With all the recent hype surrounding video content, it’s easy to think that blog writing in 2020 has completely lost its value in content marketing. But, blogging is still an effective game plan for reaching your audience, and you shouldn’t let this common notion short-change your content marketing strategy.
That said, video content may still work depending on how you use it and its suitability to your brand and audience. And as effective as it may be, video content shouldn’t entirely replace written content on your website. Rather, it should complement your blogging efforts, because you have a 434% higher chance of ranking higher on search engines if your site features a blog.
And if that’s not enough reason to start blogging, here 35 more:
1. Blogging Remains the Most Critical Marketing Tactic
In a recent survey, 52% of marketers cited blogging as the most critical tactic in their content strategy. By contrast, only 30% of the participants considered video content to be critical. This speaks volumes about the importance of content writing in 2020.
2. Blogs Are Still the Best Way to Provide In-Depth Content
Sure, video content is engaging. But when it comes to dissecting a complex subject and providing nitty-gritty details, nothing beats a well-written long-form article.
And with up to 10% of consumer’s daily information needs involving learning about a broad topic, it’s no wonder that longer content dominates the first page of search engine results today.
3. Blogs Are Trusted More by Consumers
A blog adds a human touch to your brand. It’s through it that you find the voice to give your business some personality, which determines how likable, credible, and authoritative your brand is. Due to their personal touch, well-written blogs are the fifth most trusted source of accurate information online.
4. Blogs Serve as the First Point of Contact Between Your Brand and Potential Customers
A well-designed content market strategy outlines the different types of content for each stage of the sales funnel. Top- of-the-funnel content is the most viewed, and is most effective in written format, with a personal touch.
In a 2016 survey, 47% of buyers viewed 3 to 5 pieces of content before getting in touch with a sales rep. Thus, you can use your blog as your first point of contact between you and your customers.
5. Blogging Makes It Easier to Achieve a Positive ROI
Blogging is one of the best ways to increase conversions, and research shows that content managers who blog regularly are 13 times more likely to achieve a positive ROI.
6. Blogging Reduces the Burden of Managing Relationships With Your Customers
In 2020, customers are managing most of their relationships with a brand without speaking to a human. This means even before your first point of contact with a prospective customer, they’ll already have done research about your company on the internet. A blog is one of the most efficient ways to educate potential customers about your brand and influence their buying decisions.
7. Blogging Increases Organic Traffic
Your blog carries important SEO elements that help your site rank higher on search results. And since 95% of web traffic goes to brands that appear on the first page of search engine results, a blog is a critical tool for organic traffic generation.
8. Blogging Increases Backlinks
High-quality backlinks can help your site rank higher on search engine results, and you’ll receive 97% more inbound links if your website has a blog.
9. Blogging Increases Engagement
With a blog, you have several ways to increase engagement by:
Including an open comments section where your audience can provide feedback on your blog posts
Encouraging your audience to share posts they like and making it easy to do so
Providing links to relevant peer-to-peer forums.
Engaging with your audience will help your blog to be more authoritative and credible.
10. Blogging is More Effective in Advertising than Banner Ads
Ad blockers are more common than ever, and gone are the days when bombarding your target audience with banner ads was enough advertising. With click-through rates as low as 0.1%, your customers have a better chance of climbing Mt. Everest than clicking on a banner ad. A better way to advertise is by using a blog to educate people about your brand, establishing trust, and then using CTAs to drive them further down the marketing funnel.
11. Blogging Complements Email Marketing
In addition to being an effective marketing tool, a blog can help make your email marketing efforts more effective. In fact, companies with well-crafted blogs get two times more traffic from email marketing than those without.
12. It’s Easier to Become an Industry-Thought Leader Through Blogging
Provided you don’t produce “me too” type of content, you can build authority in your niche through blogs that incorporate storytelling, well-researched facts, and unique personal takes on the major pain points in your industry.
