Every so often I get asked if blogging still matters now that we have Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter. That question used to frustrate me greatly until I started making this distinction.
No, the act of blogging itself does not matter any more, but the act of consistently creating education based content that is easy for search engines to find and index, easy to share, attracts links, creates a searchable and archivable body of work on a subject and will never be seen as inorganic by Google has never, ever been more important.
It just so happens that what I’ve described is easily accomplished through the use of blogging software that runs your entire site. Every aspect of this site is built on WordPress – landing pages, contact pages, about us pages and this page. It puzzles me why people still fight this notion or why they would ever consider entrusting their content assets to Facebook or some other social network flavor of the month.
Using blogging software is not a trend or tool or even a behavior, it’s the single most important marketing element of your Total Online Presence and attempting to build a business today without using blogging software as your foundation is simply indefensible.
No matter what the excuse – we don’t have the time, we don’t know what to write, we tried it once, our customers don’t read blogs, our dog ate it – the cost of not actively creating and housing valuable content online is too high and you are absolutely kidding yourself if you think engaging prospects on Google+ with the occasional profound bit of banter is enough.
Blogging is stablest form of SEO
Google likes to keep the SEO community on its toes and every so often adjusts how it ranks sites often penalizing some practice it sees as an unnatural attempt to gain an advantage.
To my knowledge, high quality, keyword rich, education based, properly formatted, highly linked to and consistently updated original content has never been penalized.
Blogging creates a hub for social
Creating awareness for blog content that addresses challenges and provides useful information is the best way to build relationships through social media and one of the best ways to then attract links and traffic.
Quite often social networks are the greatest source of daily traffic to my blog.
Blogging builds your email list
A key action in your Total Online Presence is the capture of leads. One of the greatest forms of currency in this game is valuable content. People willingly exchange their email address in order to receive email they want to open. This can be in the form a subscription to your blog posts or for an eBook compilation of posts related to a specific topic.
Blogging drives point of view
One of the greatest differentiators in business is a consistent and valuable point of view that attracts followers over the long haul. When you approach your blogging content creation as a publisher might with a total body of themed work in mind, you stand a much greater chance of building the credibility and expert status that comes from holding a firm point of view.
By focusing on writing about key concepts through a singular voice you can build an attractive brand message through blogging.
Blogging creates other options
Forcing yourself to create content every day or every other day enables you to think about all the ways you might use your total body of work. Three blog posts can become the makings of a feature article. Ten blog posts on a related topic might make a great eBook. A comprehensive point of view expressed in a blog post might make a tremendous presentation or video. The need to create a workshop might produce five solid blog posts. Answering the most consistently asked questions your firm receives by way of blog posts creates useful content and automatically builds an FAQ section.
So, if you’re tired of hearing about blogging, think it’s a dying fad or that it’s not for you, that’s totally fine. Just make sure you are consistently producing and sharing high quality content that is searchable, subscribable and indexable and house it all on your company’s domain.
And come back tomorrow when I tell you how I do all of that using blog software.
