Business blogging in 2024? Here’s why we think it’s still important
The blog. It's come a long way from its humble beginnings in the 1990s. Larger companies, and many small companies, have some kind of a blog installed on their website. But why? What purpose does it serve? We've got social media where we post cool memes and videos. Why do we also need a blog?
Here are some reasons why you still need a blog, and some tips on how to make it stand as a key pillar of your content marketing strategy.
You own your blog
If you've ever seen, heard, or read anything from Content Marketing Institute, and more specifically, its founder Joe Pulizzi (who has since left CMI and runs The Tilt), you've probably heard the statement, "Don't build your house on rented land." It comes up almost weekly on his "This Old Marketing" podcast with Robert Rose. What's it mean?
It means that social media is great, but what happens when it isn’t? A trip through Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube will commonly surface a creator that has set up a new channel because the main one that they’d been developing for years was suddenly gone.
Or maybe the channel remains but your audience can’t find you. Algorithm changes occur all the time and your views can fluctuate greatly based on whatever behind-the-scenes changes the social network happens to make.
With social media, you have control of your message, but you don't necessarily have control of the medium. Stuff happens.
Blogs help you control the medium AND the message
It happens less frequently when you own and control both the message and the medium. Do something wrong? Just fix it. Are you getting less traffic? Optimize your content or promote it differently. Sure, there are still factors like Google search traffic and its constantly changing algorithms, but owning a content medium like a blog gives you a home base. Everything you do can start at your owned media property, and then circulate from that property to social media, a newsletter, podcast, YouTube channel, or wherever else you promote it. The content on your blog serves as fuel for your content and media strategy, and it’s highly efficient fuel if you use it properly.
Why would anybody want to read your blog?
That’s a good question. The truth is, they probably wouldn't. Not even your closest friends or family members, WANT to read your blog. It's just the truth. People have their own stuff going on and their own interests. Generally, those interests don't overlap with what you want to discuss on your blog. So you have to give them a reason to read it.
The key to successful blogging is providing something of value to your audience. Knowing what content people are interested in will go a long way towards getting those results. That's why building accurate and usable personas can be so valuable. A persona, or an avatar, is a personified representation of your audience. Developing a persona can help you figure out how to craft your content to best reach your target audience. It can help you make decisions on what content would be relevant to your blog and what should be left behind. Then, you can zero in on the audience that DOES want to read your blog. Your family still probably doesn’t.
Content marketing AI tip: start your personas with AI
You can use AI for persona development. If you use a generative AI tool like ChatGPT or Google Gemini, try this prompt:
You're an experienced and knowledgeable [B2B, B2C] marketing consultant helping me develop my company's content marketing strategy. My company is in the [fill in the blank] industry and we serve the [geographical location] market. We sell [fill in the blank] for the purpose of [fill in the blank]. [Add any additional information here about your company and its customers that you already know].
Create a buyer persona for my company that we can use as a target when creating content. Include name, demographic information (age, gender, income, education), job role and level of seniority, goals and challenges relevant to your product or service, where they seek information (favorite media, social platforms), buying behavior (how they make purchasing decisions), and personal motivations or values.
Please ask questions that will help make the persona even better.
Of course, this is only the starting point. AI is great at making generalizations based on what it has in its training data and what it can find on the internet. You’ll still need to do some work and use your own data to verify the accuracy of this persona. But it’s a fantastic place to start.
How does a blog fit within your content marketing strategy?
Blog posts are an integral part of any content marketing strategy. Blog posts can serve as a powerful connection between your business and its audience by telling the story of your company and brand in a more intimate way. Blog posts can improve your search engine optimization (SEO) by increasing the number of unique, high-quality pages on your website. Blog posts can also convert and nurture leads by sharing valuable content that your desired audience wants.
Blogs are different now
Today’s blogs aren’t like the blogs of 2010. Those were mostly text-based, and tended to be filled with personal stories and anecdotes. Today’s blogs are different. Good blogs, as we mentioned above, are filled with content of all kinds and media (text, images, video, audio) that your audience can interact with in various ways.