For this, you don’t necessarily need to be “the best expert” in your industry. You can always outsource content creation to experts or use guest posts to build authority and credibility.
13. Industry-Thought Leaders Get More Unique Site Traffic
If you’re wondering why it’s important to build authority and become an industry thought leader, here it goes: content marketing leaders—those with a well-defined content strategy—get 7.8 times higher unique site traffic compared to followers. A blog is one of the main components of a well-defined strategy, and starting one is the first step to becoming an industry thought leader.
14. It’s Easier to Repurpose a Blog
Repurposing content (or re-using content) is a critical piece of the digital marketing puzzle, and blogs are best suited to testing and refining ideas, topics, and angles to achieve a specific goal. Most digital marketers repurpose their content two to three times.
15. Good for Networking
If you run a successful blog in a certain niche, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ll network with other people that share your passion. Whether you’re looking for mentors, coaches, or business partners, blogging is one of the most effective ways to find allies.
16. Freedom to Work From Anywhere
If you blog for a living, you’ll enjoy a great deal of freedom that you may not find with tons of other careers. Since there are no geographical constraints, you can work from virtually any part of the globe, provided there’s an internet connection. This way, you’ll have plenty of time to travel or do other things you’re also passionate about.
17. Blogging Can Be a Stepping Stone to Getting Published
A blog provides you with a platform to showcase your writing skills. If you do well, blogging will open doors to book deals that no first-time author would get. And if you blog for a while and no deals come your way, you can always self-publish. You can repurpose your existing blogs to create a book. With a published book under your belt, editors might rethink their impressions of you.
18. It’ll Boost Your Confidence
A blog is the best stage for the shy to express their views and build confidence. As a blogger, you’ll learn how to handle being the center of attention, meeting new people through online engagement, and expressing your views candidly, all within the confines of your limits.
19. Blogging is a Great Way to Refine Your Writing Skills If you’re trying to become a professional freelance writer, there’s no better way to hone your writing skills than through blogging. The beauty of improving your writing through a blog is that every piece you write will remain on your site unless you pull it down, meaning you can track your progress over time.
20. A Blog Can Be Your Creative Outlet
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the hassle of your everyday life, you can use your blog as a creative outlet to blow off some steam. And since you have the flexibility to blog whenever it’s convenient for you, your blog can be a way to channel your creativity without affecting your day-to-day commitments.
21. You Can Help Others Through a Blog
If helping other people warms your heart, a blog can be one way to do that. Blogs tend to be niche-specific, and chances are, you’ll be talking about a subject that you’re knowledgeable and passionate about. Every piece of information you put on your blog will help someone in need, and it won’t take long to notice this in your comments section.
22. A Blog Will Improve the Mastery of Your Niche Subject
When creating articles for your blog, you’ll be doing lots of research on your niche subject. With time, you’ll find that your mastery of the subject has grown immensely without you even noticing. That’s because every single time you create a blog, you’re doing more and more research into your field, and your brain consumes that information subconsciously.
23. Blogging May Improve Your Presentation Skills
If your blog features video content, you’ll find yourself trying your best to present the information in a clear, understandable tone, with the right kind of body language. And while you may struggle at first, your presentation skills will definitely improve in the long run.
24. Blogging May Enhance Your Videography Skills
Today’s blogs tend to feature video content alongside written content. This means you’ll be creating and editing videos regularly, something that may push you to enroll for a videography course or seek a mentor to learn from. Either way, your videography skills will improve.
25. Blogging Will Keep Your Mind Sharp
If you’re blogging simply because you’re passionate about blogging—and not worrying a lot about monetizing your site—you’ll certainly get some mental exercise to keep your memory power in top form.
26. Blogging May Boost Your Photography Skills
As a blogger, you’ll often need to include photos and other types of visual aids in your content strategies for 2020 to make it more presentable and understandable. This will require some photo shooting and editing skills.
