Nowadays, everyone is building their own personal brands using social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and even Instagram. This is a trend I’ve noticed in my own social media consumption watching makeup tutorials on YouTube and short cooking videos on TikTok. However, much to my surprise, blogging is a key component in strong marketing strategies, as a way to connect with customers and fans, attract new customers and followers, and even increase sales. It’s a surprise to me, as I always associated blogs with the online diaries that blogging started out as in the ‘90s. However, Buzzfeed, a website I used to frequent as a teen, actually is a blog with some journalistic aspects.
As of January 2023, there are 600 million blogs on the internet about every topic you can think of. It has become one of the most powerful tools for building brands. There are also four different kinds of blogs that brands can utilize to grow their brand: awareness content, thought leadership content, sales centric content, and pillar pages. Awareness content is meant to be an in-depth article on a topic that people care about. The trick with this content is to make it as informative as possible so that it can be shared over and over again. A similar idea would be about us articles from brands when you Google the company. These can also be shared easily on a website or on social networks to drive traffic.
The purpose of thought leadership content is to build trust with your listener base. These posts are supposed to position you as an expert in your field by giving step by step process content or sharing insight into your industry. These posts can be about anything that you have insight into experience with. What’s super interesting about these posts is to answer related questions on Quora or Reddit and link back to your article. The third type of content is sales centric content, which is designed to sell a product or service, or inform/empower someone to become a customer in the future. I did not realize that there were blogs about sales, but now that I think about it, I’ve definitely perused a few blog posts about different items that I’ve considered buying, especially technology. I’ve definitely perused many a pillar page, which is content that provides a specific overview of a subject, just serving as an overall guide to a topic.
What’s most interesting about companies blogging is that we’ve all read them without knowing it. I’m sure that’s the beauty of it. In my use of the internet, I’ve definitely read so many companies’ blogs, just thinking it was a part of their website. I feel like people have dismissed the idea of blogging as a personal diary, so when they encounter one on the internet, they don’t realize what they are reading. With this new knowledge, I now know just how important of a tool blogging is for businesses.
Eyes on Social Media 