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Is Blogging Still Relevant?

Ten years ago saw the emergence of blogging as a mainstream corporate digital tactic. Before that, politics, travel, cooking and technology blogs were popping up all over the place, offering reliable sources of advice and niche information.

Of course, strategic-thinking marketers quickly caught on to the profit-yielding promise blogging held for companies.

It proved a powerful way to appear in search engines and in front of an already interested audience. Not only that, it was a super-effective way to share expert opinions and allow companies to show they knew what they were talking about.

Now, none of that has changed.

Blogging is as effective a marketing tool as ever. In fact, it’s supercharged.

A recent study by Data Box, “The Shift in Your Content Marketing Mix: 25 Marketers On What’s Changed in 2 Years” showed that 68% of marketers find blogging more effective than they did 2 years ago.

But, the internet is overrun with blogs! I hear you yell. How do I stand a chance?

The trick is, you have to adapt your approach.

Quality Over Quantity

Blogging is about building relationships. It’s about playing the long game.

Not convinced? Pay attention to the offline world.

Would you approach a customer at 9.30am on a Monday morning and just say: “buy my product”, then disappear?

Would you turn up at their desk at the same time next Monday morning at 9.30am and say “buy my product”, then disappear?

And this continues every week.. you get the picture.

However, if you spent time talking to that customer about topics they’re interested in. Topics that help them. Giving valuable advice. Then you’re positioning yourself as someone they rely on and trust.

The same logic and strategy applies to your blog. Take time to write your posts. Talk to your customers and build conversations.

The everyday consumer is smart and has a limited amount of time. They make informed choices, not only about what they want to buy, but what they want to read.

It’s only by offering your reader something truly valuable, that you’ll get the conversation started.

Your blog should always aim to answer the questions your audience has (No John, no one’s Googled ‘is John the new VP?’ Our blog post These 16 Blunders Will Butcher Your Content Strategy lists this as the most common but number one error).

How consumers find your content will undoubtedly evolve, but what they’re looking for probably won’t. We still need the same information we did 5 years ago, but we’re just using different methods to find it.

Creating high-quality, original content will go a long way to getting results from blogging.

Easy to Skim

When time is of the essence, you don’t want to read an essay to get to the info you need.

Fact. People have no time.

If you want to get your point across and keep readers engaged, make it easy for them.

Separate your content into well-thought-out headers and keep sentences short. Make sure the chunky paragraphs and prose-like musings are kept out of your blog.

Rule of thumb: limit to one thought per sentence to keep it digestible.

P.S. Lists are also a fantastic way of making your content more skimmable.

Make Sure Your Content is Unique

Remember how irritated you used to get when your Mum retold a story you told her as if she were there?

Don’t make that mistake with your customer.

The term ‘thought-leader’ is bandied around everywhere these days. Create content with your own spin, sharing your expertise and knowledge with the information-hungry world.

Unique content isn’t a nice to have, it’s a need to have.

But how do you come up with unique content?

Read, read, read. The more you absorb, the more you could open the line from your unconscious. Blogs, social media, fictional books…anything you can get your hands on.

Exhausted those avenues? Eavesdrop on conversations on the train. There’s always a train whiner talking about the issues they face at work or in their daily lives.

And for some more tangible tips on how to zig while your industry blogs are zagging, this post, “Is Your Blog a Golden Egg?” (by yours truly) will help.

Marketing is an evolving entity. If I had a penny for every time a marketer has informed me with absolute certainty that ‘blogging is dead’, or ‘SEO is dead’, or ‘that’s the last we’ll see of Facebook’, I’d be sailing off into the sunset.

That’s why the question of are blogs still relevant is, in itself, irrelevant.

The truth is, we need to stop pronouncing flat-lines just because we don’t know how to adapt.