Think your business doesn’t need a standout blog? Think again. Our guest writer Sara Dueck reveals why a thought leadership-driven blog is an essential tool to elevate your company’s credibility, boost your search engine game, and ultimately increase your conversions.
We live in a content-saturated culture: everyone’s a writer, and everyone—including the company dog—has a blog. The good news is that it makes finding information incredibly easy. The bad news? There’s not much you can say that’s different from what your competitors are also saying.
In that landscape, it’s hard to stay motivated. We know. And we’re not going to judge you or your marketing team. But we are going to offer a blogging strategy that showcases your subject matter authority—and guides your readers toward engagement and (ultimately) conversion.
Don’t Let Your Blog Sit Idle
Maybe you and your team were bursting with ideas when you started your company’s blog. Or maybe it always felt like a chore. Either way, you started strong, hit publish, and waited for the leads to roll in.
Except…they haven’t. Blogs are a bit like a watched pot—they’re not going to boil while you’re staring at them. It takes time, patience, and consistently exceptional content to grow your readership. When you’ve got a defined set of responsibilities, coming up with a new topic and writing a fresh blog post every few days can get pushed to the back burner.
Before you know it, a whole year has passed since your team’s last post. So you ask the intern to drum up a post every now and then. The issue? The intern isn’t a thought leader in this space. Even when they churn out a post on the regular, that doesn’t guarantee anyone will care—not the search engines, and certainly not your target audience.
It’s time to change how you approach your company’s blog. Let’s start by treating it as an investment, with a long-term horizon. It takes consistency and a (consistently) compelling perspective to turn your thoughtful publication into something worth following. But when it pays off, it can be tremendous.
Don’t Follow the Crowd
Fact: your competitors have already said everything obvious about your industry, a hundred times over. Covering that same tired ground will only bury your blog post five pages deep in the search results. But if your blog consistently has something new and thought-provoking to say, people will notice. That’s what thought leadership is all about.
Becoming a thought leader means doing the research, risking a stand, and offering your expertise to the world. It means understanding the changing trends of your industry and using this information to peak interest and answer questions. Do this enough, and your blog will become an essential source for industry knowledge—establishing your company’s credibility and clout, and generating the traffic and shares to prove it.
Don’t Play It Safe
And here’s the thing: you can’t play it too safe. You’ve got to risk turning a few people off. If you don’t, you just sound like everyone else, dishing up information but without really moving the needle.
Say you’re a software company and you post regularly about where most businesses are going wrong with their current approach to cybersecurity. Or you’re a stock broker that ruffles a few feathers with your controversial—but sound—advice about when is just the right time to sell. When people start coming to your blog for advice and insight, they’re more likely to stick around to explore your services and products, too.
Expert status is only achieved with time, consistency, and a measure of subject matter brilliance. Maintaining a regular posting schedule is good for your cred, and for your search results. Companies that publish 16 or more blog posts a month get an average of three and a half times more traffic than companies that publish four or less times a month.
But that doesn’t mean 16 rushed and stagnant posts will earn you the blogging crown—traffic is only useful if the searcher finds something worth sticking around to read. Achieving a balance of quality and quantity is what you need to get ahead, and MarketSmiths can help.
Conclusion: Do Blog Like a Thought Leader!
Becoming a thought leader is one of the best things you can do for your business. To take your thought leadership to the next level, and to ensure your content is as a consistent as it is refreshingly provocative, tap the editorial minds at MarketSmiths to help. We’ve ghostwritten content for Forbes, The Huffington Post, and more, and our broad industry expertise means we’re always bursting with fresh insights and ideas. Get in touch today.
