Corporate Blogging is a tool you can use to educate your audience on subjects relating to your product or service. Google is now the number one source for finding out solutions to problems; your customers are searching for the answer to their problems online, and their first stop is the search engine.

With the right blogging strategy, your blog posts will turn up in the search engine results at just the right stage in the buying journey. Your potential customer needs a solution, and there you are, providing it and adding value. A name we can give this method is ‘value based marketing’ – a very-customer centric form of marketing. You are placing your customer’s needs ahead of your sales, and this will always lead to a stronger business, which grows in reputation and standing.

One of the greatest things about blogging is its ability to scale and grow, in line with your business growth. When you start out blogging, it is completely free, but when you hit a certain point of critical mass, you can easily outsource it to a blog management company and ramp up your content output and results.

It is no surprise that more and more companies are picking up on this tactic. But there is a killer lurking in the mist; a killer to blogging success which can make or break your results.

That killer is…

Inconsistent Blogging

Consistency is very important when it comes to managing your company blog.  Statistics show that most professional bloggers are publishing at least once per week (53%). Source These are the guys whose business is content creation, and for this reason, these are the guys who rank well in Google.

If you want your company blog to succeed, then a regular publishing schedule is absolutely vital. With your resources split, we know it can be tough, but this is important and needs to be prioritised.

One of the reasons to blog consistently is that there is a direct correlation between the number of posts you publish and your traffic. A study by Hubspot found that companies who had 401+ total blog posts had about twice as much traffic as those who has 301 – 400. Source

This is the tipping point for traffic and leads, when you can start to see exponential growth. Let’s look at some figures.

In order to get to 401 blog posts at a monthly posting schedule, it’s going to take 33 years. On a weekly posting schedule it will take 7 years, and on a daily posting schedule, just over a year.

When we look at the figures like this we can really see the value in staying consistent with our blogging efforts.

Another reason is that consistency grows trust. As this blogger aptly puts it

“Consistency makes it look like you know what you’re doing.”

Customers feel more comfortable working with a company who has some sticking power, and has shown that they are reliable. Just think about the voices you know and trust online – why do you decide to trust them over others?

Familiarity is likely one of the fundamental reasons, even if you don’t recognize it yourself. Our brains like consistency; we are creatures of habit and we don’t like too many surprises!

For this reason, consistency is particularly important for online businesses, who have to work extra hard to gain the trust of their customers. According to a study by Evercoach, 81% of US Online Consumers trust the information they read on blogs.

Use blogging as a tool to grow trust with potential buyers and convert those buyers into a consistent stream of sales long into the future.

Don’t let your corporate blog fall into the death trap of inconsistency. If you are going to add blogging as a marketing tactic, we recommend that you write at least four blog posts upfront so that you have a buffer of content ready and waiting be published.

Most CMS systems allow you to schedule your content into the future. This is a great way to ensure you always have content going out on the same day and time each week.  You could even block one or two days per month just for your blog writing and scheduling. This way, you have the time prioritised, but it doesn’t take over your other business activities.

Author:

Yva is the Director of Boost Business Support a blog management company helping small business’ drive traffic & sales through blogging.