What is a Blog?

You may have been told you need a blog. If so, you've likely thought the following:

• I don't have time to write a blog?
• Who would read what I would write in a blog?
• There are already more than enough blogs out there?

At VGM Forbin, we understand all of that. Another boring blog that doesn't get seen is a waste of your time and money. That is not what you need, but a good, engaging blog is crucial. We'll tell you why your business may have a lot to gain from a blog.

What is a Blog?

Blogs (weblogs) began as online journals, and in many cases still resemble journals. However, blogs have come to be so much more. They are pre-formatted places to quickly publish content that can often be less formal than your main content. 

What does a Blog do?

We see blogs delivering 3 main benefits to businesses like yours.

1. Blogs Give You Space & Flexibility to Better Cover a Subject

At some point, product pages won't be able to drill down and cover that product information any more clearly without discovering tangents. But too many tangents in your main content would distract and divert readers' attention away from the steps you mean to guide them toward (usually a sale or lead). A blog allows you to take a new angle out of the context of the product page and explore it on its own without interrupting your more focused product information.

Sometimes videos will be appropriate, other times written, long-form articles will be better, and still other times, you may want photos or diagrams. Blogs can be extremely flexible, accommodating any of those needs or even multiple media in a post.

2. Blogs are a Great Tool for Organic Search Presence and SEO

To be found for all of the key phrases relevant to your business, you might need to create an enormous amount of content. Each post can attack an SEO goal in its own way. 

In addition, blog posts are naturally well connected. When you apply categories and tags, each post is a click away from other very closely related posts. On top of that, posts are grouped by year and month. Author tags give those articles yet another way to relate to each other. That winds all of your blog content tightly together - presumably around the same needs your business aims to serve.

Helpful, well-written blog posts are also a key to bringing more backlinks to your website. Users are more likely to share content that tells a story, covers a need, or more completely explores a thought than they are to share a page of product content. Great blog posts can draw those links.

All of that gives search engines like Google a very clear picture of what your business does and for which searches your site should be found. 

3. Social, PPC, and Email do More with a Blog.

Social Media + Blogging: Your social posts begin to lose relevance the moment they are posted. If you put significant work into them, that work dissolves over the hours, days and weeks. However, if you put that effort into a blog post instead, your social post can start the conversation then draw them to the blog for more information. Every so often, your blog post can be refreshed and used again in the same way. 

Email + Blogging: An email campaign can have an even shorter life than a social post. Often the day of the send and a day or two beyond, you'll see interaction with a commercial email. Instead of putting the full story within the email, use your email to begin the conversation. Then ask them to click through to the site to continue. This allows you to build lists for remarketing, and to periodically get more work from the same post. 

PPC + Blogging: PPC display ads often aren't intended to move someone the entire way through the customer journey in a single click. A well-done blog post looks for a good point A (where the customer comes to you in their journey) and point B (how far you can bring them along with you in their journey) and specifically delivers that. Some might tackle those very first stages of awareness, others might help them compare possible solutions, still others may clear the last few hurdles to get them to convert. Those PPC ads can all be working at the same time to keep buyers moving through that funnel. 

VGM Forbin provides affordable blogging services as part of our full line of results-driven marketing offerings. If you are ready to put a blog at the center of your marketing strategy, connect with a VGM Forbin associate today.