Nowadays it is critical to know what a blog is and what it is for, since times have changed and being present on the internet is essential in any digital marketing strategy.
Many companies no longer use the curriculum as reference material to find information about a candidate interested in becoming part of their work team. Many human resource managers use search engines to see what they can find about each candidate
And believe me, if during this survey they find a blog written by you, with content about your professional activities, your chances will increase, because they will be able to evaluate your abilities even before they can meet you personally.
Also, there is nothing better than a blog for building a personal brand, for looking for a job, becoming known in our industry as an influencer or as a hobby.
Tip
So if what you want is to become recognized for your work, I recommend that you start studying to learn what a blog is and why it is so important.
· What is a blog?
First of all, I will explain the concept of Blog so that you understand the meaning of this word.
A blog is a web page or website where you can post content divided by categories (you can create a blog about various subjects), and you will have to write content periodically to achieve your goals. These regularly published texts are called “articles” or “posts.”
Generally speaking, most people believe that they know what a blog is, but this should be clear.
A blog is a site for publishing content, and our articles are published in chronological order, almost as a “journal” or “book” on a certain subject.
These topics can be ideas, opinions, personal or professional information, experiences, etc.
So we should take good care of our blog because the brand image or our personal image will be reflected and affected by everything that is posted on it. The Blog also will be a fundamental channel for contacting our readers, so whatever you are writing should be relevant to them.
These visitors can leave their comments on posts or articles, which means we will receive immediate feedback.
We should also create an SEO strategy, using keywords relevant to our target audience, since the content, must be optimized for the visitors, but search engines have a key role in the number of users that will visit your blog.
Images are another important element to consider when creating a post. Your article may have been very well written and with relevant information, but if you don’t include optimized images, the content will not convey the same message.
Therefore, we should use a software to edit our fotos and optimize the file size (to reduce the loading time of the page and facilitate its indexing in search engines), as well as brightness, colors, and contrasts, if we want to publish beautiful and professional images.
To create a successful Blog, you will have to define clearly how you are going to create new content, taking into account the goals you want to achieve with every post. Once you know what a blog is, you should understand some terminologies. For example, the person who writes on a blog is called a blogger. A blogger is someone who administers a Blog or publishes content regularly on blogs.
As a blogger, you should always be talking to your audience. When managing a corporate or a personal blog, you should try to create engagement with your readers, as you represent the brand and you are its official voice.
To get good results, you need to set clear goals and create a strategy to understand how you can reach these objectives.
Therefore, the blogger should be intimately involved with the blog, since he or she will play a key role in its administration and will be responsible for its results. Although anyone can manage a Blog, if you want to be successful, you will need perseverance and discipline.
· What is a blog for?
A blog is useful for many things, but it will depend on the goals that are defined by the company or blogger.
The goals you can set for your blog may be different and will vary depending on your digital marketing strategy. Therefore, the first step will be to clearly define your marketing strategy, to know where you want to go.
Many people believe that having a blog is a waste of time.
They think: Why should I waste time teaching other people for free? I don’t want to waste time teaching other people! No one will read what
I’m writing!
But they are wrong.
Tip
A blog can give you many opportunities, and if there is something you really love to do, and you don’t know how to advertise your work in the industry, creating a Blog is a fantastic way to build a personal brand on the Internet.
So I’ll explain what a blog is and how to take advantage of this digital marketing tool.
► Generate traffic to your corporate or personal site and improve web ranking
Often we have our corporate website created, but there comes a time when we think: Why I don’t have a lot of visits? Am I doing something wrong?
What many companies don’t know is that a blog will allow them to rank for more keywords, which will help them to attract more visitors.
But now you may be thinking: it may have worked for you, but that doesn’t mean that I will have the same results.
Well, for you to see this more clearly, let’s talk a little about numbers and probability (the numbers don’t lie).
Even if you publish one article per week, in a year of work you will have posted more than 50 pages on the topic of your blog. Maybe this may sound like a waste of time, but if you start thinking about the amount of
information that you can include in 50 pages, you will see that the amount of content that you can share with your readers is impressive.
A corporate website, no matter its size, will likely have less than 50 pages in total, because if the website has a lot of content, it can be confusing for visitors to find the information they want to get.
