Blogs are considered one of the most powerful online marketing tools for modern businesses—and with good reason. An entertaining, relevant, and well-written blog puts fresh search engine fodder on your company’s website weekly (or daily), spiking traffic to your pages. A steady flow of quality content also establishes you as an expert in your field, engaging existing and prospective clients while providing information people can really use.
According to the State of Inbound Marketing Survey for 2011, 85% of businesses that publish blogs have found them to be “useful, important or critical” to their business, while 27% consider their blogs “critical.” Those are pretty impressive numbers, especially considering that blogs didn’t even exist a decade ago! 57% of business bloggers say they have acquired at least one new customer thanks to their online content, while Facebook only yielded clients in 47% of cases and Twitter, 42%.
The same survey shows that inbound leads from blogging and online marketing cost an average of 62% less than leads from traditional marketing. And that value is reflected in the number of businesses that are blogging: between 2009 and 2011, 48% of U.S.-based businesses started a blog, raising the total of companies with blogs to 65%.
If you haven’t already, there’s never been a better time to board the blogging bandwagon! Contact us if you need help getting started, or if you’re interested in outsourcing your blog’s administration and content creation.