Why Blogs Remain Indispensable
Don’t let reports that the blog hype is over fool you. The publishing tool remains a key element of every PR and marketing strategy on the web.
It is the anchor for your campaigns. Your secret weapon for Google. Why blogs are indispensable for companies of all sizes.
The Merriam-Webster publishing house chose the word “Blog” as its word of the year for 2004 – that seems like a lifetime ago. Blogs were on everyone’s lips. Hundreds of thousands of users started their own online journals. The feature pages wrote about traditional media being replaced by professional bloggers. And PR experts in companies started encouraging their CEOs and even the staff to blog. Daimler is a great example of this. The euphoria has passed. Blogging CEOs are a minority, journalism was not replaced and the famous pioneering bloggers have long since left for new shores.
However, blogs remain the most powerful positioning tool on the Internet.
Let’s assume you want to position yourself or your company as an expert in your market niche. You publish studies, boost your PR work and write articles for industry journals – all useful measures, but measures that fall flat in isolation. No matter how good your texts may be, in the end the expensive content ends up in the waste paper bin, with all the magazines and newspapers, or disappears in the online archives of media websites.
On the other hand, blogs allow you to make tailored content accessible to your target groups at all times, free of charge and permanently. Publish every news item, every article, every text from your customer magazine in your blog. Answer the most pressing questions by your potential customers with highly useful information. Relevant content also encourages visitors to supplement your articles with comments (user generated content). All of that gradually creates an immense pool of content, which has a magnetic attraction on Google. As soon as you have a critical mass of information on a subject, users from your target market stumble on your website automatically with their search terms.
Unlike Xing, LinkedIn, Facebook etc., access to your blog is unrestricted worldwide. Users don’t have to register, they come directly to you and, ideally, can start communicating with you immediately. RSS, keywords and social bookmarks distribute your information virtually automatically. That makes your blog’s reach immense.
That is why you should make your blog the anchor of all of your social media activities: For example, post links to your new content on Twitter. Conversely, you can simply integrate new tweets automatically in your blog.
The most important rule is: Think and act like a publisher. Your content must be tailored for your positioning and offer your target market real added value. Only then will the investment and time really pay off. You establish yourself as a leader in your area, don’t have to rely on questionable search engine optimization practices by service providers and can use your AdWords budget more efficiently.
