With the rise of social media, blogging has unfortunately been somewhat neglected in the marketing sphere. Those who do neglect it, however, fail to realise the power that blogging actually has. Used correctly, blogging can be a much greater tool than any piece of social media.
Blogs stay relevant
The great thing about blogs is their high level of permanence. Social media platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram can relay information fast, but the issue is this information never stays relevant for long.
Snapchats can only last for a day, while Instagram posts tend to only remain relevant for as little as 13 hours. Added to this, it is difficult for Instagram posts to rank highly in search engines on google, while for Snapchat this isn’t possible at all.
Blogging does not have to worry about any of this. Once posted, a blog post remains there forever. While social media requires a constant wave of information to win over its audience, a blog has the power to win over someone with an insightful post, be it posted yesterday, last week or last month.
Furthermore, you never know how long the social media platforms themselves are going to stay relevant. People often forget that Myspace was once the king of social media, now it is rarely used at all. With a blog, you’re the owner, and it only stops when you want it to.
Blogging and SEO
But in order for people to see your blog, you need to take into account SEO; search engine optimisation. This essentially determines where your blog and its posts rank in a search engine search such as Google, and you want to ensure your blog is front and centre in a relevant search result.
Quality and interesting blog posts are what drives Google’s SEO these days, so ensuring your posts are the best they can be will help you climb the rankings and increase your audience.
You may you think you could reach a wider audience through social media, but statistics show this isn’t the case. Facebook brings in on average an impressive 2 billion searches a day, but this is nothing compared to Google’s 3.5 billion.
Other social media platforms don’t even come close. Instagram averages only 700 million, with Snapchat averaging even less. If you want to reach the highest amount of people possible, blogging is still the best way to do it.
Enhancing your blog
So, while having your own company blog is the best way to go in terms of marketing, there are still many things you can do to ensure your blog is as successful as possible.
One idea is to take advantage of other blogging platforms alongside your own company blog. A popular way to do this is through Medium.com, a social media blogging website for writers.
Using sites like Medium allow you to showcase your own blog, allowing you to reach a wider audience that would take much longer to achieve than by only using your company blog.
And while Medium can help, don’t be afraid to spend a little money to help promote and advertise your blog elsewhere. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn in provide simple ways to promote your yourself, so spending a little to advertise your blog can go a long way.
Bear all this in mind, and you’ll quickly realise why blogging is still the king of marketing.