The debate continues. To blog or not to blog appears to be the ongoing content marketing hand-wringer, although the statistics show that businesses that blog are thirteen times more likely to have a positive ROI.
Your Business’ Future Depends On Machines
Still, the blogging resistance prevails. For all you blogging cynics out there, think of the future. By 2020, it’s projected that your customers will manage 85% of their relationships without ever speaking a syllable to a human.
Your customers are going to be busy researching your business online, without any direct contact with you. How are you going to personally influence them? With a blog, they can easily learn more about you.
I read an interesting dialogue in a comments section of a marketing blog recently. The commenter was making a case against blogging, asserting that it’s not for everyone. The comments were borderline caustic and appeared meant to provoke. This is the sort of behavior you sometimes see in someone whose last defenses are crumbling.
In other words, no matter how hard the commenter argued, the evidence speaks for itself. The one good point the commenter made was to maintain that blogging makes sense when you have enough time and resources.
What Will Blogging Cost You?
The one thing blogging costs you when resources are limited is your time. Instead of investing in pay-per-click to get new leads, with its requisite advertising spending of often hundreds of dollars, give blogging a try.
Your business blog will continue to work for you long after you’re done writing a post. No ad space or ad campaigns that will cost you money and time. Consider doing a blog in conjunction to your advertising expenditures.
Blogging Value Is Endless
Even when you’re at home and watching reruns of Mad Men, your blog is working for you. That’s how your blog is able to continue creating 67% more B2B leads than businesses who don’t blog. Your old blog posts are just as valuable as your favorite TV reruns.
Visitors will continue to find them when they search, long after you published them. Keep your content relevant and updated, and your post’s value will go on and on, like Monday Night Football.
That Downtime of Yours? Wanna Use It?
Is your main blogging objection lack of time? That’s like saying you don’t have any downtime. Or as Boost Blog Traffic calls it, mundane time, or weird time. Those hours you spend driving back and forth, doing mindless chores, or the unavoidable waiting you have to do for appointments and meetings and standing in line.
You may not be able to jot anything down, but you can use this downtime to think creatively about your business and the things you want to share. You can also listen to podcasts and audiobooks to help you stimulate your creative juices. Find titles related to your industry and begin making a list of potential ideas.
It’s often the idea that’s the most difficult to generate. Once you’ve nailed the topic, the process is on its way.
Get More URLs and Get Found Online
Consistent blogging helps you get found online. So you’ve heard that one before? And you’re still not blogging?
Every time you publish a blog post, you give the internet surfers searching for your content the opportunity to find you online. The more posts you write, the bigger your chances are of having new visitors to your website.
When you do the math, it’s simple. 100 posts = 100 URLs. For each blog post, you’ve created a new URL. Your website alone doesn’t do that since there are a limited number of pages a typical site should reasonably have.
For every blog post you publish, it helps you reach the right audience who is interested and searching for your valuable content. Your website traffic is tailored to the people who are interested in what you have to say, thanks to the relevant blog information you’re sharing.
If you start blogging now, you are staying ahead of the game. The future for a successful business involves more online content exposure, and 37% of marketers says blogs are the way to go with content marketing.
Begin educating your audience now and stake your claim in the world of online engagement. The resistance is caving one blog at a time.