Blogs are also great fuel for social media, and can serve as the launchpad for other media like newsletters, podcasts, and YouTube videos.
Stay consistent with your publishing schedule
The first step to an effective blog strategy is to stay consistent with your posting schedule. The more consistent you are with your posting schedule, the more likely people will associate your business with a particular time of day. This association can help drive traffic to your website, as users are accustomed to checking for new content around the same times every day.
Blogging on a consistent schedule will also increase your chances of having people find and share your posts on social media, introducing new readers to your content.
Increase your SEO keyword rankings with optimized blog posts
Blog posts can play an essential role in increasing the rankings for the keywords you wish to target. Blog posts naturally help increase the number of unique pages on your website, which is one of the factors search engines use to determine where your website falls in its index. Blog posts can also help improve the quality of your website's content, which will increase your overall ranking. Blog posts can also provide valuable backlinks for SEO by including external links to related websites and blog posts.
A note on AI and SEO:
We currently don’t know how AI will influence SEO. The vast amounts of low-quality mass-produced AI-generated content being produced could have a big impact on how your content is found in the near term. Additionally, search engines like Google and Bing are continuing to integrate their AI technology into their search interface, which could result in a world where people don’t go to your website to get information. They’ll just accept what the language model tells them.
Google has stated that they will continue to prioritize and promote high-quality content. They push forward with AI, but they also have a vested interest in serving up the best information to their users. For now, the best way to maximize your search results is by creating great content that is relevant and useful. Just know that your mileage with SEO may vary as we venture into the generative AI unknown.
Here’s how long your blog post should be…sort of
There isn't a firm answer to the question, "how long should my blog post be?" As I mentioned in the post "Content Project Management Lessons From The Beatles: Get Back!," your content should be as long or short as it needs to be to tell the right story most effectively.
With that said, there are a few general guidelines to follow. Blog posts should, at a minimum, be between 400 and 600 words long. The prevailing wisdom is that long-form blog content in the 1,000 to 2,000-word range, like this post, for instance, is more beneficial for search engine marketing. In my opinion, that is likely because you've got more opportunities to get the right keywords in place in the proper context with a longer post. With shorter posts, there is less room for error.
Recent research from Hubspot has indicated that you should be in the range of 2,100 to 2,400 words. That can be a lot of words! My previously mentioned Beatles post was in that range. It does perform better than some of my other content, but I can't say for sure that it's due to the length because I don't have thousands of posts to analyze as Hubspot did. It might just be the topic vs. the length.
For a short answer to a complicated question: just tell the right story. The length will take care of itself.
Include images in your blog posts
Yes. Again, prevailing wisdom says that you should incorporate a few images in your blog post for two fundamental reasons:
People like to look at pictures. Blog posts with images are proven to be more likely to get read than those without images. Blog posts with relevant images will also improve user interactions.
You can tag those images. Include keywords in image captions and meta tags to add another searchable route to your website.
How do you find the right images for your blog posts? It can be challenging. I typically search for images that have some sort of relevance. You can also create charts and imagery that are directly relevant and visually illustrate the topic you’re discussing.
One more note on images: Don't steal them.
Don't use Google Image Search. Don't swipe them from other sites. Images are intellectual property. People own them, and often those people are individual photographers and content creators who are trying to pay their rent. Be nice. Don't steal. Here are a few options for you:
A Dall-e 3-generated image based on this blog post topic made in ChatGPT
Use your own photos if you have them. When I blogged for a travel company, I often used my own travel photos if we didn't have a better option.
Use stock photo sites. You can either pay for a premium site like iStock or Getty. You can also use free images from sites like Pixabay and Unsplash. I have not personally used it, but JumpStory is a stock photo site that looks promising for a low cost.
