Blogging Is an Effective Way To Connect With Customers, Build Trust and Brand Loyalty – all without breaking the bank
Welcome to our original Loudoun Clear Marketing Blog series where we discuss the best reasons for why business blogs pack such a big punch for your content marketing strategy and why your organization needs to be blogging in 2020.
Reason One: Google Search Rankings
Boost your website’s Google search rankings with the keyword influx, SEO optimization, and the unique, dynamic content that regular blog posts provide.
Reason Two: Get More Leads, Earn More Business
The fact is, it pays to blog. Not only is content marketing (including blogging) 62% cheaper than traditional marketing investments – according to statistics published at https://www.demandmetric.com/content/content-marketing-infographic – it also produces three (3) times more business leads than a paid online search strategy.
Blogging generates fantastic returns on your overall marketing investment, especially internet content marketing efforts. Small businesses, whose websites have blogs, generate 126% more leads than those without blogs, according to figures available at http://www.techclient.com/blogging-statistics.
Reason Three: Develop Trust
Statistics show that 81% of U.S. consumers trust information presented in blog form, and 61% of consumers have made a purchase based on a blogpost. Therefore, it is important to be yourself, develop your voice in a creative way, and really dig into who you are as a business and why you matter.
Blog about what you know. No one knows your business like you do. Educate prospective clients about the services you offer; use your blog to tell stories about problems you successfully solved.
Blog about what you want your customers to know you know. Assume the role of a go-to thought leader and share up-to-date professional expertise. Advise readers about news in your industry, seasonal updates, the latest recommendations – show them you’re on top of your business.
Blog about your organization’s role in the community. Sponsor any Little League teams? Participate in a fun run, fundraiser or a food drive? Blogging helps spread the word of upcoming events, and are a lasting medium for recapping community outings. Use blog content in tandem with social media to make that all-important personal connection with customers in your market.
It’s time to start making regular, creative, brand-defining blog posts a fundamental part of your business’s or nonprofit’s online marketing outreach. Call Loudoun Clear Marketing at 703-721-7040 or send us a message at https://loudounclearmarketing.com/contact-us; we’ll get to work on a custom Digital Marketing campaign including engaging, unique blog content tailored for the market you need to reach in 2020.
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LCM’s Best Reasons To Blog In 2020: A Five-Part Blogpost Series
Reason One: Boost Your Google Rankings With Better SEO
Reason Two: It Pays to Post
Reason Three: Define Your Company’s Unique Sales Proposition
Reason Four: Establish Credibility as THE Local Leader In Your Industry
Reason Five: Engage Directly With Customers and Make a Personal Connection To Your Company
Search Engines Love Active Websites With Original Content. That’s What a Company Blog Provides.
We’re kicking off the Year 2020 with a new look at an old friend: the blog. Blogging has been part of Internet culture for a quarter-century, ever since the World Wide Web made websites a reality – and they’re no less relevant today. Loudoun Clear Marketing is pleased to publish our original five-part blog series explaining why you should make regular blogging part of a successful digital marketing campaign all year long.
Why write a (better) company blog in 2020? Reason One: Stand above the competition with improved SEO results.
Your website isn’t producing value if it isn’t getting found. That means your business site needs to rise high on Google’s first page for as many keyword terms as possible. That’s where the science of Search-Engine Optimization (SEO) comes in.
Blogs do many SEO things Google likes. Blogs keep your company website fresh and active. Blogs reinforce your company’s name, address and phone (NAP) info. Blogs pinpoint your geographic market, identifying the cities, counties and regions your company serves.
Blogs populate your site with relevant keywords (ex.: “marketing”) and long-tail search terms (ex.: “best content marketing in Loudoun County, Virginia”) – and because blogs are updated regularly, your website gets indexed more often than a static, non-blogging site.
Blogs increase your website’s chances at quality backlinks, wherein another website publishes a hyperlink back to your blogpost. This is yet another way writing original blog content generates a valuable SEO boost.
According to stats compiled at http://www.techclient.com/blogging-statistics, publishing regular blog content attracts eight times more visitors and increases the chances for higher rankings by an astounding 434% – plus, websites with blogs earn 97% more indexed links, which means more customers find your business website…thanks to your blogs.
Think about your company blog. Does it exist? Does it feature weekly blog posts of at least 1,000 words of original content (plus a pic or a vid) that defines, differentiates and distinguishes your brand? Is your website’s blog pulling its weight to lift your Google ranking? Talk with Loudoun Clear Marketing at 703-721-7040 or https://loudounclearmarketing.com/contact-us so our expert digital content marketers can design a blogging campaign customized for your business in 2020.
