9 Ways a Blog Can "Growth Hack" Your Brand
Whether you are a new business, existing brand, entrepreneur or professional artist – our universal goals look much the same:
WE WANT TO MAKE SOME CASH.
Right? But how?…
In our glorious age of accessible technology, we have an incredible opportunity to directly control our potential for success.
From websites and social media to email lists and blogs, we are living in an era that is more connected and interactive than our human species has ever experienced before.
At the click of a button, we are capable of reaching our target audiences in ways that truly put the traditional marketing model to shame.
Digital marketing strategies are not only cheaper than the old methods of advertising, but they enable us to create organic customer relationships while boosting our earning potential.
In fact, optimizing your company blog has the potential to generate a 67% increase alone!
Although 25-43% of businesses are allocating their marketing budgets to content creation, only 23% of businesses are finding these efforts to prove profitable.
Why?
WHAT ARE THEY DOING WRONG?:
For starters, creating marketable content for your business requires a variety of “strategic” ingredients.
You’ll need to ensure that your content is:
Tailored to your direct target audience
Posted on the most effective platforms
Posted at the most effective times
Optimized in the correct formatting for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
By researching and understanding the most current/effective combinations of the above strategies, businesses of all sizes have been able to use their blogs as a “growth hack” for:
Increased brand awareness
Enhanced customer relationships
and of course, CHA CHING – Profit.
Here are 9 incredible ways your brand can benefit by using your business blog:
Table of Benefits:
1. Portrays Your Brand as an Industry Thought-Leader 2. Improves Your Social Media Strategy 3. Develops an Email Subscription List 4. Turns Readers into Customers 5. Increases Online Traffic with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 6. Offers Value to Your Target Audience 7. Keeps Your Customers Up-To-Date 8. Encourages Community 9. Increases Profit & Sales
BENEFIT #1: PORTRAYS YOUR BRAND AS AN INDUSTRY THOUGHT-LEADER
Committing to a blog is like granting your brand a voice.
Blogging provides you with an opportunity to educate and empower your audience from the insight of an industry expert.
By presenting yourself as an accessible thought-leader, you are able to build a relationship with your audience as a friendly resource that can answer their most pressing questions.
Whether you are selling a product, service or persona – engaging in the online community is a great way to join the conversation and interact with the people you are looking to benefit.
As every industry is fuelled with competition, a key way to distinguish yourself is to offer consistent, useful and thought-provoking content that will encourage readers to value your expertise and in turn, help build customer loyalty. BENEFIT #2: IMPROVES YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY
Sharing your blog content across all of your social media platforms is a great way to reach your target audiences!
Each time you publish a blog post, you are creating content that can be easily shared throughout the public via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and more.
By using the correct SEO techniques, hashtags and groups, you have a major opportunity to expose your company, brand and/or services to new people within your target niche.
If they happen to find your content valuable, they might even share it to their immediate contacts as well!
Instead of stressing over new and exciting ideas to post, take the time to promote and link back to your most recent or time-relevant pieces to drive more traffic towards your website.
This will both strengthen your online social media presence while simultaneously increasing potential leads!
BENEFIT #3: DEVELOPS AN EMAIL SUBSCRIPTION LIST
Email marketing has become an extremely popular and effective marketing strategy in recent years.
Every one of us can list at least 5 email subscriptions that pop up in our inboxes on a regular basis!
The ones that make the most effective use of subject lines, email aesthetic and offer some form of consumer value might even entice us to hit that glorious “OPEN” button!
Use your blog to encourage readers to subscribe to your content.
By hosting great blog copy, you have the opportunity to grow an email list full of people who are actively interested in your content, brand or services… and these are the exact people you are looking for!
Making use of your email list will make it much easier to reach your readers directly with any future promotions, new products and/or business updates.
BENEFIT #4: TURNS READERS INTO CUSTOMERS
Today’s consumers like to be well-informed.
While the internet has provided us with unlimited researching abilities, many of us have adapted to the habit of looking up companies, industries, products and reviews before investing our hard-earned money.
We like to know where our cash is going.
While blogging can develop a closer relationship between brand and consumer, brands that regularly educate, inform, empower and engage their clientele often do a much better job at converting readers into buying customers.
To accomplish this, be sure to end your blog posts with a strong call-to-action that ties in exactly how your products or services are relevant to the topic at hand.
