Inbound Marketing 101: Why You Need A Blog

So you are finally online, you even got a Facebook page after all this time and now you want to know why the money isn’t just rolling in. The problem with most small businesses and their efforts to get found online is that they are searching around in this big abyss called the internet without really having the slightest idea about what is going on and how it works. By knowing a few key facts about how the internet works you can get one step further in your marketing efforts and online footprint. In this installment of inbound marketing 101 I will be teaching you how to use blogging in your online marketing efforts.

First lets learn a few terms that we will use throughout the article.

Inbound Marketing: Refers to the concept of earning the prospects attention as opposed to outbound marketing which is supposed to interrupting or distracting (think direct mail, tv ads, etc) the prospect from what they were otherwise doing.

SEO: Stands for Search Engine Optimization and is based on the concept of optimizing your web content so as to rate it better and bring you to the top of search result.

Blog: is short for weblog. This is basically an online journal of sorts that can be updated regularly. There are many free online blog providers. WordPress is my favorite but there are others out there.

Now that you have a sense of a couple terms lets talk learn a little about blogging:

• >50% – The percentage of daily internet users who read blogs at least monthly!

• Most people read 5-10 blogs!

• Nearly 40% of Companies use blogs for marketing!

• 55% – The percentage increase in number of website visitors for companies that blog!

• Morning is the best time to blog!

Blogging is probably one of the easiest things you can do to increase traffic to your website and set yourself apart from the competition. By creating a blog you give yourself an online platform to promote your expertise and set yourself up as a voice of authority on whatever it is your business does. You can post original content that you create as well as re-posting articles that your customers or clients might find interesting.

The main reason that blogging helps you increase traffic is because of how the search engines catalog your online content. The days of cramming a bunch of keywords in to a meta tag to trick the search engine into rating you higher than you should be are well behind us. On most search engines, you are rated based on the quality of your content (videos and images are a huge plus). The frequency with which you update it is also an important criteria in their search algorithms. Enter the blog!

Blogging gives you the perfect platform to cheaply and regularly publish original content online. Product reviews, industry news, and any other topics that your ideal customer base finds interesting are perfect topics for blog articles. You are creating content that people will come across while searching for solutions to a problem that they actually have a need for (inbound marketing tactics) as opposed to direct marketing (outbound marketing tactics). Since they end up on your site while searching for something they need it is more likely that they will try/buy your product or at least browse your website further.

So what are you waiting for? Now that you are a blogging expert you can get your own blog and share your expertise and insights with all of those potential online shoppers out there.