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LCM’s Best Reasons To Blog In 2020: A Five-Part Blogpost Series
Reason Two: Get More Leads, Earn More Business
Reason Three: Define Your Company’s Unique Sales Proposition
Reason Four: Establish Credibility as THE Local Leader In Your Industry
Reason Five: Engage Directly With Customers and Make a Personal Connection To Your Company
It’s official: The World Health Organization has declared that the COVID-19 virus, commonly known as the coronavirus, is now a global pandemic. Health officials are urging individuals, institutions and governments to take immediate, significant precautions, if they haven’t already.
Life, and business, must go on. Loudoun Clear Marketing wanted to take a moment to share with you three things you can do right now to maintain a healthy immune system for your company or non-profit so it continues to thrive, in the present and when this virus inevitably passes.
Many companies already have a Business Continuity Plan – especially ones that provide essential services – but if your company doesn’t, you don’t have to worry. It’s just a matter of thinking through what you can do to make sure your employees stay safe and the business keeps running if there’s a disruption, like COVID-19.
Our advice, which we’re taking ourselves, boils down to three straightforward steps:
1. Make A Plan.
Make a company-wide plan of actions and behaviors for essential and non-essential staff, tailored to the sector you work in.
Businesses directly serving (and interfacing with) the public, like restaurants, retail stores, transportation, etc., need to maintain vigilance about their employees’ constant cleanliness and hand-washing. Companies who work in the field, like HVAC, house cleaners, roofers, etc., must do the same. Enforce a no-handshake rule; smiles and waves make for great customer service too!
Businesses or organizations operating in office settings should strongly consider telework for as many employees as possible, if not for everyone. In cases where workers must be physically present, like manufacturing or work within a warehouse, companies should require that employees who feel ill stay at home and follow the instructions of a medical doctor or local health officials.
2. Talk With Your Employees and Partners.
When your company or organization has come up with that Plan, communicate it to your employees, vendors, partners, etc., with one unambiguous message. Make sure everyone gets the same message by having them reply to a group email or sign a memo.
So what’s your message? Again, it should be tailored to your company’s unique circumstances as to the best ways to handle the ongoing viral pandemic, but the essence of your message should be calm and communicate that their safety and well-being is the most important thing – but the company or organization will be resilient throughout this ordeal because of 1) their continued hard work, 2) open communication in case of sickness and 3) the aforementioned plan.
3. Talk With Your Clients or Customers.
This is pretty important to those of us in the service industry, where disruptions in service can have consequences for those we serve. Utilize all of your company’s digital platforms, including social media, website, blogs, mobile app notifications, etc., to let your customers (and the public, where appropriate) know what your company is doing to protect them from this unusual outbreak while still serving them as usual. Make sure every employee who speaks with a customer in person, over the phone or via online chat, delivers the same message as to exactly what your company’s Plan is – even if that means giving your employees a script to follow.
If you have questions or need help finding the right messages, we’re – as always – here to help. We’re confident, however, that if you follow these three tips, they’ll help ensure your company continues to thrive. If you want to learn more about what Loudoun Clear Marketing is doing to protect our employees and keep our business moving, you can click here. We wish you good health as we calmly face this together. And we look forward to seeing you once the threat passes.
When marketing a business or doing public relations for a non-profit, the one thing that matters most when the rubber meets the road is the answer to the question: Are your key messages actually getting across…and actually compelling people to act?
Granted, maybe that’s two things, but those are the most essential points of effective business communications. You need to know, to the maximum degree possible, that your marketing is effective, and why.
Today, because marketing and public relations 1) are becoming more interconnected, and 2) are becoming increasingly omni-channel, the fifth major trend Loudoun Clear Marketing is seeing this year is the universal usage of metrics and measurables to determine marketing and public/media relations efficacy.
Whether your target market is Leesburg, Virginia, the USA or the Internet, it pays to be able to know people are getting the message and being converted into your customers (or, for non-profits, contributors.)
The result is today there exists an embarrassment of analytical riches, a sea of numbers simply not calculable a decade or so ago. We PR, social media and marketing professionals have fingertip access to rich troves of measurables, analytics, and deep-dive data tools useful for pinpointing your market and then determining what messages to deliver and how.
A few of the more common, popular and useful analytic stacks employed by marketers to improve message reach and increase customer traffic:
Google Analytics – the essential platform for website traffic analysis. Google provides data on unique visitors, visit duration, page popularity, screen views, bounce rate and conversion percentage. Moreover, there’s a bevy of audience data (e.g., age, gender and geographic breakdown), and how they came to your site in the first place (e.g., organic web search, paid AdWords search or direct email outreach).
