Blogging is brilliant for two reasons.

A) Aids in increasing your SEO (please see blog post on SEO) and visibility B) Gives you an opportunity to discuss what is going on within your industry in more depth. You aren’t limited to word count even though the unspoken rule is people switch off after 700 words.

The best way to think of a blog is to visualise it like a short story about any topic. The best blogs have a start, a middle, an end and/or have informed you of something. They all have a catchy subject header and the ending often works best with a call to action such as ‘get in contact for more information’. Personally, we don’t always do this as we write blogs more to inform our current and potential clients of any marketing concepts out in the big agency world or to shout about any news that might be of interest. Also, we often use our blog to give a better idea of what we are like as an agency because when you hire a design agency it is important to think you can get on with them.

Blogging is also an opportunity to guide people to your website if utilised in direct marketing such as emails sent to your database. You can simply give it a clever header according to the content within the blog piece. You can then write a short note explaining what made you write about the topic and then direct them with a link to your blog. This can also be done on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.

When utilising blogs to their full potential you run a list of SEO words that are either very popular for your industry and you wish to be found under or words you want to rank higher with. You then get these within your blogs. Why? Well, by using the word (not excessively) google will recognise that your site mentions this word and hence could aid in getting you higher in a generic google search. Obviously this is only one of many other factors that enable sites to appear higher but this particular way is free and every little helps.

It is worth mentioning though that google is clever enough to know that if you mention the word far too many times or not in a suitable context, it brands you as spam. So be clever how you use the words. Stick to 5-10, of the chosen word as too many words will dilute the most important words.

Pros:

Increases activity on your website hence google trusts it is a used site. Enables you to inform your clients, customers and potentials of anything you want. No real word limit. You can have several people within the company write blogs hence potentially reaching a wider audience as we all have different views and hobbies.

Cons:

Time consuming. If you drop off the radar with your blogs and don’t blog at least once a month then people looking at your website will assume the website is not monitored.

We think blogs are great. We try to blog all sorts of information. Fun, serious and informative. We feel that blogs give us another set of lungs and enable us to talk to the whole of the interweb or enable us to share our thoughts that other wise would simply be stuck between the studio walls or could be over heard in the pub on a Friday afternoon. The plus, it aids in our SEO. Definitely time well spent!