Why having a blog and posting articles is a crucial marketing strategy?
When I started my career in marketing as an intern in a B2B startup, one of my first activities was to brief a blog post and schedule its posting. I was never explained why I had to do those, but now, after 5 years of working as a marketer and being the main responsible for the area, I get it. In this article, I will explore the importance of blog posts in article formats and why marketers should include them in their planning.
People do not read the full content anymore.
That was my first question when I started evaluating my articles’ results. I used to post them weekly and share them on LinkedIn and Instagram on a biweekly basis (2x a week), and while checking the results:
0 comments on LinkedIn
5-6 clicks to the article
Max of 14 likes on the LinkedIn post
– > And all of this in an account with more than 5.000 followers.
The engagement rate on social media was not satisfactory then I decided to understand what other KPIs would be interesting for me to track related to my articles. Based on this, I got:
My bounce rate (entering the paper and leaving the website);
My interaction rate (entering the article and interacting with my website by going to a different page inside it);
The average reading time;
And guess what? They were low as reasonably… And besides thinking about how to improve them, I started thinking if I SHOULD improve them because literally, it is a fact: people do not read the full content anymore.
So why do an article and not an infographic or a video?
To generate traffic on search engines. That’s it, straightforward. It is ok for people not to read your entire content, but it is NOT ok for people to find your competitor instead of you while searching for something related to your service. The words and URLs explain the beauty of an article – and how they play a crucial role in ranking you in a Google search (or any other searching tool). Infographics and videos don’t have the most critical element that articles do – texts and written words on the web.
While creating your content, you must choose the right words (in the SEO world, we call it the “keywords”). These keywords are the words, phrases, expressions, or even combinations of words that lead your prospect to your content. Better than having someone reading fully what you wrote is having someone finding you because of something you wrote – and that’s why we write articles!
I am not telling you that you can write anything you want; it is the opposite. The keywords and the process of structuring your article to be seen on search engines are incredibly detailed and will require you to structure it properly and to write “the perfect content” for your audience.
The world of SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, representing all the strategies behind optimizing your content to be seen on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Nowadays, information is everywhere, and we are all overwhelmed by this. As in Google’s purpose statement, they want to “organize all the world’s information,” which fits perfectly with SEO.
I love to explain concepts by asking questions, so:
- How do I rank my website? I want to type the name of my company and see it on the first page.
- How do I want my website based on the product I sell?
- I am a marketing consultant for B2B startups; what do people looking for this service usually search online?
In a nutshell, search engines rank a URL based on its popularity. To increase the popularity of your website and work on ranking, you should check some basic things such as:
- How many URLs do I have related to this domain?
- How many people are accessing this page?
- How many people are referring to this page on their website (external links)
- How many posts do I have internally interacting with the page I want to rank (internal links)
And something is for sure: the more people referring you, the more URLs you have talking about that content, the more popular your page is being considered, and it earns “points” to be seen on the first page for a Google search.
Nice, right? But SEO is so big that it requires a post just about it. If you are interested in learning more about SEO, check out the article for next week!
“Karina, it is easy to stay on the first page; I can create a campaign on Google and pay for it!”
Yes, you are right but do you click on the first answer of your search that has an “ad” before the title? Most people don’t because they know it is a paid result and not the most relevant content.
People want what everyone considers reasonable, not what marketers are paying them to see. SEO can help you rank on whatever you want by implementing the right strategies and becoming an authority on the topic you want to share.
That’s the beauty of articles and why you should have them 🙂