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A lot has happened since the launch of the AD blog, and having just passed our third ‘blog’ birthday at the end of November, it seemed like the perfect time to take a closer look at the rapid ascendancy of blog publishing as an effective content marketing platform.
Looking past the endless blogs on cats, movie reviews, cats, the ‘the top 20 ways…’Buzzfeed phenomena and more god-forsaken cats, a blog is a fantastic vehicle for B2B marketers to consistently communicate a brand’s message and areas of expertise to their target audience.
Because it is ‘owned media’, B2B brands can publish and proliferate tailor-made content for free to their own schedule and agenda. As long as they have a focussed and steadfast strategy behind it, and have something valuable to say to their audiences, businesses can create content and distribute it far and wide. And with sufficient knowledge of SEO, they can use certain tactics to help drive the right traffic, i.e. future customers, to their blog and their websites – all supported by powerful and accurate analytics to quantify that their material is relevant and consequently, purposeful.
They can also incorporate and enhance their blog with other media formats – either of their own to give further insight into a topic, or that of others; such as this beautiful video, this disturbing photograph or this hilarious gif (pronounced ‘jif’, which the creator himself has now confirmed). It provides great scope for creativity and for reinforcing, enhancing or reinventing a brand, and more businesses than ever are recognising this.
Riding high on the red hot twin engines of online and content marketing, B2B companies are fast harnessing the power of the blog. A recent North American study by the Content Marketing Institute on B2B content marketing found that 93% of businesses surveyed now use this form of marketing, with 73% of B2B marketers using content such as blogs more than they did last year. Throw in the fact that B2B marketers are starting to dip their toes in the social media pool, and a company’s content now has an unprecedented reach.
For AD, it enables us to reflect the many personalities that make up our team. We develop thought-leadership and opinion pieces that demonstrate the many facets and interests of the company, further strengthening our relationships. And with the number of followers on our Twitter stream recently hitting 1,600, combined with the fact that the blog page is proving to be one of the most visited on our website according to our analytics, we know we must be doing something right. Question is: what will the next three years bring?
Hopefully no more blasted cats.