Why Still Blog in 2022?

With the rise of social media (LinkedIn, Instagram, Tiktok, and Facebook), you might be thinking if creating a blog in 2022 is still worthwhile. Every year around this time, a rash of “is blogging dead” blog entries appears. This begs the question: Is blogging still a viable business and growth strategy as we approach 2022?

The answer is a resounding yes!

Remember how, on October 4th, 2021, Facebook and Instagram fell down, cutting out social media-first companies from their customers? This incident demonstrated the importance of owning a piece of the web rather than relying on these platforms.

While social media isn’t going away anytime soon, blog material remains an important component of digital marketing strategy for increasing organic traffic and establishing authority in a niche. This type of exposure might also help open doors for your business.

Starting a Blog 

In actuality, 409 million internet users read 20 billion blog pages every month. As a result, 53% of marketers rely on blogging as their primary content marketing strategy. Moreover, blogging has grown 14% in the previous 5 years. While it may be harder, even daunting, to stand out with over 570 million blogs (and counting) on platforms like WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, Squarespace, and Medium, it’s still worthwhile to share your thoughts, ideas, and experiences. Nobody can tell a tale or communicate thoughts as you can.

Starting a blog will not only help you develop your authentic voice, but it will also help you find a unique audience who is interested in your message.

You don’t need everyone to read your blog; you simply need the right type of people.

The way people find your material will surely change, but what they’re searching for is unlikely to. We still need the same information that we did five years ago, but we’re just using different methods to find it.Still not convinced? Let’s get into a few things to ensure your blog will grow, stay relevant and be worth all the time and effort it takes to give you the edge from your competition. Here are a few notes from Neal Schaffer.

Getting Results

Easy to Skim

When time is of the essence, you don’t want to read an essay to get the info you need. Fact. People have no time. If you want to get your point across and keep readers engaged, make it easy for them.

Separate your content into well-thought-out headers and keep sentences short. Make sure the chunky paragraphs and prose-like musings are kept out of your blog.

A Rule of thumb is to limit to one thought per sentence to keep it digestible. Lists are also a fantastic way of making your content more skimmable.

Make Sure Your Content is Unique

The term ‘thought-leader’ is bandied around everywhere these days. Create content with your own spin, sharing your expertise and knowledge with the information-hungry world. Unique content isn’t nice to have, it’s a need to have. But how do you come up with unique content?

Here’s a little quote from creative ad mastermind, David Ogilvy, to give you a hint:

“Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, science, and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process. You can help this process by going for a long walk, or taking a hot bath, or drinking half a pint of claret. Suddenly, if the telephone line from your unconscious is open, a big idea wells up within you.”

My tip? Read, read, read. The more you absorb, the more you could open the line from your unconscious. Blogs, social media, fictional books… anything you can get your hands on. Exhausted those avenues? Eavesdrop on online conversations.

Keep the Conversation Going

What gets me is when companies go to all the trouble of writing a super-valuable, well-written post that is actually getting the holy grail of interaction…and they don’t respond to comments. Their audience is responding to their post. Asking questions. Commenting with their own experience. And all they get in return is a nice, fat tumbleweed rolling past them.

Let’s take it offline again.

You spend a lengthy amount of time building a relationship with a customer. You can tell their interest is piqued by your awesome advice and insight.

They say: “I agree with you. In fact, can you tell me what you can do to help me?”

You stare past them over their shoulder, then turn on your heel and stroll away.

You get what I’m saying. R-U-D-E.

It’s polite and keeps the conversation flowing all the way to a conversion.

Make It Easy to Subscribe

You need to make your blog easy for readers to subscribe to.

The answer? Collect emails.

Have a scroll-triggered opt-in box on your page, so readers, who are engaged and want your content to arrive straight into their inbox, can easily get that. It’s a win-win tactic, that will help you nurture your audience and continue to build those all-important relationships.

Link Like There’s No Tomorrow

Many companies get scared about linking out to other blogs. In fact, they look at me in horror. Why would I send readers away from my blog to another website? There’s one key reason: it will give your readers even more valuable information. If another blog has in-depth information that will benefit your reader, linking to it will only make them view your blog in a good light. It can also help your blog gain credibility.

Linking to external sources, studies and data will give weight to the topic you’re discussing. Another plus point is that linking out to other bloggers can help you to build relationships in that industry, which is always helpful to have up your sleeve. There’s power in numbers when it comes to content marketing, and influencer collaboration can turbocharge your efforts.

Intensify The Focus

Going deeper into your content will have many advantages. Not least the fact that you can expect your ranking in search engines to improve.

Digital marketer, Eric Enge, says: “We tracked the SEO performance of a number of different sites. The sites that provided exceptional depth in quality content coverage literally soared in rankings throughout the year. Sites that were weaker in their content depth suffered in comparison.”

So this brings a whole different meaning to ‘quality’, where you need to expand your topic leaving no stone unturned. And that’s where the SEO magic lies.

Keywords are obviously important, I’m not denying it. But if you focus on in-depth quality posts, you’re going to go a long way to making your blog successful.

Here’s how to go about that:

• Write long-form posts that give you the opportunity to explore a topic.
• Come at topics from many angles and points of view. Use the opportunity to show you understand both (or multiple) sides of the coin, not just your own.
• Write ‘Ultimate Guides’. Readers love ‘em, but they’re also a great way of forcing yourself to get down to the teeny details.

Ask your customers – “what do you wish there was one single resource on, that you don’t currently have access to?”

Their answer will give you a pretty good indication of where to go next.

Final Thoughts

Blogging has several advantages for businesses. A well-written blog may help you save money on marketing, improve website traffic, and attract new prospects. But, above all, blogging adds value to your reader, laying the groundwork for long-term client connections. It is worth the while and effort.

“If people like you, they will listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.”– Zig Ziglar