As a knowledgeable business professional, you know that your reputation is everything. People simply refuse to work with those they can’t trust, which is why establishing your credibility is paramount especially if you’re only just starting out. And in the online marketing realm, one of the best ways to establish your reputation is by creating a blog.
So how can you build a great reputation by publishing blog articles on your website? Here’s what you need to know.
Shift Your Mindset from Cost to Investment
Business owners, such as Realtors, must carefully differentiate between costs and investments when making important financial decisions, and this holds true when you are thinking about blog marketing expenses as well.
A cost is something that generally will provide an immediate result. An investment, on the other hand, will have a long-term residual return. When it comes to blog marketing for your business, there are three good reasons why you need to think about this as an investment rather than a cost.
1. Building Brand Awareness
Marketing generally has many purposes, and one of the primary purposes for most marketing efforts is to build brand awareness and develop or enhance your reputation in some way. Blog marketing essentially creates a series of blog posts that can shape the image your target audience has of your brand.
2. Increasing Visibility
Another goal of marketing is to increase visibility for your brand. Each blog post that you create may be linked to from other online sources or a previous blog post. Your consumers may also send links of the posts to their own friends and family members.
3. Generating Need
A blog post can be created so that it defines consumer needs and shows how your products or services may meet those needs. The blog posts will generate an immediate response from your consumers when they are initially posted, but they also can remain online for others to view. This also has long-term benefits for your business.
Generate Credibility With High-Quality Authoritative Content
‘Content is King’ is a good saying, but ‘Good Content is King’ is a better saying, for a good reason, with so many places to go online to consume content, every blog has to stand apart. Focus on in-depth blog posts that are well-written and cover an aspect of the industry that isn’t discussed much.
Exceptional writing stands out in an age where most blogs are quickly pieced together just to have something to post each day.
Writing to get to the top of search engines a great side benefit of having an engaging blog. However, writing your content exclusively for search engines will alienate your readers – especially if you’re using outdated SEO tactics.
Create Trust And Engagement By Fostering Audience Connection
In order to get people to care about you, you need to show that you care about what they think. You need to show them that you belong in their circle.
If you want people to engage with your blog, you need to show them how you are similar to them. You need to show them your human side. Don’t be afraid to talk about personal experiences or use colloquialisms on your blog it shows your readers that you’re like them, which helps them to trust you.
Branch Out Into Other Content Arenas
A really well-written, long form blog post can be deconstructed to make several additional pieces of content that cover the same topic but target different users.
Social media is an incredibly useful tool for exposing content to new viewers. One of the major benefits of social media is the ability to share content that stands out with people who will, in turn, share it with each one of their friends and followers.
A short YouTube video highlighting some key points from the blog post, a podcast discussing the industry or an eBook that covers the same ground can all be useful ways to expose a website to new viewers and boost the traffic, provided all new forms of content link back to the blog.
An effective content marketing strategy should start with creating content that people will want to share and help go viral. From there, it will be time to get that content to social media followers and then branch out into new pieces to target people who consume their content in different ways.
Determining how to invest your marketing funds is rarely a simple task. You want to generate an immediate return, but some marketing methods also will give you a long-term benefit. There are numerous marketing methods that you can choose to use for your business, and blog posts are just one. With how cost-effective and advantageous it can be to invest in blog marketing, you may consider including this in your overall strategy.