By Cassy van Eeden

To put it simply, having a blog gets you noticed. Blogs ramp up your SEO, making you far more discoverable for Internet searches, establish you as an expert voice in your industry and provide you with a valuable channel to communicate with your consumers.

Why your brand should blog

Charlene Erasmus, owner of Brand Heart, explains that building SEO keywords into clients’ ‘products’ or ‘services’ is a difficult task. This is where blogging becomes a key part of any content marketing strategy, she says. Blogs bridge this gap.

“By blogging you give readers a specific gem of information that helps them satisfy a requirement for information to solve a problem,” says Vince Love, owner of Write Concepts. “That way you start to build solid relationships of trust with present and future customers.”

Blogging is as much a part of social media as any online network, explains Jess Mouneimne, director of Jam Media. “Through sharing, comments and guest posts, blogs provide the basis for building a targeted community.”

What is good content?

Owning a blog is great, but it is useless without good content. But what is ‘good’ content and how does it fit into an overall content marketing strategy?

“Good, sound, thorough research is essential,” says Erasmus. “If your facts are wrong, don’t expect people to [come] back a second time.”

“Hitting the publish button on an article filled with mistakes makes you look stupid,” agrees Love. “If your blog reads like it was compiled from two Google searches and written in half an hour by a third grader, you will be sending a message that you don’t respect your readers’ time or intelligence. And that’s worse for your brand than doing nothing.”

Mouneimne explains that the purpose behind blogging is not hard selling. “Sure, you can link to products or services for sale in other pages of your company website, but blogs that are successful are about giving back to your community with advice, opinion or tutorials,” she says.

The most important advice Love gives to his clients is to plan in advance. “If you start off without a plan, you will almost certainly run out of steam quickly.” He recommends planning how each part of the story you are telling fits together, to allocate time to conceptualising and developing a blog post and to leave space for editing.

How do you market a blog?

Mouneimne recommends that, before you begin marketing your blog, that you have a significant amount of valuable content to start with.

Once you have this in place, you can start marketing your blog. The obvious answer would be to share it on social media as much and as widely as possible. But this is not the only way that you can successfully market your blog.

“If you have a database that you send email campaigns to, it’s a great place to share your latest blog post,” says Erasmus. Love says you can also reach people through email by making sure there is a subscription button on your blog so that they receive updates and new posts.

Does your brand have a blog? How does your blog fit into your content marketing strategy? Let us know in the comments below.