Content for Inbound Marketing
Content matters to inbound marketing. It’s the one major reason your website needs a blog. But it’s not enough to simply start an online dialogue. You need a strategy. Sure, a blog can drive traffic; yet, if you don’t understand how it’s employed, you’re unlikely to ever harness its full potential as a promotional tool. Want to inform and engage? Here are three more reasons your website needs a blog.
1. To Provide Topical Content
To stay fresh in the minds of potential clients, you’ll need to keep them coming back. Producing regular, topical content is key. The goal is to become a daily bookmark — or better yet, an email they don’t delete. Accomplish this by developing a weekly eBlast (or email newsletter) that incorporates newsworthy industry topics straight from your blog.
Yes, it’s important to develop general content, as well — but you need to give your visitors a user experience worth subscribing to. Consider setting up Google Alerts for several trade buzzwords and make sure to cover the latest bulletins on your blog.
2. To Become an Authoritative Industry Resource
That said, it’s not enough to simply write a short intro and link back to a full, third-party article. Instead, you want to become an authoritative voice: one that further develops your brand with a strong, knowledgeable voice. You’ll create more than just content that’s worth subscribing to — you’ll build a reputation, one that could open doors for guest blogging opportunities.
Guest blogging often translates to link building. If done right (re: ethically or without fraudulent blogging personas), you’ll network real relationships with clients and non-competitive businesses within your vertical through carefully placed links within your guest post.
3. To Develop an SEO Backlog of Deep Links
Speaking of link building, are you developing your own network of deep links? Regular blog content presents weekly or even daily opportunities to embed anchor text (keywords) and target URLs that allow search engines to crawl and find your site’s most buried pages.
It’s not enough to create pathways to pages via primary menus and footer navigation. You need topical content to drive traffic back to those hard-to-crawl (or hidden) pages that often get overlooked.
Blog Development
More than anything, your blog should be valuable and engaging and not just a hotbed for links and “robot text.” That’s why, in addition to meaningful content you’ll need social plugins and other tools to help your users connect and share.
Developing a blog is about more than just turning on a layout feature and submitting your first public post. Blogs require calculated web design and programming to ensure they’re a cohesive part of your overall website, as well as your inbound marketing strategy.
Ready to begin blogging? Start with smart content. Give us a call today to find out how we can create the best blog for your website development project.
