As a creative digital agency we regularly recommend frequent blogging to our clients, so we thought it was about time we lead by example!

If your company is contemplating starting a blog, make sure it’s a company decision – get everyone on board and enthused about the personal / company benefits of blogging because the more people involved the better, as this will help ensure a variety of topics that appeal to a broad audience.

Reasons to start blogging

1. Content marketing is king
2. In comparison to other PR / digital marketing it’s very cheap
3. Prospective clients can find your work at the exact point where they are looking for answers
4. Let’s everyone in the team get creative if they want to
5. It can go viral, there are millions of people on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ ready and willing to share interesting content with their friends
6. Helps establish your company’s authority in the marketplace 
7. Ensures you stay active and knowledgeable in your field 
8. Great for SEO –blogs are one of the best ways to build links and drive traffic to your website
9. Provides a platform to promote your products and services from an expert, insider, credible, and authentic point of view
10. Shows a human side to your business. People are loyal to companies that are transparent and real
11. Blogs can help identify long tail search term rankings. You may discover keyword phrases that you rank well for that you would have never researched otherwise
12. Increase engagement! Be innovative, don’t limit your blog to talking about business news – encourage interaction by replying to all comments, asking for feedback, using it for customer support, embedding videos or interviewing someone knowledgeable within your industry

3 Top Tips!

They don’t need to be long – quality is more important than quantity, people are looking for quick access to information so use headings to break up long blocks of text and make sure your blogs posts are easily scannable

They shouldn’t take forever to write – if you’re time poor, keep them short 150-250 words should take around 30 minutes while a 500 word blog post will take a couple of hours and some time on top of that for initial research

The early bird catches the worm – know your audience, the best time to publish a blog post can vary considerably between niches, try posting one at 9am one day and see how many hits you get, then post at 11am the next day and see what happens. After time you’ll build a schedule that works for you.  As a rule, hits peak later on in the working week, particularly on Fridays and most people read blogs early in the morning – with the average blog posts getting the most traffic around 11am and the most comments at 9am.

This post was written by Holly Davis - Project Manager at award winning web design, digital marketing and branding agency - Obergine.