With over 4 billion people in the world connected to the internet, there is no better marketplace in the world to advertise your business than the internet. One of the best ways to exploit the potential of the internet and boost your business is to use content. Content development is one of the many marketing strategies that fall under the umbrella of digital marketing.
Content development, especially blogging, is one of the most potent marketing strategies, making it a must for all modern-day Philadelphia businesses. Best of all, content development and blogging can pair well with your existing marketing strategies and increase the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. This article will walk you through the benefits of blogging and content development to help you understand why this marketing strategy is so important for you.
What Is Content Development?
Generally speaking, content development is the process of gathering, researching, composing, and editing knowledgeable information for the purpose of publication on one or more platforms. When combined with marketing tactics, content development can be referred to as content marketing and it now serves the purpose of promoting the services or products of a business.
The end-all target of content development, when used by businesses, is to draw in profitable leads to their website and convert them into sales.
Due to its versatility and enormous reach, content development is a strategy used by all large- and small-scale corporations, businesses, and industries. In fact, some of the most renowned and well-established brands in the world use it, such as P&G, Microsoft, John Deere, and Cisco Systems.
The fact that the majority of your marketing efforts will fail if you don’t have well-developed content signifies the importance of content development. In this sense, content can be seen as the engine that powers most of your marketing strategies, including social media marketing, SEO, PPC, and others, making it no less than the core of digital marketing.
The Benefits of Blogging and Content Development for Philadelphia Businesses
It Helps Drive Traffic to Your Website
One of the biggest benefits of a blog is that it can help drive organic traffic to your business website for little to no cost. Of course, there are other ways of bringing in more traffic as well, however, none of them is as effective as blogging.
For instance, you could buy an email list and start spamming everyone on the list with promotional material, hoping that they take the bait, click on the email, and come over to your website. However, this would be an illegal and unethical as well as an expensive approach that is nearly not as effective as blogging.
You could also try running paid ad campaigns on social media and Google. However, this is also a very expensive strategy, one that ceases to function as soon as you run out of your marketing budget. The third option you have is to leave it up to chance that people would discover and visit your business website on their own. This, of course, would be a poor approach and you’d probably gain no new leads.
Blogging, however, can be the perfect solution for bringing in more traffic to your website without breaking the bank or any laws. Every time you publish a blog on your website, you get one more page that will be indexed by the search engine algorithm. This means your website will have a greater likelihood of showing up on the results page of a search engine and drive organic traffic to your site.
Combine your content with great SEO writing and your SERP ranking and discoverability both go up, driving even more traffic to your business. Publishing blogs on your website also makes the site look more updated. Not only that, but it also alerts Google and other search engines that your website is still active and functional, and that they should check on your website regularly to see what new content you publish.
Blogs Can Improve Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
As mentioned before, one of the biggest benefits of blogging and content development is that they pair well with other marketing strategies. One such strategy is social media marketing.
When you blog, you’re essentially generating sharable content that can be published not only on your business website, but also on your business’s social media profiles. This allows consumers to share your content throughout social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, thereby serving as free advertisement for your Philadelphia business.
The more people share your content, the more your content and business are promoted. Seeing as how more than 50% of the entire world’s population uses social media, repurposing your blogs and sharing them on social media can do wonders for your brand awareness and lead generation. In a nutshell, this can help you acquire new customers, drive more traffic, earn consumer trust, and become an authority in your field of business.
Not only that, but sharing your blogs on social media also reinforces your social media marketing strategy. It helps you establish a prominent presence on social media platforms and be more active on your social accounts since you won’t have to generate new content from scratch for your social media.
It Can Improve Your Lead Generation Rate
Lead can be thought of as a potential customer for your product or service, someone who shows interest in your business. We have already seen how blogging and content development can help your Philadelphia business reel in more traffic by increasing your visibility on search engines and social media.
However, you may be surprised to learn that blogging can also help you convert your traffic into leads and, in doing so, increase the profitability of your business. It is worth knowing that in order to use blogs to convert traffic into leads you’ll need to strike a perfect balance between knowledgeable and promotional information in your content. In addition, you’ll need to skillfully add in a call-to-action (CTA) in your blogs which is essentially how you’ll convert the incoming traffic into leads.
Confused? Let us break it down for you. First, you’ll draw traffic using your blogs, that’s why the content must be well written and the title should be catchy. Next, you’ll present the visitors with a call-to-action for free stuff such as an eBook or a whitepaper.
