Are ‘blogs’ still a valid part of the communication package and it’s so, how often should a new ‘content’ be added?

Question asked by @TransitionPlus

Interesting question to end the show on today, blogs absolutely I believe they’re still cornerstone of social media and digital marketing, without a shadow of a doubt. This is the bit where it’s your playground, it’s your office, it’s your domain and actually if you want to convert your audience into people, like names and email addresses, your blog has got to be that place where you pull traffic, own that traffic, build a community and an audience and convert them, start building your email list.

Now some people say that this is starting to be quite an old and tired technique, however, email has been around for a very long time now, blogs have been around for a very long time now. There are loads of new social media channels popping up all the time, loads of techniques, loads of different strategy but actually email and blogs have proven to be staple diet of any digital strategy that’s been successful. So I would say absolutely. What I would add, if you blog with content that nobody is interested in, if you blog with content that isn’t relevant to your audience, if you blog low-quality blogs too frequently just because you want to get lots of stuff out there, then it’s kind of a waste time. You’ve got to go back to basics, do your research, see what your audience really wants to consume — what are they looking for? Go look on Google Trends and see what people are searching for right now and that’s also relevant for the real time marketing question earlier. Use SocialCrawlytics to investigate the competition and see where they’re getting the most traction and engagement on their website and also gives you an insight into what content is working best for them and take some cues from that.

So, you know there’s an argument going on about quantitative over qualitative, we actually a question a couple of episodes ago about this. I agree with Keiran Flanagan from HubSpot, he posted something on LinkedIn just a couple of days ago, basically saying this argument is redundant, there’s no argument about quality vs quality because actually, the bar is so high now that it’s got to be quality every time, even when there’s a building site next door making a huge racket, still going to be quality content or we lose your interest. There’s no excuse not to poor quality content out every single time, therefore the frequency will be determined by how many great ideas you’ve got, in terms of what your audience will appreciate, how much resource is at your disposal.

So, the blog is extremely important and, for me, will be for the long call. How will that change going forward? 50% nearly 50% of Google searches are voice now so I think video and audio are becoming more important because we can take cues from how our audience are searching but transcribing those blogs and also putting them in new places, we’re having a little bit of fun in medium right now, also LinkedIn pulse, have a look at putting your blog post there and get that traction, add value to your business, pull people back to your website in convert them into an email list. That’s still great lead generation and I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon.