals with each digital campaign.

Remember, Analytics is not about looking at data, rather interpreting it!

Measure and track information that is RELEVANT to your ROI / GOALS.

 

Here are five features or data within analytics that are usually most crucial when it comes to CMO, CDO, CFO, CEO, CIO, CTO etc tracking and measuring digital marketing success:

1) Users flow and Affinity:

These are categories in Google Analytics and Facebook insights which will boost your ROI success across aspects and tracking metrics for your social media marketing campaign.

Users flow: will help you understand your customer journey, digital touch points, which pages, content, etc are consumed more by end users, for how long, what appeals, where are the drop-offs etc and help you design a more suitable website, content marketing, SEO focused experience for your end users.

Affinity: Across segments like In-Market, affinity categories, others etc will help you understand your customer likes,dislikes, online buying and browsing behaviors, topics of interest etc. It will also play a crucial role in designing Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns integrated as part of your digital marketing strategy using google adwords, facebook ads etc

 

2) Customer Lifetime Value and Customer Acquisition Cost: Google Analytics:

Measure the lifetime value (LTV) of your users using Google Analytics:
The Lifetime Value report shows you how user value (Revenue) and engagement (Appviews or Pageviews, Goal Completions, Sessions, and Session Duration) grow during the 90 days after a user is acquired.

These could be anything based on your GOALS tracked, measured through the analytics. For eg. actual sales conversions, lead enquiry, subscribe, email newsletters, page views, sign-ups etc

These will work better if you have clear GOALS defined for your business.

Understanding customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value will help organizations to design a customized goal based digital marketing social media brand ROI campaign.

With this, it will also be important to ensure that you are able to track and budget your digital marketing campaign expenses based on your ROI plan: Here are 7 steps to help you get started: Click here to Read

See sample screenshot: (Click  pic below to enlarge)

customer lifetime value digital marketing analytics metrics google

 

3) Consumer behavior, lifestyle, mobile footprint, demographics:

Including and not limited to tracking metrics like household income, spending patterns, appeal to deals, offers, incentives, messages, etc will help you understand what type of advertising messages to design to reach out to users across different categories and demographics. For eg. see the screenshot below from Twitter Analytics sample report: These when integrated, understood and used to design content, ads, SEO, etc as part of your social media campaign, will have a much greater and focused impact.

twitter analytics

Digital marketing is not a one time process or strategy. It has to be a daily effort with a sincere idea to add value to end users.

“Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing ~Thomas A. Edison”

4) What TYPE of CONTENT:

Understanding what type of content appeals to users can help you design a customized digital marketing strategy for your end users across B2B or B2C industries.

For eg. do they download whitepapers, case studies more? Do they like or re-share top social media digital videos or images with links more, how much time do they spend consuming content, when are they online, when are they active the most etc are insights which will help you not only plan the timing of your content, but also the location and type of content that you can customize and share across platforms based on their responses. Did you know? We have achieved digital marketing campaign ROI success across content marketing and SEO too with actual sales conversions by even closely monitoring FACEBOOK REACTIONS of users across content for few of our clients (DOWNLOAD Digital marketing social media ROI case studies – Click HERE).

facebook insights

facebook insights

 

5) Custom reports:

Finally, custom designed reports. Yes, you can use features from Google Analytics like ‘Cohort Analysis‘ to create a custom focused and targeted tracking metrics to ensure your deals, offers, content, landing page users, web visitors, social media users, ecommerce or online buyers etc are users who are indeed your targeted audiences.

cohort custom google analytics reports

Other than this feature, you can anyway completely custom design and track a unique report based on metrics that you feel are relevant for your digital marketing social media ROI campaign by using the customization option in analytics too.

digital marketing social media ROI Success

Hope you found these insights resourceful.

How do you use analytics for your campaigns? Do share, would love to hear from you.

Feel free to reach me for queries here.

For customized Social media marketing ROI campaigns and custom designed Corporate Training programs, Reach Me using Quick contact form link HERE

Have an amazing day ahead.

Be Well

Ananth V

Let’s Connect – Facebook Twitter LinkedInSocial Media Book Learn Digital marketingCorporate Training

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