Your website must have a blog. If your site has no blog, you have no hope of getting the attention of potential customers or search engines and your website is doomed. And your business too. Or so many web gurus will tell you.
Your blogless website will sink like a stone. Not.
Balderdash.
The blog is a powerful tool when generating website traffic and developing your brand. A blog really does help demonstrate your industry expertise and help your potential customers understand who you are and what you do. But there are other ways to achieve similar goals.
Consider social media. If you maintain a business presence on Google+ or Facebook is there really any difference between posting a focused, informative status update and writing an identical article to be hosted on your website? Of course not. Your followers and their friends will still see that you know what you are talking about and that you really are an expert. And if they want to know more they can leave a post on your wall or click through to your website. They might even buy something.
That’s not to say that posting to a social network is necessarily any easier than writing a blog post. You will still need to read, research, write and edit until you have something interesting and engaging to share with your followers. Is it easy to generate compelling content day after day, week after week? Absolutely not, and nor is it a quick job. Which is why you may still like to consider outsourcing the job.
The SEO gurus are correct on one issue however. It is absolutely essential that your business be actively creating web content somewhere on the internet. And not only writing for the web, but engaging with people and forging relationships. If you miss this key point, your website really could be doomed.
Need help creating content for your social network (or even your blog)? Tech Write can help, just drop us a line!
I do agree with you to some extent Ben. If you’re active on social media you can get some good exposure for your business. The only disadvantage of that is that you are constantly at the mercy of the social media platform. Facebook Pages get deactivated for reasons that sometimes make no sense. Twitter accounts get deleted (did you read about Ana Hoffman about 6 months ago?). When you have a blog that you own YOU are in control – well, mostly anyway. 😉
I agree Danielle. I would strongly recommend that every business invest the time and effort into creating and maintaining a corporate blog, but for those unable to do so, social media platforms provide an alternative. As you say, there are pitfalls to this approach but it is definitely better than nothing at all in the era of the social web.
Great post. A blog should never be thought of as absolutely essential, and social media is better than nothing.
I’d also add, though, that your own blog posts are going to rank individually, so I guess that’s the unique benefit for SEO. You’re creating more ways into your business, for a much wider variety of search terms.
But, of course, most people don’t do that. They relentlessly target one or two keywords throughout their blogs, using that to determine what the content should be.
I think if you’re going in with people in mind, it’s worth doing and will bring an SEO benefit above and beyond what social media offers. But, if for a moment you think you should start a blog to improve your SEO, you’re wrong (and clearly have time on your hands).
Great point Stephen. Targeting keywords seems to be a common trend, but you’ll never develop a consistent readership if all your topics are just variations on one or two words. Where is the interest for the reader in that?