In sales sites, this is different because each product has its own page, but for most companies, the blog is the best channel to work on a SEO strategy and improve brand ranking in search engines.
One of the pillars of any SEO strategy is the inclusion of keywords related to your niche. Each article you post will be a new opportunity to include relevant keywords and improve page ranking.
► Making money with a blog
Making money from a blog is not easy because you need to work hard to attract visitors and create engagement, which requires time and effort.
There are different techniques for making money from a blog, so I’ll explain some that I consider very important.
Generate sales with a product or service blog
As I mentioned, the website will receive more traffic (and you can sell products or services with each article), which means you will have more chances to offer these products to your visitors.
Also, another advantage is that if you become recognized in your industry, you can even write ebooks or sell courses to your visitors.
It’s a fantastic way to demonstrate your knowledge of a topic and make money from your content.
For example, Mailrelay uses banners in its articles to be able to generate conversions while a user is reading about a topic on their corporate blog.
Affiliate Programs
Believe it or not, affiliate programs are a great option for monetizing your blog.
In this technique, an affiliate promotes the product or service of an advertiser, getting a commission for each conversion generated through his blog.
Therefore, the affiliate will provide users with a link to a landing page or a sales page. If someone buys after accessing this URL, the blogger will be compensated.
Advertising and Blog Ads
There are different forms of advertising that you can explore. For example, you can offer spots directly to advertisers who would pay for advertising their products or services on your blog or work with a system called Google Adsense, one of the most famous affiliate programs, which is paying millions of dollars every month for bloggers from around the world. With this program, you get money whenever a user clicks on a banner, for example.
Of course, you have already noticed that many of the websites you visited displayed banners with products from stores that you have visited recently.
If you click on one of these ads, the blogger or site owner will receive some money for each click on the banner.
► Getting Leads
If when visiting a website you find a form requesting your personal data, such as your name or email, you will probably ignore this form or exit the page. However, if they are offering something you want to get in exchange for this information, you would be more willing to fill this form.
Well, working with a blog is a good option for attracting these leads. You could publish an article about a relevant topic for your visitors with a free template in exchange for their personal data. Don’t you think they would like to download this free content?
Don’t you think we’ll have more data or leads this way?
With a blog, it will be much easier to get this data, because we can send them information in the future directly to their inbox, using an email marketing software like Mailrelay.
If we only send corporate or sales content, they will likely end canceling the subscription from our mailing list.
And that’s not what we want, right?
► Personal branding with a blog
With a corporate website with few visitors, it will be very difficult to convince other people to trust you in case you want to show the world what you know and demonstrate that you are a competent professional.
Creating a blog with a professional layout will be crucial to demonstrate to the world that you are an expert in your field.
Users will start to have another vision about you; they will start to recognize that you are an expert in your field.
If you don’t demonstrate that you are an expert, no one can guess it just by looking at your photo.
► Find a job with a blog.
This point for me is essential. I know many people who are looking for work as a community manager or social media, and they spend the day sending resumes to companies by email.
The first thing a company that knows the online environment will do is to search for that person on Google; And what will happen? They will find nothing relevant.
And if they look for us and find in the first result a blog that is a reference in community management? Don’t you think our chances of getting the job that we want would increase considerably?
Probably the company’s human resources manager will consider this person for the next interview.
· What are the main types of blogs?
As we know, on the internet we can find all kinds of content. Nowadays, unfortunately almost nothing else is invented, most things are simply copied from other sites. If you want to create a successful Blog, you will need to be creative and add a personal touch to your content.
We can find different types of blogs. You can create a blog to teach, to offer information on a particular topic, to tell jokes to your readers, to give your opinion on a subject relevant to you, or simply as a place where you can ramble on about your life.
For easy understanding, we can split Blogs into some categories, based on the goals of each blogger.
► Personal blog
If you don’t know what a personal blog is, I’ll explain it to you.
A personal blog is a type of blog where the admin talks about real experiences that are happening to him in his life, his ideas, his opinion on various topics, his advice for other people on how to solve their problems, ETC.
Generally, these are blogs about the blogger’s life in which they put their ideas into an article to reach out to their readers and build loyalty through understanding.
Also, depending on the type of format, we can find different styles, since it can be a video blog, Fotolog, audioblog or podcast, etc.
