How can you use your blog for Digital Marketing?
More opportunities for digital marketing have developed over the past few years, but blogs have still remained popular. Plenty of businesses still make use of them to keep people up to date with their latest developments, promote their work and generally increase their online presence. It goes without saying that any digital marketing agency would encourage a business to have a blog of their own.
However, if you’re going to use your blog for digital marketing, it needs to be done properly. An ill-maintained, sparsely-populated, poor quality blog is unlikely to do your business much good at all, so this is definitely something to take seriously. Here are seven ways that you can use your blog for digital marketing.
Relevant Content
One important way you can use your blog for digital marketing is as somewhere you can post lots of relevant content. We all know that content is king in the online world. This is where your site really gets its value, and it’s your opportunity to write about the issues that matter and are relevant to you. No matter your topic(s) of choice, it makes sense to keep your blog as relevant to your business as possible.
SEO Potential
It almost goes without saying that blogs also have good SEO potential. For example, they are another place that you can target important keywords and phrases that you want your website to rank well for. If your blog is filled with high quality, interesting, relevant content that has been properly optimised for SEO, it could bring you significant benefits.
However, it is important to remember that SEO should not be the only aim of your blog. Just as with any other type of online content, something that has been tailored purely for SEO rather than the reader is unlikely to have the effect you were hoping it would have.
Guest Posts
Another good digital marketing use for your blog is guest posts. This is where you invite others to make relevant posts on your blog – for instance, many corporate blogs have a regular guest spot where experts from the industry write about relevant issues. This can be a good way of developing your online connections, and if you are able to do guest posts on someone else’s blog in return, it can further boost your presence.
Popular websites such as; Mashable and Smashing Magazine make use of guest blogging in this manner. This helps the website stay relevant and frequently updated for Google.
Link Building
Link building is very important when it comes to ranking well in search engine results. Lots of good quality, genuine links to your blog and other websites help to demonstrate their relevance, which in turn can give you a boost in the search rankings. For instance, if you are able to get lots of people tweeting or posting on Facebook about your blog posts and linking back to those posts, this could well be very beneficial for you. Which brings us on to our next point in digital marketing.
Social Media
Your blog can also be a good way to help increase your social media presence – just as social media can help your blog grow. You no doubt will have seen other people’s blog posts with social media buttons at the bottom, giving them the opportunity to share what you have written with others. When you consider how fast social media is growing and the influence of websites such as Twitter and Facebook, it’s definitely worth paying attention to this issue on your blog.
Increases Online Presence
Your blog is simply another space for your business on the web. It’s another site or page that can be found through search engines, increasing your chances of more people finding out about your business – as long as you have optimised it well, of course.
Have a look at Asda, who have a separate blog called Aisle Spy. It is packaged in a different manner to the official website, but it has banner ads directing users back to the online shop.
Active Websites
Finally, any digital marketing agency will tell you that keeping your website updated on a regular basis is important not just for SEO, but also for holding the attention of people who visit your site. After all, if someone visits your site and sees that it hasn’t been updated for a long time, they might wonder if you are still active. A blog linked to your main site can be a good way of keeping new, relevant content on your site and making it clear that you are still very much open for business.
