Remember when blogging was a new and cool concept? Just about everybody who was anybody and his dog got online and set up a blog. There was even a TV sitcom called Dog With a Blog. Although it’s tempting to talk about blogs being “
Recently, Neil Patel published 17 charts that show where content marketing is heading. The article contained interesting answers to the question of whether blogging will boost your business in 2019.
I pay attention to Patel because he’s been in digital marketing for over a decade and made about $10 million. Math isn’t my strong suit but that appears to be about $1 million for every year in digital marketing.
To evaluate digital marketing trends in 2019, Patel took data from 183 companies that leverage content marketing. Each of the companies he selected make at least 5 million dollars in revenue a year and generate less than $1.9 billion a year.
Patel highlights how more organic website traffic is going to blogs than ever before. While it was about 30 percent of your organic search traffic in 2015, blogs are now generating 60 to 62 percent of a site’s search traffic.
While this is good news for blogging, it should be balanced against the increasing competitiveness of the blogisphere. As Patel says:
“SEO is also getting more competitive because there are more blogs popping up and people are creating tons of content. But you have no choice but to do the same if you want to keep up.”
He recommends companies employ more bloggers to keep up with the competition. Most mid-sized companies now have at least two full-time employees managing their blog. Patel goes on to say the average mid-sized company has as many as 10 contractors contributing to their blogs.
That’s a lot of bloggers pushing out material. Patel goes on to point out some of those contractors may only be writing a blog or two a month. He recommends companies hire more contractors.
Nor are the mid-sized companies cutting down on content. Patel’s research suggests mid-sized companies publish on average 22.8 blogs a month and the optimum length is at least 1,890 words.
Despite such compelling research, many companies, particularly small businesses, are dismissive of blogging as a new-fangled fad, even though blogs have been with us for more than 15 years. I have encountered many lawyers, accounts, doctors, and members of more traditional professions who tell me blogging is not something they do.
In many cases, the stigma of the word “blogging” proves a stumbling block. A blog need not be experimental or new age. It’s just a term for new content that often reflects a current event as opposed to static web pages.
Blogs are important to businesses because they can being new potential customers to your site. When somebody reads your blog, it builds trust in your brand and causes your conversion rate to increase.
For this reason, it’s important to breathe your personality into your blog. Although business owners are often too busy to write their own content it’s important for the writer to assume their voice and personality traits.
Patel notes digital content is moving imperceptibly in a new direction in 2019. Expect less traffic from social media and more from videos and podcasts going forward.
However, blogging should remain the major plank of your digital marketing in 2019 just as it was in 2018.
Last year, HubSpot pointed out businesses have a 434 percent higher chance of being ranked highly on search engines if they have a blog. Businesses that use a blog as part of their overall content marketing mix get on average 67 percent more leads than those without a blog.
Why Blogging is Crucial to Your Business in 2019
The research suggests blogging won’t only boost your business in 2019 but it’s a critical plank of your online strategy.
That’s not to say you should panic and churn out material for the sake of it. There are now so many blogs being produced in a saturated market that you have to stand out to make your blog punch its weight.
What is the Secret to Blogging that Will Boost Your Business in 2019?
Bloggers spend many hours fiddling with codes on the back end of their sites, trying to make their blog appear on the front page of Google. Although there are certain rules, writers often overcomplicate the process.
The rules for a good blog are no different from those followed by newspaper journalists for decades and the Anglo-Saxons scops who passes down great tales like Beowulf orally; namely tell a good story.
If your blog is readable people will read it. If people read it, your website’s popularity will improve. One of the biggest challenges for digital marketers is to get their blog in front of readers and to draw them in. We live in a fast-moving and distracted age. It’s, therefore, important for blog writers to find unusual angles, look for the offbeat, and answer questions people are asking online.
Increasingly, the blogs that boost your business over the next few years will be those that answer your potential customer or client’s questions. Blogs that answer voice searches made on mobile devices will increasingly come into their own.
Blogging will invariably change over the next few years but there are few signs that blogging is dead, despite a steady decline in searches for the term blogging on Google Trends, as reported by Blog Tyrant.
Given the fast-moving nature of digital marketing, blogging has been something of a constant.
There are a lot of uncertainties in the digital age. However, keep on blogging remains sound advice.
Veritas Media provides blogging services. Email us at veritasmediavirginia@gmail.com or call (757) 582-1836.
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