27. You Can Learn Affiliate Marketing Through Blogging
Affiliate marketing is one of the main sources of income for many bloggers around the world. Yet, many of the good affiliate marketers were completely unaware of the concept before they started blogging. They learned along the way, and you too can follow their steps if you start a blog.
28. Blogging Can Be a Gateway to Becoming an Online Marketer/Digital Marketer
When you blog consistently for some time and build an audience, you’ll automatically find yourself promoting products/services in your niche. This may, in the long run, unlock new opportunities in the digital marketing space for you.
29. A Blog Can Help You Make a Difference
If you’re passionate about a particular cause, you can support it through your blog. Whether it’s an environmental, political, social, or a humanitarian cause, you can use the influence you build through your blog to garner support and build awareness. However small you think this contribution may be, it’ll make a difference in some way.
30. A Blog Can Be Your Online Portfolio
If you’re an aspiring freelance writer or author, you can use your blog as an online portfolio to showcase your writing skills. Additionally, your blog will show your clients that you have what it takes to run a large platform with expansive reach.
31. Get Instant Feedback
If you’re a writer with a great idea that you want to develop further but aren’t sure how it will be received by your audience, there’s no better way to test that than through your blog. With a book, you’ll have to wait months after getting published to get reviews. A blog, on the other hand, will provide instant feedback through the comments section. For a writer, the ability to get an outside perspective and/or constructive criticism immediately is invaluable.
32. Learn In-Demand Coding and Web Design Skills
Today, easy-to-use platforms such as Wix and WordPress have made it incredibly easy to start a blog—without necessarily having to learn computer programming.
But over the course of blogging, you might pick up one or two things about web design, CSS, and HTML. This makes it easier to make minor changes to your website without having to pay someone. That kind of knowledge is high in demand in this day and age, and having it may unlock new opportunities for you in the long run.
The same goes for a host of other blogging-related skills such as SEO, graphic design, content marking, email marketing, and much more.
33. You Might Meet Influential People Through Blogging
Regardless of industry and niche, we all have that prominent person that we dream of meeting and talking to. Through blogging, you’ll build the credibility and audience you need to attract prominent people to your interviews.
And who knows, maybe you’ll manage to get hold of someone that you look up to somewhere down the line and get a chance for a one-on-one chat that you might have never had if you never ventured into blogging.
34. Blogging Allows You to Control Your Online Identity
Whether you brand yourself as an individual or a business, chances are there’s lots of information about you on the internet. When someone searches your name, you’ll want them to get an accurate depiction of who you are as a person/business and what you’re all about.
Having a blog that covers all the bases and accurately reflects your personality and/or business brand is a great way to take control of your online identity. This way, you can make sure that friends, prospective partners/employers, or potential clients get the right first impression when they search you or your brand.
35. Blogging Improves Your Problem-Solving Skills
Blogging comes with its share of challenges, and anyone who thinks it’s easy hasn’t tried it yet. But challenges are good because they make us stronger. Most importantly, challenges force you to think out of the box, and this enhances your problem-solving skills.
It’s going to be a challenge to create a writing schedule, stick to it, and keep on doing that consistently. That’s not to mention the many skills you’ll need to develop outside of writing. But that shouldn’t put you off. Rather, you should embrace the hurdles along the way because tackling challenges will make you a better problem solver in business and everyday life.
How to Start a Blog, Today
As technology and the internet become more ingrained in our lives every single day, the advantages of building a site and starting a blog are impossible to overlook. The good news is that unlike in the old days, you can build a site with absolutely zero coding skills.
A quick search online and you’ll come across thousands of “how to write a blog from scratch” guides detailing every single step you need to become a blogger. And if you want to start a website, platforms such as WordPress, Wix, Constantcontact—just to mention a few—will help you do that without writing a single line of code.
So in essence, it all comes down to your determination and perseverance, because all the tools and information you need to start a blog are just a few clicks away.
For more blog writing tips, check out our latest blog posts.