Hard to believe 2013 is right around corner, right? I am happy to say that blogging in 2013 will still not be overrated.
Blogging is important for any business, small and large. It doesn't matter if you make widgets, candy or boomerangs. Whatever your business is, blogging is important.
Let's talk about it
Your blog is your everlasting gobstopper (tweet this). I say, this because it's something that everyone wants to ingest, digest and share. It's a place that always has something new to learn from. It's filled with useful information that customers love to read.
Your Everlasting Gobstopper
For many websites, a blog brings in around 70% of its traffic. Also, around 15% of home page visits will click over to a blog, if the word "blog" is in the navigation menu. Neat stuff, huh?
Your website visitors, and potential clients will view your blog to see recent work, advice and stories. As a company who develops photography website templates, we instruct our photography customers to blog, and often. We tell them there is no one true strategy, but share the same insights you are reading now. People love to consume content. But you don't have to take my word for it. Check out the statistics of the very popular iOS app, Flipboard.
Over 1.5 million people are using Flipboard on a daily basis, consuming content of their choosing. There are over 14.5 million social sharing actions through Flipboard. This means that if your blog was in the top blog content on Flipboard, there is a very good possibility of being shared by thousands of people.
Content is an interesting thing
Content can be text, videos, audio, pictures, animation, etc. If it can be consumed through digital media, then it's content. In addition, blog content generates discussion, discussion generates movement, movement catches attention and attention improves search engine rankings. So your everlasting gobstopper now has another benefit to your website.
Photocrati also runs a photography SEO community, and there we share educate members on optimizing their blog and blog content for rankings. If around 70% of website traffic is coming through blog articles, imagine if each of those articles ranked number one on search engines for their designated keywords.
As much as SEO algorithms change (and they change a lot), at the end of the day the core components remain. With that known, and mixing natural tendency to visit a blog, optimizing articles for important keywords is and always will be essential.
Blogging in 2013
Now that we've gone through all that I want to discuss some things to consider in 2013 when blogging. First, try writing something that is guaranteed to attract interesting discussions. (and more on that here) Another would be to create a video course on a website, like Udemy. Evergreen your existing content, refresh it and create a course. Then create new content that talks about the course. Not interested in a course? Then create a short video series, post it on YouTube and then on your blog, with a transcription. That way you have two forms of content to absorb in one article. Interview partners and share the discussion in a blog article, or host a local meetup and write about it for people to say "next time I want to go!" Use visual marketing weapons like cartoons and infographics.
Blogging in 2013 can be the same as blogging in 2012, but I think bloggers should keep taking their content to new levels.
I hope you think so too.
Thanks for reading,
Scott
Infographic source: Flipboard