Your Blog and ROI

Blogging is the cornerstone of your social media strategy

This is what I tell all my clients.  Despite the amount of press garnered by social networks like Facebook and Twitter or the popularity of new tools like Pinterest, blogging converts visitors and generates SALES for the business.  If you want to see more Return on Investment (ROI), focus on creating great content on a blog associated with your ecommerce website.

But, don’t just take my word for it.  Here’s a cool infographic showing how a blog creates ROI in your social media marketing strategy — even outperforming traditional media buys such as magazines.

ROI and Blogging are intimately linked.

 

 

Why you need a blog?

A blog gives your social media marketing strategy a home base to send potential buyers to close the deal.  Facebook and Twitter are great for engaging potential buyers, for gaining awareness and for getting satisfied buyers to share your message, but your blog is what draws buyers to your website where you can sell them products.

Sure, other social media platforms contribute to positive attitudes toward the brand and help spread the brand message, but it’s your blog that really turns these sentiments into ROI.

To truly understand the impact of a blog on ROI, you need to understand how consumers find you online.

OK, if you’re a big brand, visitors will find you.  They’ll Google your brand name, they’ll search for your fanpage on Facebook, or gladly join their friends who already LIKE you, follow you, PIN you or, otherwise share their loyalty to your brand.

But, if you’re a small brand, people don’t know you exist so your job is to cut through the clutter so they find you.  And, a blog is a critical element in getting found online.

When users search for products online, they enter search terms.  So, if I want to buy gourmet dog treats, I’ll enter that term in my Google search.  Google serves up pages of results including literally thousands of websites including this search term (called SERPS – for Search Engine Results Pages).  Most users select from one of the top 3-5 results, with significantly fewer users moving to the second page of results.  So, your goal is to end up in the top 3-5 results.

But, how do you do that?  The answer is SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Google wants you to find the results it serves up valuable or you’ll use Bing or Yahoo as your preferred search engine.  So Google uses a complex algorithm to determine which links show up 1st, 2nd, 3rd …

And, a blog full of valuable content is the BEST way to turn up high in the SERPs.  Sure, it takes some skill, and understanding of keyword research, and some good software to help your search engine results, but superlative content on a blog associated with your company website is essential for letting potential buyers find you.

But, you can’t stop with just getting found!

While content on your blog helps bring traffic to your website, it should also act as a salesperson, convincing visitors and motivating them to buy your brand. Blog content should also make it easy for visitors to find and buy your brand, without being overly promotional.  So, blog content should focus on informing visitors and using tools of influence to motivate sales.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my series on ROI in social media. Next week I’ll begin a series on how to build a successful blog — now that you understand how a blog impacts your ROI.

If you have questions, as always, just post them in the comments and I’ll answer them.  Also, please join our Social Media Marketing Tribe on Facebook, where social media experts and novices go to ask questions and share insights on social media.