A business blog is an essential component of establishing and maintaining a presence online with your target audience. Simply put, blogs position companies as thought leaders, which creates brand loyalty among audiences. And with an industry as relationship-driven as the AV industry, blogging can be just as effective, if not more effective, than advertisements in creating brand awareness.
A blog creates two-way communication between a company and the audience. The content can be presented in a more casual and personal way as compared to the traditional press release or case study, which are still just as essential but serve a different purpose in business communication. It can differentiate your brand from competitors and emphasize what makes you unique. And it keeps your audience updated, serving as a way to discuss industry trends and your position, products and services related to the trends.
One of the most common marketing buzzwords is SEO (search engine optimization), and a blog can improve your rankings on search engines. Better SEO results won’t happen overnight, but utilizing proper keywords will enhance SEO over an extended period. Plus, search engines reward websites that produce fresh content over time, and that’s what a blog is designed to do.
You’re likely wondering how to use your blog to build loyalty with customers. Here are a few tips on how to get started:
- Create quality content, not quantified content. Producing an excessive amount of content will not build brand loyalty; instead, it will likely frustrate your audience. Focus on creating less material and more quality content that your readers are genuinely interested in reading.
- Research your audience to understand the content they want to read. The research will allow you to better understand the questions your audience might have, also addressing how your company can help answer those questions.
- Create a discussion on trending topics in the industry through blog posts. Everyone has an opinion — use your blog to share your opinion, and allow others to contribute their views too.
- Share blog content on social media to reach a broader audience. If you’re already blogging but not sharing the content on social media, you’re missing out on an opportunity to reach a broader audience. Pro tip: include a catchy description in the social media post to drive interest in clicking the link to the blog post.
- Use social listening, which is a fancy term for listening to and engaging with your audience on social media. (Posting a blog online is only half of the work. The other half is interacting with your audience by responding to their comments and continuing to spark conversations and engagement in your post.)
Blogs can be a relatively low-cost medium, but they require time creating content, sharing on social media and interacting with the audience. But investing the time in creating a blog will result in a higher marketing ROI as compared to companies that do not prioritize blogs, according to HubSpot’s “Not Another State of Marketing Report” in 2020.