Cision Communications Cloud – sometimes used in conjunction with Google Analytics, the Cision Communications Cloud measures the effectiveness of traditional public relations outreach and earned media coverage, including insights on your marketing campaigns’ returns-on-investment.
Facebook Insights – typically utilized in a social media marketing context (i.e., what to post and when), Facebook remains (with its two billion users and ownership of Instagram) nonetheless, an excellent source of both hyper-local and mega-broad marketing data, in terms of an audience’s ranges of age, population density, and income levels.
Memo – a startup company offering a service measuring the impact of online articles and web-based content that mentions specific brands. (Similar services are offered by Storyful and Dataminr, among others.)
In a piece published in the Wall Street Journal’s CMO Today section, the chief digital officer of a multinational communications firm says that integrating data from multiple sources is necessary to give clients the best marketing guidance, and he’s right.
Analytics algorithms are constantly being refined, novel methodologies are being invented, and new platforms are being introduced to the industry. In 2019 and beyond, the strongest marketing firms with the most effective tailored strategies – like Loudoun Clear Marketing – make use of today’s full array of analytic tools in order to identify your organization’s target market and communicate meaningful, engaging messages directly to them, evoking the response you want.
About Loudoun Clear Marketing: LCM was founded in Leesburg, Virginia, by Sharon L. Wright, who brings more than 30 years of local, national and international experience in the fields of Marketing, Communications and Public Relations. She has established a team of high-performing professionals to serve the PR outreach and strategic marketing needs of clients throughout Loudoun County, DC and nationally, bringing customization, community connections and technological know-how to every project.
LCM is heavily involved with a variety of non-profit organizations serving Loudoun, and works closely with for-profit companies to enhance their brand within the NoVA region. More about Loudoun Clear Marketing is at LoudounClearMarketing.com. Your Story. Brought to Life. Loud & Clear.
Part Two: Public Relations Needs To Drive Compelling Content
This is the second blogpost in our five-part series discussing the most important trends in public relations and marketing.
Nowadays, if you’re in the public relations business, you’re in the content marketing business.
Content marketing is an industry term that barely existed 20 years ago. Now, there are courses on it at institutions of higher learning, and some people choose it as a career. Content marketing entails packaging information in an attractive way that induces a desired call-to-action (find out more, make an appointment, give us a call, buy now, etc.) from your target audience – and that’s where the PR part comes in.
The role of a public relations firm has always been (and still is) to understand a client’s distinguishing message(s), identify that client’s target audience, then reach that audience through available channels of communication. Once upon a time, that meant things like press releases, media advisories, earned mentions, and public events.
But the times they are a-changin’. Effective PR today necessitates the creation and distribution of informative, attractive digital content such as:
Blogs
Infographics
Social media posts (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)
Podcasts
Video productions
Photo galleries
Website content
…in addition to releases, advisories, articles and events. All these forms of communications outreach – when well strategized and implemented – work together to drive key messages directly at the target audience, resulting in a positive public perception of your company’s or organization’s brand.
But without compelling content to attract them, any outreach efforts could fall flat.
From a public relations perspective, the goal of content marketing is to define the client’s unique sales proposition – what they do better than anyone else – and to establish the client as a thought leader – a go-to source for expertise in their field. In essence, the goal is to rise above the rest. Viral videos, shareable Instagram posts and topical, relevant blogs are effective ways to be seen, heard, and liked.
Communications technology has changed immensely over the past few decades; the way people communicate hasn’t. As is human nature, we’re still attracted to pretty pictures and new experiences – and when we want something, we want it now.
Today’s PR demands creativity and novelty. It demands targeted outreach through social media as well as earned media. It demands messaging that can be posted quickly, seen quickly, and acted upon quickly. Today’s PR demands content marketing.
About Loudoun Clear Marketing: LCM was founded in Leesburg, Virginia, by Sharon L. Wright, who brings more than 30 years of local, national and international experience in the fields of Marketing, Communications and Public Relations. She has established a team of high-performing professionals to serve the PR outreach and strategic marketing needs of clients throughout Loudoun County, DC and nationally bringing customization, community connections and technological know-how to every project.
LCM is heavily involved with a variety of non-profit organizations serving Loudoun, and works closely with for-profit companies to enhance their brand within the NoVA region. More about Loudoun Clear Marketing is at LoudounClearMarketing.com. Turn It Up!
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