Most savvy digital marketers can tell you the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) and how different tips and tricks can be implemented to boost your SEO presence. Some of these best practices include attaching title tags, link building, and adding more keywords to your site. A great way to implement keywords is to build some quality content through blog content and email.
But having a blog goes further than SEO- it allows you to show yourself as a thought leader to your audience continuously. If the blog link on your site by itself is not getting as many sessions as you originally hoped, you have to make people want to click on it. One way to do so is to get your customer base accustomed to you providing blog content. So how does this relate to email? When you leverage your blog content into email messages, you’re doing more than just “saying hi” to your email base. Valuable blog content, put into an email, can accomplish a lot more than either of those forces separately.
Build Customer Loyalty
For this case let’s look at Nasty Gal. Nasty Gal has grown into a recognized brand based not only on the clothes they sell, but also from the content they provide. Through their blog, they provide an insider guide into what fashion trend is in, makeup tips, music playlists, and more. Their customers are no longer going to their site just to shop their clothes, but also to scope out their blog, and chances are once they’ve made it to the blog, they’ll visit the shop section and make a purchase.
The blog gets people coming back to your site over and over again, but only with quality content. Email is a great device to teach people about the blog. When your brand is top-of-mind, likelyhood of conversion increases. The blog gets them to the site… email gets them to the blog.
Build Authority
One of our Hawke Media clients is a food delivery service. Since the pandemic, most grocery stores have jumped on the bandwagon of offering a delivery service of some kind, so how do you stand out? For this brand, we build a blog to give customers an additional reason to visit your site versus the competitors. For this client, there was an obvious type of content that could drive clicks: Recipes! Recipes are an oft searched topic to drive draffic, plus it will make customers search your store online for missing ingredients.
Providing content adjacent to your product will build authority for your brand. This shows that your store knows what it’s talking about when it comes to culinary expertise. This is especially true if you carve out a specific niche such as “family meals on a budget,” “romantic dinners for two,” etc. Once you have this authority built, people will sign up for email and SMS updates to stay in the know. Sometimes email can drive traffic to the blog; other times blog traffic can boost email subscriptions.
Develop Brand Trust
More often than not, you’ve probably been in a situation debating whether or not to get that expensive shiny new toy, but before doing so you’ll see what past customers are saying. Host some of these five-star reviews and testimonials on your site as a way to make it as easy as possible for customers to learn more. This is a great way to not so subtly pat yourself on the back and also build trust. People don’t buy from brands they don’t trust, and third party feedback such as reviews is a great way to develop that trust.
Don’t hope and wait that suddenly your blog content will take off organically—spread the word! Put blog content email subscribers to use by pointing to one another, and it’s a win-win situation for everyone.
