Blogging… Why bother?

Blogging… Why bother?

Blogs are increasingly being included in many corporate PR and marketing programmes, especially in the scientific industry where the latest innovations are being developed at a rapid pace. But what can be gained by implementing ‘blogs’ into your marketing mix and what should you think about when writing one?

Companies have quickly realized the benefits of incorporating blogs into a wider social media marketing programme. When used effectively, blogging can be a powerful tactic alongside other social media platforms including LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Blogging allows companies to communicate to its key audience quickly and easily and by publishing blog content on a regular basis, you can improve SEO, drive traffic to a website and ultimately convert that traffic into leads, integrating sales and marketing.

However with over 180 million blogs in existence, it’s imperative that yours stands out from the rest so here are some top tips for creating a great blog and how to maximise its potential:

• Create valuable, unique and varied content specific to your target audience. Scientists, engineers and CEOs all have very different interests. Tip- Including an interesting headline that captures your audience’s attention is vital and will also improve your SEO rankings
• Consider inviting industry experts to contribute and creating roundup posts. For example, key influencers including professors or lead scientists.  Industry thought leaders’ support immediately makes it a much more credible blog and your readers will appreciate this. It could also result in the contributor sharing your blog themselves reaching new audiences!
• Include social sharing buttons will allow readers to easily share the blog in a single click
• Share other relevant blogs; this provides varied, valuable content as well as forming relationships with other bloggers who may return the favour
• Think about making certain blogs registration only so that additional information is required of them if they wish to read on. This is a great way of generating leads. Remember though that this will only work if you’re writing great content that people are willing to give their contact details in order to read more.
• Profile the personality of the company; include blogs from different people in the organisation, it will portray the different personalities, rather than always coming from the same marketing team

There are many theories behind whether it’s best to host the blog on your website or if it’s best to host it on a blogging service like ‘blogger’ or ‘Technorati’ but I guess you need to think about what you want to achieve before you decide whether to or not.

As a full service agency, we work with our clients on a whole host of projects including content creation, lead generation, sales strategy and the graphic support integrated across all of these areas. So if you are looking for a team that breathe some fresh air into your creative projects (we’re very happy to send examples of previous work!) contact us via business@scottpr.com. Why not take some time to read some of our other blogs written by the team here at The Scott Partnership by clicking here and let us know if there are any topics you’d like to see us post a blog on!