Should I blog or not blog?
This is the question that every businessperson considers while developing a marketing strategy.
And the answer is a bit of a mix: yes, you should blog, but it is not mandatory.
This is because blog marketing has its own set of pros and cons.
If executed properly, it can be the most brilliant move for your business. Otherwise, it may end up being a time-consuming activity with no results.
As a result, before making any decision, it is crucial to weigh the pros and cons of blog marketing.
What is blog marketing?
In a nutshell, blog marketing is the process of promoting your business through blogs.
Businesses use blogs to reach out to their target audience and promote their products and services.
Earlier businesses use to maintain their business website and blog separately.
But today, they can easily integrate their blogs with their website making it easy for their audience to learn about their company.
Pros and cons of blog marketing
Websites with blogs have 434% more indexed pages in search engines than those without.
It certainly resembles a blog marketing advantage. So let’s start with the pros.
The pros of blog marketing
Here are the six advantages of adopting a blog as a marketing tool:
1. You get traffic
According to Hubspot, businesses that blog on a regular basis receive 55% more traffic than those that do not.
So, if you are an expert in your field and can write well, your blog could end up driving millions of visitors to your website.
This can result in more sales for your business.
2. Forms a unique brand identity
Your website does not communicate much about your business.
So, how can you position your business as a special brand?
The answer is blogs.
Blogs enable you to interact with your customers on a more personal level.
The way you create your blog posts and engage with others influences the development of your separate identity.
Furthermore, when a business blogs on a regular basis, customers who read the blog feel as if they have formed a relationship with the business.
This allows you to stay in their heads and pop up whenever they think of your industry.
3. Authority
In today’s competitive environment, being an authority is critical for standing out.
Authority comes by providing information, and information is shared through blog posts.
Therefore, blog posts help you form an authority.
Furthermore, blog posts encourage your current customers to tell their friends about your business.
This enables the word-of-mouth technique to bring in more customers for your business.
4. Provides long-term benefits
While blogging is not a one-time job as it requires you to constantly update your post, most of the work gets completed once you hit the publish button.
Google may not index your blog post instantly because it takes time for it to process and give a ranking to your blog post.
However, once your blog begins to appear in SERPs, it will continue to bring new visitors to your website for the rest of its life.
Each blog you write is like a long-term asset for your company, providing results until it is deleted.
5. Promote your business
Once you attract visitors through your blogs, you can promote your business to them by publishing case study blogs.
Case study blogs are articles in which you describe how your company assisted a client in achieving their goals.
This assures your potential customers that your company is valuable.
You can promote your business in each blog post you write and include CTAs in your high-traffic blog posts to direct readers to your landing page.
6. Blogs get more shares
As noted in the previous section, people value websites that provide valuable information.
As a result, blogs get more shares as compared to any other type of website content.
The cons of blog marketing
When I first started blogging, I thought it would be an easy job.
It wasn’t until I started writing posts that I realised how difficult blogging can be.
Here are the four cons of blog marketing.
1. It takes a lot of time
The biggest disadvantage of blogging, in my opinion, is that it takes more time than other marketing channels.
Businesses cannot simply set up a blog, publish content, and expect thousands of visits the next day.
The process of a blog does not end with its upload.
In fact, this is where the actual process of optimising your blog for visitors starts.
From there on, you’ll have to:
• Promote your blog on social media networks.
• Examine whether the blog is effectively optimized for higher rankings.
• Analyze and measure how well it is performing.
• Make the necessary adjustments and update the post.
And the list goes on and on.
This brings us to the notion that blogging requires time.
2. Requires more effort
Businesses cannot expect to receive a flood of visitors simply by sharing their blogs with their family, friends, and other connections.
In most cases, even your social media following will be unable to help you in achieving your goals.
And there is only one way to make your blog successful, which takes us to the third disadvantage.
3. Requires SEO expertise
You can’t just post something and expect Google to prioritise it on the results page.
Pages that rank higher in a search are those that have been highly optimized for SEO.
On a basic level, businesses can handle SEO on their own.
However, a higher ranking requires greater expertise, which may require hiring an SEO expert.
So, in order for your blogs to provide the finest outcomes, you’ll require SEO expertise.
4. It is competitive
As of 2022, there are over 600 million blogs on the internet.
This data alone demonstrates how competitive the blogging world is.
Each keyword you target will already have some blog posts ranking and providing information for it.
And in such competition, it is sometimes difficult for businesses to stand out and get visitors through blogs.
How to do blog marketing
Despite the drawbacks of blogs, using them for marketing can still be highly beneficial for your business.
Here are a few steps to setting up your blog and making it ready for marketing:
Step 1: Decide on the type of content you are going to post and the frequency of publishing.
Step 2: Write at least ten blog posts to publish right after you launch your blog.
Step 2: Choose your blogging platform and set up your blog on it.
Step 3: Customize your blog as you want.
Step 4: Upload your blog posts and write more.
Step 5: Promote them on social media platforms and optimise them for SEO.
Step 6: Encourage your visitors to leave comments and subscribe to your email list.
Conclusion: Should you use blog marketing?
So these were the major pros and cons of blog marketing.
Overall, I believe the advantages of blog marketing outweigh the disadvantages.
So yes, you should blog.
However, it is entirely up to you and your preferences.
Comment below whether or not you would blog and why?