Forget the standard web template approach that most businesses employ, if your organisation wants to generate meaningful, engaged visitors then you should incorporate a blog into your website. Its a significant element of our Inbound Marketing philosophy.
Most corporate websites look fairly similar. There’s been a group-think mentality that your site should all be contained in the one screen, with content not falling “below the fold”. You see the same logo position, same navigation and the same bland corporate information.
What you don’t often see is regularly updated information that is both helpful and relevant to your target audience.
That’s where a blog can become extremely valuable to your organisation. Here are 6 reasons why one should be incorporated into your web presence.
1. A blog keeps your visitors interested. The more regularly you update your website with quality information, the more likely visitors are to return. Otherwise they can just visit once and then move on, quickly forgetting about you.
2. Visitors can actually show loyalty to a website by subscribing to your RSS feed or updates by email. The more interesting and helpful your information is, the more likely it is you will grow a base of subscribers. These regularly engaged visitors can be an extremely valuable asset and are obviously more likely to become customers over time.
3. A blog post is more likely to be shared or passed onto others than a normal web page. If you are generating useful content and have included social media sharing devices such as a Facebook “Share” button, a Twitter “ReTweet” button or a Digg prompt, there is a good chance visitors will share your information with others. This immediately broadens your audience and can boost your traffic. your audience can become your distribution network. Even if your organisation is not heavily engaged in Social Media it can benefit from those who are.
4. Search engines love blogs. Every blog post is another piece of content for Google, Bing and Yahoo etc to index, and its another potential slot in the search results that can deliver more traffic to your website. In fact, Google’s latest algorithm changes seem to be favouring fresh, relevant content so if your website is sitting there unchanged month after month you are likely to be overtaken by your competitors who are posting regularly. Even if you don’t have a sophisticated SEO strategy, simply posting regular content will go a long way to building your online success.
5. Most websites are limited by the design and pages in the websites they launch. Once the initial content has been uploaded the site is left to age. New content means design hassles, additional expense and problems. But if you built your site with a blog mentality the limitations are removed. You can add as much new information as you desire. In fact, the blog demands your attention and will keep your organisation more focused on driving your site onto bigger and better things.
6. Blogging is thinking. The discipline of blogging about your industry and organisation and creating new content can lead to great insight. It forces you to constantly consider why your organisation exists and how it can benefit others. Sometimes that “light bulb” moment can come whilst writing a thoughtful blog post.
We urge most organisations to add a blog to their online presence and have seen wonderful results from those who have embraced it. So move away from the old-fashioned corporate web templates and incorporate a more dynamic approach to your website.
