Is Blogging Really Necessary – Should Your Organization Do It or Not?
Being a part of the SEO world, if someone asks you why they need to blog, just like any other marketer, probably the first thought that crosses your mind will be – you need to do it; everybody else is doing it.
Nowadays, website blogs have become a basic element on sites. But due to the blogs becoming such a common feature on sites, a lot of businesses are terribly failing when it comes to blogging correctly.
In the last couple of years, the blog has been an excellent way of targeting keywords and earning good SEO rankings for your site. Undoubtedly, blogging comes with its own set of advantages – from helping you establish yourself as a content authority and engaging your audience to strengthen your SEO efforts by drawing more links. But taking into account how SEO is becoming extensive, including content marketing, this blog will shed light on the reasons you need and need not blog.
Reasons Why You Need to Do It
- Content Authority
As we touched on this subject in the initial paragraph, keyword-rich content helps websites gain the desired search rankings. So if you produce original, informative, and compelling content surrounding topics related to your industry or niche on a regular basis, you are most probably covering topics relevant to your keywords.
Over a certain period of time, when you take a look at the volume of content you have written blogs about, you will realize you have produced a considerable amount of content encompassing specific themes falling under your domain. It also provides your organization with an excellent window of opportunity to spin a bigger internal linking ‘web’ within your website.
- Social Sharing
This is most likely not the first place where you are going to read that you should be more active on social media platforms because that is where the audience is today.
Besides, social media is an ideal vertical to build your community, establish your brand, and engage your target audience. While you should refrain from nagging your audience with continual improper self-promotion, an informative and engaging blog post will surely be a useful addition to your social media posts.
Moreover, adding features to your blog posts to facilitate social sharing puts your readers in the seats of the judge, allowing them to decide whether or not your content is good enough to be tweeted or shared on other social channels with their peers and friends. Therefore, by enabling social sharing, you are actually promoting your content and expanding its reach to broader audiences for free!
- Link
As a search marketer, you must be well aware of the need to have good links for your survival or growth in the SEO world. Think about how many links can you really earn for your product/service pages, homepage, or about page without any supplementary supporting content?
Websites with link building potential require good content. However, they also require the depth. You can only do so much for the existing link building potential of a small website. Great content not only earns social love but also link love.
- Engagement
Given that you have other social sharing catalysts and link-building pieces on your website, but besides a forum, the blog is an effective way of giving voice to your site visitors. While it can be an excellent means of building a community, this will only go as far as your intensity in replying to the readers’ comments.
- Scope of Visibility/Funneling/Goal Conversions
Merely crafting a piece of blog content doesn’t necessarily mean it will rank or drive traffic to your website. But a judicious piece of content has the ability to grab social attention and link love, as discussed above, to help it get somewhere regarding its ability to rank in the search results.
How is this beneficial to you? The content helps you rank on the SERPs, putting you in front of your target audience, and will probably drive visitors to your website. Now, the effectiveness of your internal linking and CTAs in your blog will ascertain whether or not you will be able to interest these visitors further into your website and perhaps move them into your sales funnel.
Reasons Why You Don’t Need to Do It
- Brand Dominance
You are the website that other SMBs and webmasters despise. So basically, you are the 800-pound gorilla in the search results.
Your site has domain authority via links solely on your name. You have got the kind of social presence other businesses crave. People want to get on social media only to browse your page.
So with that kind of fan following and brand name, you don’t really need to blog. However, you may always offer ‘extra’ content to your audience or customers, take advantage of the aforementioned points, and demonstrate thought leadership in your niche or industry.
- Crazy Social Popularity
If you are fortunate enough to suffer a problem as such, then most probably you are related to the brand supremacy topic we discussed in the point above. Or perhaps you have worked really hard to earn and nurture a social audience over the years.
You are familiar with the art of delighting your audience with engaging and compelling content. While blogging would offer you additional content opportunities, you don’t really ‘need’ to blog.
- Other On-Site Asset Channels
You have successfully built a tremendous amount of on-site content via an abundance of ingenious ‘evergreen’ content or sets of informative content or article posts that have resulted in mass link creation. You might have also added social sharing functionality on your content pages, which has contributed to your social virality and perhaps boosted it further. In such a case, you don’t need to blog.
Wrap Up
The bottom line is that the majority of the businesses will not become social media superstars or top brands by blogging, but still, it can be beneficial.
While a lot of top brands still practice blogging, these websites have earned their organic search supremacy via their link and social audience feat. So blogging might be helpful for them, but it is not their trump card.
On the contrary, for websites with the most benefit potential, you cannot depend on blogging alone to be successful. It is just a platform to support your other SEO efforts and help you achieve success in all the aspects mentioned above.