One of the most successful parts of any digital marketing campaign is blogging and content marketing. While they both offer specific content to a small business’s audience, the way the material is delivered as well as the material itself will vary greatly. Blogging can be seen as one of the more basic forms of content marketing, especially due to the availability of cheap or free blog hosting services available on the market today.

Some of the more popular choices for blogs include WordPress for business blogs and sites such as Tumblr for personal, though the latter saw some heavy use by companies before the user base began to dwindle and it was ultimately purchased by the parent company of WordPress. Both of these platforms focused on simple blog creation to share the thoughts and interests of companies and individuals alike.

So What Makes a Stream of Posts a Blog?

A blog is typically a portion of your business website separate from the static pages that make up a majority of the browsing options. This section of digital marketing must be treated as an on-going project. Posts with a consistent theme or focus turn a regular page into a fresh blog. Nothing screams lack of interest from a company like a dead blog with the last post being years old.

The ideal small business blog will featured frequent posts and updates that typically serve to educate, entertain or communicate with your customers. Comments allow visitors to ask questions or leave their own suggestions, generating natural engagement that also serves to improve your online reputation.

Content Marketing Takes Things a Step Further

If you’ve ever been checking out at your local grocery store and see their monthly newsletter or magazine full of recipes, whose ingredients happen to be on sale, just being handed out for free, then you’ve encountered physical content marketing!

The presentation of images, stories and articles in a more informational way can help facilitate subtle marketing techniques while avoiding sounding like a sales pitch on every page. While a blog can be used to post content marketing pieces, the possibilities expand beyond your blog posts.

One of the most popular and memorable ways to introduce content marketing into your digital marketing plan is by making videos. Not only do video ads perform better than images, they are more captivating than a static data-driven post. This doesn’t mean to remove every option but videos, but to leverage them to keep interest high and your other posts receiving traction.

Types of videos created can range from instructional pieces on how to use your product to interviews with owners or industry experts that give your viewers special insights they attribute to your small business.

Striking the Perfect Balance

Having a mix of blog posts that put a personal touch to your brand as well as information based content marketing is the key to keeping engagement up in a way that feels natural to visitor going through the funnel of your site.

If you’ve grown interested in adding a blog to your website or need a revamp of your content marketing, please don’t hesitate to review our marketing services to start garnering more natural visits and engagements today!