Why your business can’t afford not to blog

By Kwai Chi, Total Media, @kwaichi

First off, let’s clear up what a blog is. A blog used to be thought of as an online documentary of someone’s life. These days though, blogs don’t have to exist on their own and they don’t have to be in a long format like the one you’re reading right now. There are different types of blogs; for example, social blogs like Twitter and Facebook enjoy greater traffic by existing where most users already spend their time. The notion of these microblogs is that they allow the sharing of small elements of content across different media formats and the fact is, if your business isn’t part of this movement, it will fall behind.

Google + as a microblog

In the past year, Google has slowly, but quietly, been building up its social media offering. First I noticed the adoption of YouTube links on Google+. Then I saw ‘+1’ icons popping up all over the place. I noticed that being logged in to my Google account affected my search results. Then came the arrival of Google+ Pay Per Click (PPC) adverts. Google+ imported popular Facebook and iPhone games with larger display and resolutions than those found elsewhere. Adding a +1 button to your brand’s website gave a huge boost for owning the search space for branded searches (see the Autotrader screen grab). And now we also have the new ‘Google search plus your world’ to consider (where Google+ content is personalised to you). These are important developments for those businesses which rely on a digital presence for success. Missing out on a key platform such as Google+ now means missing out on revenue further down the line.

Fresh content

OK, so we have established that Google+ can act as an important microblog. With 100 million users already, Google+ could surpass Facebook members by the end of 2012. Let’s also consider the Google Panda update in February 2011. This was a game changer in the search industry as news sites and blogs with fresh, regularly updated content appeared higher in search results than ever before. Sites which didn’t update their content (many of whom were missing a blog on their site) were penalised and found themselves ranking significantly lower as a result.  This was reinforced with the Google Freshness update last November (2011) where searches for hot topics and events returned the freshest results first, complete with a timestamp. So for reoccurring events like Premiere League results, Google now serves up the latest, ‘freshest’ content when searching. Blogs and content shared through social media are a key way to stay on top of these changes, and rank ahead of those competing with your business.

Blogging or microblogging?  

I have a saying, ‘Content is king’ (OK I’m not the first person to say that!) and now fresh content is the key to success. If you have a website that is fairly static in terms of its content, having a blog under the same domain name, e.g. http://yoursite.com/blog, is a very good idea. Fresh content on the site will encourage it to be shared on other social media channels, such as Twitter and Google+, which will in turn drive valuable traffic back to your website, generating precious links which signal to Google that your site deserves to rank highly. There is however a caveat with running a blog and that is you have to keep it up, you have to keep it fresh and you absolutely have to keep it unduplicated.

If, on the other hand, you have a huge website that adds pages daily or have a large selection of products on your ecommerce platform then you could consider using social media platforms to blog on instead. Although Twitter didn’t bother renewing its Google search license, it’s still the open platform of choice to run a customer service channel as well as being an easy, manageable option to blog on. Facebook increased its commenting and posting limits last year (now 63,206 characters or less which is about 10x more than this blog post) which makes it the ideal location to share current or topical content with your fans. Facebook is unrivalled when it comes to long dwell times (especially amongst a female audience), enjoys very high engagement and shareability for content. Also consider YouTube as a standalone video blog (don’t forget to optimise titles, descriptions and tags) or as a compliment to a written blog.

Go forth and blog

So hopefully all this is becoming clear… Google+ is good for those wanting to dominate the search results for their brand. On-site content, through a domain hosted blog, is also crucial if you want your website to rank well. Twitter is good for hot topics and talking to consumers and influencers. Facebook is good as a hub of information, traffic and brand awareness. YouTube is fantastic for sharing, Google searches and as a complement to other media. Phew! So what now? There are plenty of rights and wrongs, theory and speculation, but put simply, get blogging about something now, and make it relevant to your business – whether it’s through a website hosted blog or a microblogging platform – you’ll soon reap the rewards.

About the author
Digital expert Kwai Chi joined Total Media – an independent, full service media agency – in July 2011. A launch and growth specialist, Total Media tasked Kwai with overseeing its fast-growing social media department.

Before working at Total Media, Kwai worked at marketing agency Wunderman where he ran social media campaigns for key brands including Nokia, P&G and Ford.

Kwai is also a regular speaker around the topics of integrated campaigns and social media platforms. As the founder of real life YouTube communities and with over 2.5 million views on his YouTube channel, Kwai is the vlogger of choice in the topics of travel, technology and eating Pringles!

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