1 – Blog Posts Showcase Your Expertise
People can only see a snippet of who you are and what you do in a YouTube video, a podcast app or on social media. And they quickly get distracted by all the other people shouting, “Here, look at me, listen to me!” Your website, however, can showcase your full expertise by presenting everything you have on offer. It’s your digital roof that keeps it all together. And the blog is the section of your website that gives you unlimited space to show your knowledge from all angles. This is where you can demonstrate your thought leadership without competition – at least as long as your reader is spending time on your website alone.
People will learn about your expertise from one or more blog posts if it addresses a specific pain point or shows them how to achieve something they wish for. If you are working as a coach or consultant, this can’t be valued highly enough. Expertise creates trust. If you generously share your knowledge with your audience, this makes you trustworthy. Potential clients learn that you want to help them. Blog posts warm your website traffic so that visitors can be converted into clients. So, your blog is where the foundation of your future client relationships are laid.
2 – Blog Posts Are What Gets Your Website Found
This being said,your blog is also what gets your website found on google so that people can learn more about you. It contains the largest amount of keyword optimised content on your website. Always write with your audience in mind but do also think a little bit of google. SEO optimise every single blog post!
Blog posts with relevant keywords included are also what gets you to be found by new people from around the world and from outside your social media or personal referral network. While the algorithms of social media accounts tend to show you people “similar” to whom you are connected to already, search engines entirely focus on the matter at hand. So, anyone who searches for your topic will be shown your blog post – if they are ranking high enough.
This is a big IF. When talking about ranking, there are two things to keep in mind:
The more you write about topics that people search for, the higher your website will rank.
And: The longer people spend time on your website by reading your blog posts, the higher your website will rank next time someone searches for your topic.
Write many posts around one core topic and write at least 3500 words. Carefully research keywords, and especially the so-called long tail keywords that offer you a better chance to rank high than insanely competitive ones such as “coaching” or “business consulting”
Yes, you can achieve a good google ranking with YouTube videos as well, and YouTube itself is the second largest search engine out there. But podcasts don’t influence the ranking of your website that much yet. Maybe still to come.
3 – Blogging Makes You More Visible
Blogging increases your visibility even more if you share your blog posts on the right channels. Sharing will help you reach new people. The golden rule is to spend 20% of your time writing blog posts and 80% sharing or marketing them! Posting on your website and then sharing the posts across the web is also great for your website’s SEO, especially if you gain lots of backlinks.
4 – Blog Posts Help You Build Your email List
You are going to provide your content for free. Your readers will be grateful, but most likely, they won’t buy from you on their first visit. This is why C no 4 is capture. You will need to capture their details, e.g. their email address, so that you can send them more content and steadily create a deeper connection.
A website captures email addresses by offering a quick and easy way to sign-up to a mailing list, a newsletter or a free give-away, such as an ebook, template or guide. The latter is called a lead magnet. You offer more free content in return for an email address. GDPR rules can sometimes hinder us from building up an email list fast, but there are still many ways to do so legally.
5 – A Blog Is Pretty Easy To Start And Keep Up
Starting a blog and writing blog posts regularly is a lot easier achieved than setting up your camera and/or audio tech, editing your recordings and doing all the SEO optimised descriptive text work on top of that.
But How Do Podcasts And Videos Compare To Blogging?
There are millions of enthusiastic podcast listeners out there. That’s good because you can share all your knowledge with them. And podcasts might create a stronger bond than blogs because to have someone’s voice in your ear is more intense than reading a text. You can show your personality and build trust by being a pleasant talker.
BUT: Podcasts are often listened to while doing other things like driving the kids to school, walking the dog or cleaning the house. And then, it is a huge step for people to actively contact you or leave an email address behind. Consequently, your email list won’t grow that much with podcast listeners. And, as mentioned already, podcasts also don’t help you that much with your google ranking yet.
And what about videos? Videos allow the most personal experience I would say. People can hear and see you while you share your knowledge with them. But again, YouTube visitors might watch and enjoy your videos, but it is another big step to then go to your website and contact you. Therefore, it can be a good idea to try to convert your YouTube subscribers to email readers directly on YouTube by linking to a lead magnet in the video description.
This all being said, I think the most crucial question is: Which format do you feel most comfortable with? If you are not a video or podcast person, you are probably a more introverted type and will most likely thrive at blog writing. On the other hand, if you suffer from writer’s block but are an easy talker, then shine in podcasts or videos!
And Here Is Reason No 6 Why A Blog Could Be Your Most Valuable Online Marketing Asset
A blog is very flexible and can be multimedial. Even if you start with written posts today, you can easily integrate podcast episodes or videos published on other platforms later. And you could even turn all your written blog posts into videos or use them for podcast episodes when you are ready to do so. Of course, always use the best bits of your blog posts for a series of social media posts to drive traffic back to your website.
Just because you start with a blog doesn’t mean you can’t use the other formats too. Quite the opposite, every single blog post is a valuable asset and will take you a long way. So, starting a blog is an excellent thing, no matter what the future brings!
