7 Reasons to Blog as Social Media Strategy

Your Blog will Grow Your Business

and Enhance Your Social Media Efforts

by Karen A. Teeters

Have you have taken my advice from my last post to lurk and follow businesses similar to yours on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin? If so, you may have noticed something most blog writers for small businesses do on a pretty regular basis.

It has to do with their blog posts. Whenever a savvy social marketing business posts a brand new blog article, don't you see a microblog on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn with an enticing tagline and link to the post? Something like: 5 Proven Ways to get Great Leads http://ow.ly/4qEDW.

How often have you clicked on a link like that, read the article, liked the article, perused the website, and decided to follow that writer or business on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn? Maybe you even signed up for a newsletter and received a free ebook of tips as a thank you?

What I am trying to get at here is that a well written business blog works beautifully as part of your social media marketing strategy! In a previous post I emphasized the importance of creating a great website with engaging content. You need to have that in place before you start drawing people to your site with social networks, yes.

However, it is your fresh content in your blog posts that will draw the social media enthusiasts to your site in the first place. So business blogging is key, a central hub for all your social buzzing.

Many of my clients have had a website for years and meant to but never got around to creating a blog. Or they started one and did not know what to do with it or got easily disinterested. This is one of the reasons it is so important to research and create a social media marketing plan and stick with it!

Blog articles are crucial to the success of your social media marketing strategy. Once your Facebook Fan or Twitter follower links to your blog, she will explore your website's services, benefits. about page and newsletter opt in, just what you want!

 7 Reasons Your Blog will Grow Your Business and Enhance Social Media:

1. Original, useful, fresh content makes you look good! How many times have you seen businesses on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn send you to other articles or sites? This practice can be valuable to you and your potential client especially when you send them to info authored by respected thought leaders in your industry. But if you are relying solely on this practice for your social media posts, you are doing yourself a great disservice! You want to send your fans to your blog and website to take advantage of the solutions and advice that only you can offer. This adds that trust and like factor that will encourage potential clients to look more closely at your offerings!
2. Establishing yourself as a thought leader in your industry adds credibility! If a Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn follower likes your writing and advice, they may repost or retweet your article to their friends and even possibly make your post go viral. Can you see the benefit of providing your own original blog articles?
3. You want to give back to your community! And the goodwill of the free advice and solutions you offer on your blog will do this for you. Helping your existing and potential clients with valuable, up to date, well researched information will help to establish you as a business person with integrity. You will become someone that will easily be referred to readers' associates and friends. People will be “tweeting” your good name!
4. Publishing a new article every few days or every week will encourage you to participate. What this means is that once you have committed to creating simple, short how to and industry savvy articles on a regular basis, you will find it much easier to add to your tweets, Facebook and Linkedin posts. And with a growing backlog of articles, you will have oodles of information to refer to.
5. Search engines will have much more of your content-all your blog articles. So that your site should be listed under more keywords than a regular static site. Your site and articles should show up more often in searches this way! And your social networking efforts work, your LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter accounts should all come up when people search for your company name. More credibility and find-ability for your services!
6. Newsletter opt-in sign up is more likely to increase with social media links and visitors. Have you ever bought from a company after receiving a great offer in their newsletter? But you did not buy from them when you first visited their site did you? Maybe you were following them on Facebook and Twitter and were getting their e-mails for a few months, right? They say out of site and out of mind but with the combination of social media and blog efforts, you can stay at the forefront when a buying need pops up!
7. Other thought leaders with great blogs may find your article and mention or link to your post!! You know you are always reposting some great advice you read to your followers, right? Well the longer your provide thoughtful, helpful blog posts, the more likely other social networkers will repost or make mention of or link to your blog posts in their blog posts! A win win for all!

You may read this and be convinced that blog writing is something you need to do but you are not sure how to set up a blog or even start writing. Blog set up can be simplified and articles do not have to be long or complicated. They need to be in your own, conversational voice and you stick to what you know. More on blog set up and writing best practices to come.
For more tips on social media marketing, follow this blog and visit Karen Teeters' website at FiveStarSiteMakers.com. You may republish this article in full. Just make sure you list this paragraph and provide a link.