The Right Blogging Strategy Builds Business Traffic & Awareness
Everyone has heard about blogging and whenever someone builds a new site they always ask about having a blog. Is it a good idea for a local business to have a blog or is this just overkill that ends up being an empty page on the site?
With all great questions the answer is it depends. Yeah, I know this is now leading to more reading because I did not give a yes or no answer. How about this for a real answer, if you have time yes, if you do not then no, not now.
What Is The Value Of a Blog?
If a business owner has the time to write blog posts or has the resources to hire someone to write blog posts it can be a very effective inbound marketing strategy. This goes back to having a lot of relevant content that helps those who are visiting your site build a relationship with your brand. If done right it can help you drive a lot of top of the funnel traffic to your site which will build awareness of your business and get them going through your funnel where they might do a secondary conversion or primary conversion.
What Is Top Of The Funnel Traffic?
Most of us have heard of a marketing funnel where people become aware of you, then they start going down the funnel of gaining interest in your brand, considering purchasing your services and then finally becoming a lead. The more people you can attract to your funnel meaning people become aware of your business and start building a relationship with your brand the more will be leads.
Top of the funnel traffic is traffic that you gain through content that is not specifically about your business but is about topics people are interested in that are relevant to the industry your business is in. For example, let’s say you are a roofing contractor and you have a blog post called “5 Ways To Tell If your Roof Has Been Damaged In a Hail Storm”. This topic is not about the business directly but if a person has experienced a hail storm and they are searching on how to know if their roof has been damaged they may come across this article or blog post. At that point they have now been made aware of your business and have entered your marketing funnel. If you had not had that relevant blog post that potential customers may never have found you.
What Should I Write About
The short answer is anything that your potential customers would find valuable to know as part of their research on topics related to the space your business provides services. People search in search engines for information for questions or problems they have. If you know those questions and problems they have, create content that answers those questions.
Here is a tip, everytime you meet with a customer, remember and write down the problems and questions they have and create a list. It is important to understand your customers and their needs and by understanding their problems and questions you can first fine tune your service offerings to align better with their problems, and also write blog posts to answer questions.
This is also where a professional SEO strategist can help you with fine tuning your blog topics. It is best to share with them the list of problems and questions your customers have and a good SEO will have tools where they can research what topics and keywords to target in your content. Or if needed they can help find a writer to write for you which is always a helpful option when you don’t have the time.
To have an effective digital marketing strategy creating top of the funnel content that provides value and answers the questions your potential clients may have, needs to be a part of your plan.
