In the age of Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, etc., where every post is practically a mini-blog, is it still important to have a blog? YES- if you do it right. 

THE PURPOSE OF A BLOG

From a social media standpoint, blogs are not essential. You don't need one to build a BIG, influential audience on social. In fact, they can sometimes make that growth harder. This is because every time you try to send someone to your blog to read something that they could have gotten right there on social, you risk losing them entirely.

However, the purpose of blogs is NOT to grow your social media audience. The purpose of a blog is to grow your WEBSITE audience. Blogs don't increase social views; they increase your organic search rankings on Google so that when people search for your offering, your business pops up at the top of the list.

OUR EXPERIENCE

AMR, in fact, has recently had its own revelation about blogging. Six months ago, we shared the same opinion that most people do, that our industry was too big, and there was no way we'd ever rank top of the Google list. But luckily, we had Meg from Clapping Dog Media to tell us we were wrong and suggested we give blogging a shot. So in May of 2020, we launched our own Blog (aka where you are now!). And in just 4 months and 29 blog posts later, our website traffic increased by 109%. People were spending 97% longer on our site (reading the Blog). And the most important metric of all, our organic leads more than DOUBLED! Since then, we continue to hit record website traffic and leads month after month. 

HOW TO MAKE A MEANINGFUL BLOG

Just like on social, when it comes to blogs, you get out what you put in. This means, the better the content is that you provide, and the more consistently you provide it, the faster you will climb the SEO ranks. And similarly to social media, the concept of blogging is nothing new. People have been blogging for decades, which means there are A TON of blogs out there. It is estimated that out of the 1.7 billion websites, there are over 500 million blogs as of 2020 (Hosting Tribunal). This means that throwing some content together haphazardly is not going to cut it. Creating and maintaining a quality blog takes work, but if you can beat out the competition, we promise you will see results.

HERE ARE A FEW TIPS FOR BLOGGING

1. Provide value

Just like on social, when it comes to blogs, you get out what you put in. This means, the better content that you provide and the more consistent you are at providing it, the faster you climb the SEO ranks. So how do you provide value? Well, for starters, stick to your niche and focus on providing informative content. For example, At AMR Digital, we are a social media marketing agency. So, our Blog provides educational information about social media, specifically to business owners.

2. Post consistency

If you have great content in your blog but aren't posting regularly, it's probably not going to take off because your audience wants regular content! And without fresh content, there is no incentive for them to keep coming back. Don't go through all the effort of setting up a blog just to move at a glacial pace. Hit the ball running and ride that momentum. A great way to keep yourself consistent is to set a day or two (or however many you want) each week when your posts get published. Say you need ten posts a month to stay on track with this, then you can make a plan of how you're going to achieve this. Don't fall into the trap of "I'll post when I get to it." That's a set up for disaster. 

3. Use call to actions 

Call to actions or CTAs are essentially what you want your viewers to do next. They've read your blog post, got the information, now what should they do with it? CTAs can be anything from asking them to respond to a question in the comments, to suggesting they try out a technique in their next video. The most effective CTAs usually don't require a ton of work from the viewer (15 seconds or so) and get them thinking. And don't be afraid to switch up your CTAs to see what performs best.

4. Get serious about SEO

As previously mentioned, the point of a blog is to boost your website's SEO ranking. SEO is what can be the difference between only your friends and family reading your blog, and the entire world reading it. SEO essentially makes it easier for Google to categorize your web post and put it front and center in front of your ideal audience. Meaning, it will rank your post higher on the Google results page. When determining this ranking, Google looks at various factors, including the quality and quantity of content on a page, the website's reputation, information about the content creator, keywords, and the authors' expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-A-T). Check out this article to dive deeper into SEO for blogs.

Do you think that blogs are still important? Does your business have a blog yet? Let us know in the comments!

And don’t forget - we put out new blog posts every Tuesday and Thursday!

Written By: Leah Ross, AMR Digital Marketing, Copywriter