When the visitor clicks the CTA, they’ll be required to enter some of their information and upon doing so, they’ll receive the free eBook or whatever you may have offered them. Finally, you can handover your leads to your highly persuasive sales team that’ll convert them into sales.
It is important to remember that converting traffic into leads is a job that requires marketing knowledge and expertise which is why you may want to enlist the help of a professional content marketing agency such as Philly Online Marketing. The experienced marketers of a professional content marketing agency will know how to tailor the blog content and where to place the CTA(s) to achieve maximum lead conversion rate.
Offers Long-Term Results
A good blogging strategy, as used by most industry-leading businesses, is to use your content to answer mainstream questions that your customers and readers have. By providing your audience with valuable content that helps them solve their problems and confusions, you’ll soon establish yourself as an authority or industry leader in the eyes of your audience.
This makes your Philadelphia business a trusted source of information and knowledge for the people and makes them more inclined towards buying from you over your competitors. Imagine the impact you would have if a blog published by you helps a confused customer understand things better. Most probably, they would always now look towards your business for any future queries and confusions they may have.
Being perceived as an authority and a trusted business can help boost your lead generation as well as lead-to-sale conversion rate. This is because consumers are less likely to question and more likely to prefer a business that they know and trust.
Although being an authority is not a concrete vanity statistic like leads or traffic, it’s still pretty potent and can be utilized to gauge sales enablement.
Blogging Helps with Link Building
The Google search engine algorithm uses 200 different factors when determining the rank of a site on its search engine results page. Among these factors, inbound links, also known as backlinks are one of the most influential and highly-weighted ones. In fact, backlinks are regarded by many professional content marketing agency experts and small business owners as the third most important element for search engine optimization.
While backlinking is one of the most important aspects of SEO, it is also one of the most challenging ones to execute. A study concluded that 41% of SEO specialists believe that link building is the most difficult part of SEO.
To earn backlinks, you must make content that is not only valuable to the public, but also to other businesses your audience perceives as industry leaders. Once you manage to churn out such valuable and relevant content, gaining backlinks can be easier.
But how do backlinks contribute to SEO, you wonder? When other authoritative websites link back their content to your website, it acts as a vote of confidence testifying that your website is reliable and trustworthy. Additionally, it tells Google and other search engines that you are an authority in your field. Faring well in this aspect means that Google algorithm will rank you higher in its results page.
Moreover, backlinks also help you build and improve your domain authority. This makes your website more discoverable on search engines.
You Can Monetize Your Blogs
One of the biggest benefits of a blog for businesses in Philadelphia is that they not only bring in traffic and leads for your business, but they can also serve as a means of secondary income, a substantial one at that.
Affiliate marketing programs are performance-based. A business pays a third-party website commission on every sale made through traffic that is coming through that third-party website.
This means that you could use your blogs to promote certain products, let’s say on Amazon and whenever a lead buys that certain product through the referral link on your website, you’ll earn commission on that sale.
There are numerous retail websites that offer affiliate programs. While commission on each sale may not be very sizeable, the earnings can rapidly build-up as you contribute more and more sales to the business you’re affiliated with.
Overall, the lead generating and monetary benefits of blogging are unmatched by any other marketing strategy. This is why a majority of content marketing agency experts recommend blogging and content development for all Philadelphia businesses.
The 8 Best Blogging Tips for Philadelphia Businesses
The benefits of a blog are undeniable. However, to reap these benefits, you must first know how to write a good and engaging blog. Here are some tips to help you write effective blogs for your business in Philadelphia:
- Research and understand your audience and tailor your content around their preferences.
- Take ideas from your audience and write blogs that answer their questions.
- Make your title very specific and focused since it’ll be easier to answer.
- Give away free stuff that would add value to your audience, this will help you gain their trust.
- Be consistent! Inconsistency will result in you losing your existing traffic.
- Invest time. Getting blogging right takes time and effort so be patient and consistent.
- Build an Email list through CTAs. Consistently emailing your audience about newly published content and other information is just as important as the content itself.
- Create an outline and structure your blog into headers. Don’t put all your content under a single heading. It looks messy and unreadable.
The Final Word
There are countless benefits of blogging and content development and that is why it is critical that all Philadelphia businesses incorporate this marketing strategy into their marketing plans. To assist you in crafting value-driven and well-optimized blogs that are tailored to the needs of your audience and the goals of your business, Philly Online Marketing offers the finest content marketing services in town. Our team of experienced and specialized marketers can cater to the needs of any business, no matter how large or small. To learn more about how we can help you, visit our website!
