As a small business learning about the world of SEO, you may already be aware that blogging regularly – at least once but preferably twice a week – is crucial to the success of your website and indeed your company. Blogging is just one piece of your online marketing content strategy, but it’s an important one.
What started out as a way for people to share their innermost thoughts and feelings for the world to see – think “virtual diary” – in the late 1990s has evolved into a marketing strategy geared toward building your brand. Everyone from Fortune 500 CEOs and doctors to landscapers and interior designers is getting into the blogging game. If you’re not blogging already, you’re missing out on a big opportunity to boost the visibility of your company, thereby increasing your digital reach.
According to Social Media Today, 61 percent of U.S. consumers have made a purchase based on a blog post they’ve seen online. A few more interesting stats:
- Companies that blog enjoy 97 percent more inbound links.
- B2B marketers that use blogs generate 67 percent more leads.
- 70 percent of consumers say they learn more about a company’s offerings through articles over ads.
Thanks to Google’s ability to rank your website’s relevancy by how often you post and how original your content is, blogging is more important than ever. That leads us to the next question: should you take on the blogging yourself or hire someone on the outside? There are many benefits and drawbacks to each, which we’re explore here.
Insourcing
Keeping the blog efforts in-house generally will save you money – especially if you do the blogging yourself. However, if you’re not the best of writers or the most efficient, you’re going to end up spending way too much time per blog to make it economically feasible. Somewhere down the road, blogging will seem more and more like a chore and you may let it fall by the wayside. If there is a writer within your organization who can take on this extra task per week, all the better. That person can run ideas by you quickly and resolve issues on the fly. Allow a good 4-5 hours per blog post (great content, images, tables, stats, etc.).
Outsourcing
There are many reasons why you would want to hire an outside professional to handle your weekly blogging tasks. This is a great option if crafting the written word is not exactly your forte, or if you simply don’t have time to devote to this task on a regular basis. With a professional, you are guaranteed a well-crafted, grammatically correct, SEO-optimized piece of content that is sure to drive more traffic to your website and build trust with your readers.
A professional will stick to the schedule you have decided on, submitting pieces on time, in the correct format – in theory. This could be a drawback if you have to constantly ask for pieces past deadline. However, a professional writer often knows the value of a deadline and makes their living off meeting those deadlines, so this is a rare occurrence. Professionals also have deep knowledge of SEO best practices, and perhaps they have personal blogs of their own, which lends more credibility to your blog posts.
The option you ultimately go with will depend on how large or small your business is, what your budget is, and what your needs are. In general, expect to pay less for an in-house writer — especially if this person is taking on blogging as part of their normal duties – and more if you hire a third-party writer with lots of experience.
Planet Marketing is your trusted local Internet marketing company in San Diego. Call us today to see how we can help you optimize your brand and foster trust with your audience through the art of blogging.