Get familiar with Creative Commons licenses. Some photographers and creators are happy to let you use their work - sometimes with attribution required, sometimes not. Sometimes, they will only allow it for personal use, not commercial or business use. It will spell all of that out in the license.
New: Use AI image generators. When I told ChatGPT about this blog and asked it to create me an image that would fit the topic, it gave me a very strange interpretation (see image).
With a little refinement, it could turn out to be a good picture. One thing to note is that copyright currently doesn’t extend to AI-generated content like it would to photographs or human-created art. If somebody decides they want to use it, you have no recourse.
Use outbound and internal links in your blog
Links make the web. They help your readers find relevant information, and they help search engines get context around the topics that appear on your website. Blog posts should have at least one internal link to your homepage or other relevant content. They should also include links to other relevant websites or blog posts that you think your audience will find interesting. Too many links can get annoying from a readability standpoint, but a few well-placed links can make your post that much more valuable. You can also work with the recipients of your external links to perhaps give you a link in the future. That's a great way to build your authority on the web for search engine ranking.
Get those titles, headings, and meta tags in shape on every blog post
Make sure you have your meta descriptions, titles, and headings in place. People tend to overlook this step, but it's vital as it helps search engines with context for your content and its topics. It also allows readers to find and understand your content more easily.
Use real headings. Your blog post isn't a Word Document. Bolding some text above a paragraph doesn't make it a heading or subheading. Have you ever seen that drop-down menu at the top of your editor that says things like Paragraph, H1, H2, H3? H1 is for the page's main title, and the other numbers are for subheadings. They're set to specific styles on your website so that those headings look the same on every page. Google also looks for titles tags for clues on the content's topic.
They are also helpful for website accessibility. People who are visually impaired or otherwise unable to navigate your website traditionally, may use a screen reader for assistance. Those screen readers rely on you having the proper tags in place. So use them!
I am not an SEO expert, and I still have a lot to learn with this, so I recommend checking out this post from Yoast to get started with heading tags and how to use them the right way.
Tip: use AI to help you with your tags
You’ve written your post and got it just how you want it. You’re done. But wait! You’ve forgotten to create your meta tags and descriptions. It can be annoying to have to go back through and add in the little information that your audience will most likely never see. AI can help.
I’ve pasted my entire blog post into ChatGPT and asked it to leave the content unchanged but add H1, H2, and H3 headings. It works. You might need to tweak the results a bit, but it can be a major time saver. You can also add it to write meta descriptions and tags using whatever keywords you choose. Some AI writing apps, like Writer, have a button you can click that generates summaries in multiple formats for meta descriptions, social media, and more.
As of now, the AI won’t actually insert them into your content management system. You still have to do some work, but it feels like that may be in our not-too-distant future.
Proofread Your Blog Content for Accuracy and Professionalism
Whether you write your blog content yourself, hire a freelance writer to do it for you, or trust an AI to do all the writing (not recommended at this point), make sure your spelling, punctuation, and grammar are the best they can be.
Mistakes happen to all of us, but do the best you can. Have your work proofread by a great writer or editor, or use a tool like Grammarly as I do. It's free, or you can pay for the premium version, which adds some convenient features like a plagiarism checker, tone-of-voice recommendations, and more.
The aforementioned Writer also has a great AI-enhanced proofreading system. Microsoft 365 also has a much improved and AI-powered editor built into Word and other applications in the suite.
To-do List: Repurpose Your Best Blog Content
Good blog content shouldn't just exist on your blog. It should be repurposed into other content, syndicated for other purposes, and shared in different ways on social media, in email newsletters, and more. Look for more information on this in future posts.
Bottom Line: Blogs are Still Important and Useful
When used as a part of your content marketing strategy, blog posts can be vital to building your business's online presence. When done right, and using some of the tactics discussed in this post, blog posts are an easy-to-use content tool that any individual or company can use to develop its brand and market itself.
What tips did I miss? Let me know in the comments below or on social media. If you would like to talk more about your blog strategy, I just might have some insights for you. Connect with me.