BENEFIT #5: INCREASES ONLINE TRAFFIC WITH SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)
Simply having a website is no longer enough.
As modern tech-culture has dramatically changed the way we shop over the past decade, we now rely on our trusted search engines to find us the best results for whatever it is we are looking for.
As a result of this behavioural shift, the number of web pages indexed by Google has increased from 1 trillion to 30 trillion between the years 2008 and 2014… and this growth is only catching speed!
With competition growing on a daily basis, businesses have had to learn the ropes of Search Engine Optimization (also referred to as SEO) to navigate their way to the top search results for their target audiences.
Blogging, of course, is a powerful tool in boosting your SEO.
To get the best results, you need to regularly publish informative content that directly responds to the popular search engine questions and/or keywords.
While SEO is a complicated and constantly changing algorithm, be sure to spend some time researching and understanding the most current requirements surrounding:
Frequency
Formatting
Keywords
Content Length
Posting times
Meta-data, etc.
By fully optimizing their blogs, businesses have been able to achieve a 67% increase in sales (which is huge!!).
BENEFIT #6: OFFERS VALUE TO YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE
The purpose of blogging has undergone some serious changes over the past few years.
In the early stages of business blogging, all a business had to do was post short 300-word articles that were saturated with target key words (sometimes at the expense of readability or value).
With a young Google, there wasn’t much competition in the search results giving them a higher likelihood of being found!
Today, digital content has become the major focus for marketers and those old-fashioned 300-word articles no longer fit the bill.
Instead, consumers are looking for approachable, informative and digestible content that will help educate and empower them to make better buying decisions.
Whether you offer tutorials, industry insight or educational content, think about the most relevant questions or concerns your target audience may have and respond with a helpful solution.
BENEFIT #7: KEEPS YOUR CUSTOMERS UP-TO-DATE
While most of your website should remain consistent over time, your blog is your outlet for active communication.
Feel free to keep your customers in the loop with your day-to-day operations!
While brand marketing has grown to favour the art of relationship building, your consumers are genuinely interested in what goes on behind-the-scenes.
Take the time to introduce your audience to the people behind the brand, the company culture, and the elements that make you unique.
By building this brand awareness your audience will be even more invested when you are ready to share new promotions, service offerings, product launches and campaigns!
BENEFIT #8: ENCOURAGES COMMUNITY
While a website is like a billboard, a blog is like a conversation.
A great business blog should make a proactive effort to encourage consumer engagement.
While this two-way conversation can directly impact a business’ ability to generate leads and industry peers, it can also create a source of community for other members of your target audience to provide feedback, network and generate helpful discussion!
Generally speaking, people want to be heard. By becoming the brand that listens, interacts and responds to their needs, your blog can do a great deal in building trust while uniting readers into a loyal community.
BENEFIT #9: THE BIG ONE: INCREASES PROFIT & SALES
Right, the reason you’re all here... PROFIT.
Business blogs are an excellent sales tool for promoting your products, services, sales and more.
With the above-mentioned benefits in mind, a blog can be a large contributor to the funnel your potential clients will travel through before arriving to a buying decision.
By establishing yourself as a hub of knowledge to your existing and potential client base, your written content will help create trust and reliability between your brand and those potential buyers that might still be on the fence.
In some cases, you might even connect with new customers that didn’t know they needed you!
HOW WE CAN HELP:
Blogging and SEO research can take a lot of time and meticulous skill.
From researching the most current algorithms, SEO trends, keywords, target audiences, local competition and meta-data to the blog topic generation, industry research, writing, editing and distribution – many businesses owners struggle to keep up on consistent, effective and properly formatted blog posts.
If this is something you are ready to pursue but need some specialized help – we’ve got you covered!
Allow us to:
Conduct a Thorough Interview to Get to Know Your Brand
Learn the Key Messaging of Your Company Culture
Research Your Target Markets & Local Competition
Provide a Research-Based Blog Topic Suggestion Inventory (10)
Create & Edit Original, Tailored Blog Copy (500-700 words)
Provide Meta-Data (including keywords, long-tail keywords, titles and descriptions)
List of all Primary/Secondary Sources Used (References)
Unlimited Revisions (We’re happy when you’re happy!)
Take advantage of our FREE 15-min consultations, or our latest Fall Copywriting Sale (20% off all Copywriting Service Packages, *For New Clients Only). With the holidays around the corner, is your blog ready? Contact Us: tacticcreativestudios@gmail.com
