Why a blog is vital to your social media strategy – a story
It’s 7:15 pm. On each table a candle flickers in draughts of romantic ambience. Waiters lurk in the shadows to attend patrons with generous measures of expensive red wine. You stare into her eyes. She’s beautiful. She’s successful. She’s the kind of girl your mother told you you’d never get. You’ll show her. From deep within a question forms, surging into your consciousness on a wave of raw, uncontrollable romance. Should you ask her right now?
In the age of Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook and the like, the existence of the humble blog seems to hang in the balance. Again.
“Do we really need it?” the exec asks.
“It does attract about 20% of our website’s repeat visitors,” the Google Analytics expert chirps.
“Yes, but in the past twelve months social signals have added significantly to our search engine performance, which is where the bulk of our traffic comes from,” says the head of social media, barely managing to suppress the urge to add “lol”.
“We have a blog?” someone asks in near-binary tones. A collective sigh escapes the lips of all but one in the company’s boardroom.
“Exactly.” the exec continues hurriedly, “The question is, do we really need it? Last time I check social was chewing up most of our digital budget, and it seems to be doing pretty well.”
Back in the restaurant your palms are sweaty. She’s looking at you, the mere blink of her eyes sets off an avalanche in the pit of your stomach. She smiles seductively. You whimper. You’re under her spell now, and she’s knows it. Somewhere in the back of your mind there’s a whisper. “Play it cool, man.” But ah, the passion. The love. It’s real, and you know it… the look on your mate’s faces when they see you with her. Priceless.
In the boardroom the future of the company’s blog isn’t as hopeful. Sales and Accounting’s joint onslaught put a huge dent into any defence the blog might have had. When asked, the tea lady said something about cute little kittens before evaporating under the collective gaze of ostensible and very much self-attributed importance. A hand hesitantly rises above the cloud of faces. “Ah yes,” says the exec, “um, you. From marketing, right?”
“Yes, sir. The fact of the matter is that while perhaps not so much of an active sales mechanism, our blog, or any blog for that matter, is a central point of engagement for current and potential customers, especially those who come from social channels. While social might be helping our rankings, it is effectively being carried by the progress our blog has made in recent years. If I may use an analogy here,”
“I love you! Marry me! Marry me! Marry me, uh, number 25!” Ah, it’s finally out in the open. And for a moment, a brief moment, you feel very relieved.
“removing our blog and only relying on social and our website to further our digital sales would be like asking a girl you’ve just met at a speed dating club for her hand in marriage. It’s the background conversation in our digital sales strategy, the getting-to-know-you prerequisite before that first kiss that cements the ensuing relationship, that gentle murmur that fills an otherwise terribly embarrassing silence.”
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