For all these types of blogs, we will need programs to edit videos, because, as we all know, the future is in the video, so we should take good care of our image on the blog and, more especially, when we are working on a Vlog.
► Personal Branding Blog
This type of blog is different from the previous one because it is a blog created for recognition and prestige. In other words, this type of blog is a showcase where we can display our work.
For example, if I believe that I am an expert in digital marketing, I could create a personal blog to demonstrate all my experiences in this sector, so visitors will see that I am an expert on this subject.
And you may be wondering, why?
Well, very simple, we should create a personal brand blog to convert users into clients or attract professionals or companies that are interested in working with us.
► Corporate Blog
A corporate blog is usually created by a company aiming to convey trust to customers and establish other relationships, either through information about the company itself or by offering useful knowledge for their target audience.
So depending on the type of article, it could be a promotional blog (promotion of products or services), or a blog for branding (information about the company).
► Blog of a general theme
These blogs are designed to address a general topic of interest to a specific group of people.
These blogs could offer tips for a group of people, for instance, if you create a blog about digital marketing, you could publish articles on SEO, content marketing, advertising, etc.
It is a good option for becoming known in your industry, either for a person who wants to boost a personal brand and turn it into a blog or a company that wants to attract customers by demonstrating it’s expertise.
► Niche Blog
We all know that there are many niches or microniches with huge potential and that many people are making a lot of money as an influencer in these niches.
But, how do they do it? They start by launching a blog about a particular topic, such as scooters, to try to rank their page as a reference in Google quickly and efficiently.
· What strategy can we follow to create a blog?
Like everything in digital marketing, I think that if you want to create a successful blog, you will have to establish a clear strategy to set your goals.
· What are the best tools for creating a blog
To create an attractive and easy-to-reach blog, there are essential blogging tools that we need to implement.
It’s true that there are thousands and thousands of blogging tools, but I will highlight the most important for beginner users:
A well-designed website and blog
When they start to write articles, many bloggers believe that the website is not necessary. They think I’ll start with something basic like a WordPress.com, and later if things go well I’ll create a professional blog.
They are wrong.
If you want to be seen and noticed from the first moment in your industry, for becoming a reference in your niche, you should do it with style, taste, and professionalism.
Your website is the first thing your users will see when they visit your blog, that is why it is fundamental to create a page with a professional layout and attractive design.
Social sharing tool for blogs
It is essential that when visitors reach our article or page, they can share the content with their followers or friends.
Therefore, it is necessary to have buttons implemented throughout the blog with a social plugin to share in social networks with their respective buttons to encourage the dissemination of content.
If you work with WordPress, you can use tools like Monarch from Divi, Sumo or Social Warfare.
All of these plugins can be configured so that the box is displayed in the content of the blog or at the end of the articles.
· Tool to capture leads in a blog
Just like with the plugins for sharing on social networks, we have to install tools that will allow us to get as much information as possible about our visitors.
So it’s essential to have a plugin like Bloom or Thrive Leads to get as many emails as possible and then sell through a good email marketing strategy.
I implement these techniques in my personal blog.
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Every time I write a special post, I try to look for some idea so that I can offer something as a gift by email and for visitors who subscribe to my newsletter.
But I have a widget fixed in the sidebar of my blog so that while the visitor is reading the text and rolling the mouse down, the registration box and Feedly will follow this movement on the screen.
This is a great way to get their attention and convince them to subscribe to my mailing list.
Reminder: Starting on May 25, you will be required to adapt your site and your blog to the new European legislation, so we must change these forms and give more information about the opt-in process and data protection.
Email marketing tool for a blog
After collecting the emails from our visitors, we need to have a tool that will allow us to create email marketing campaigns for our blog.
With Mailrelay, we can create a new list and send messages to our subscribers, including gifts, courses, tips and much more.
I recommend you send relevant content, but not just about your company or your blog because it can annoy your subscribers and in this case, they could decide to stop receiving our newsletter. So why not create an email marketing strategy?
As you have seen, it is vital to have your own blog, so I would like to challenge you to create yours and leave a comment describing your strategy for attracting visitors.
It can be tricky due to lack of resources (time, money, etc.), but it is an investment that I’m sure will be worth it and you will not regret it.
Do you already have your own blog?
Are you ready to create a blog and share your knowledge with other people?
