Considering dumping dollars into traditional advertising? Think again. Try blogging instead. Of course, blogging isn’t a new concept, but you may be surprised to find out that it can be even more effective for your business than traditional advertising tactics. If you’re strategic in your approach, your blog may be your best source of advertising – and save you lots of money in the long term. Here’s why…
1. Blog posts help you reach other networks through social media channels.
By adding social sharing buttons for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, etc to your blog posts, it’s easy for readers to share your blog content with their own networks. This is a free way you can extend your reach beyond your own network. Traditional online advertising isn’t shareable in the same way, since conventional ads aren’t usually compelling enough to share.
2. Blog posts can help you rank for terms that your target audience is searching for.
If you’re strategic in your blog strategy and include relevant keywords within your post, the post will naturally get indexed in search engines. That’s just another way that potential photography clients can find you. Pay per click ads can certainly help with growing your brand, but blog content is far more cost effective AND can help you rank for more organic search phrases. As a bonus, because you have an unlimited number of pages for your blog posts, you have endless opportunities to rank for these terms!
3. Blog posts are naturally attractive to your target audience.
If you’re providing your audience with practical, actionable content that solves their problems or meets a need they have, you’ll naturally attract potential photography clients, because you’re offering them content that helps them. Not only will you earn their trust and show that you’re an expert in your field, but with compelling Calls to Action, you’ll be incentivizing potential clients to receive more content from you and learn more about your photography business. A well written, informative blog post that naturally leads the reader to the next step is much more effective than an intrusive ad.
4. Blog posts are effective for generating qualified leads.
Since blogging is an effective way to drive your audience to specific Calls to Action, blogging is also naturally effective for generating leads for your photography business. A lead “qualifies” herself when she opts-in to one of your content offers. And when she opts in, you can determine that she’s at the very least interested in the topic you’re writing about on your blog. From there, you can develop a lead nurturing campaign (a series of emails and perhaps phone consultations) to convert her from a lead into a paying client. This is more effective for qualifying your leads than a pay per click ad or banner would be.
5. Blog posts attract inbound links.
High quality content is a great way to attract inbound links. That’s because people want to link to great content and share it with their friends and followers! Therefore, if you’ve got something worthwhile to share, blog posts are a powerful way to generate referral traffic, which of course makes for better search engine rankings! One of the benefits of this being tied to your blog is that the content is there permanently. You aren’t relying on traffic from a banner or advertising spot that is just temporary. You can invest time creating great content on your blog and know that it’s there to stay.
About the Author:
Katie Humphreys is co-founder and Chief Action Officer of MatchStick Strategies. Find more musings from Katie on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.