Blogging and marketing communications... are blogs worth the time and effort?

Is a blog a useful part of the marketing mix?

I've just come across this article on Marketing Review about blogging which I think is pretty interesting and worth sharing via our Ruby Slippers blog.... 

A lot of our clients ask, what is a blog? Do you have one and is it worth bothering with as part of the marketing mix? 

So, to answer the first question... what is a blog? 

According to Wikipedia here's the definition of a blog:

A blog (a blend of the term web log)[1] is a type of website or part of a website. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
Most blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other via widgets on the blogs and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites.[2]
Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability of readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (Art blog), photographs (photoblog), videos (video blogging), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting). Microblogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts.

The second question... should I have a blog? 

I firmly belive that out of all the internet marketing tools available to use in your business, a blog is one of the most useful and versatile. A good blog provides lots of benefits and one of the most significant is that a great blog can improve the SEO profile for your website. 

The reason that most businesses have websites is to act as a shop window for their products and services, and so it is ultimately the goal to attract lots of traffic to the site. For this reason it is important to consider SEO.

Search engines are still the number one source of traffic to the majority of websites. So, if you want to see the volume of traffic to your website increase, it is important to think about ways to bring more visitors to your site through search engines. The simple answer could be a blog!

Blogs help to create keyword rich content, which put simply means, you choose the keywords to feature in each blog and this can help your entire site rank higher in search engines.

So, get writing! If you write regularly enough and about topics that are relevant for your site, business and audiences then you should benefit in terms of how well your site ranks. Quality does count though, so write relevant and interesting content!

Hope that helps... contact us at http://www.rubyslippers.co.uk/ or call 0114 221 7487 if you want more info or advise.

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