So social media can be used to share links and content, you need to link with people who would find such content very interesting. So interesting, they may want to share it with their friends. How could a link benefit your business? By directing traffic back to your website.
These days you can build up a huge social media audience without even having a website of your own. Then, when your site launches you have this huge network of people you can announce it to and they’ll flock to it.
Your blog is your content hub and third-party social channels are the communication mediums: you push content out from your blog through these mediums, direct traffic and engagement to your blog and ultimately to your site.
Basically, no matter what kind of content you might produce, it should be represented on the blog somehow. This way, your blog can become a real asset because you’re producing content that you’ll always have. So whereas that Facebook Post (or Survey) or Tweet becomes history within a week tops, something published on your blog is something that will continue to rank in search engines and attract engagement (comments and shares).
But how are you supposed to justify the costs of investing in producing content and updating your blog on a regular basis? According to Hubspot’s State of Inbound Marketing 2012, not only are marketers investing more in blogging, but blogging has the potential to outperform many other channels. The graph below taken from the Hubspot State of Inbound Marketing 2012 document, in the last three years marketers portion of budget allocated to blogging has tripled!
Furthermore, lead generation on a blog outperforms what can be generated on Facebook and Twitter overall. This fact is a logical find really; after all, when we go on networks like Facebook and Twitter, we are there to socialise, not to be bombarded with sales. This is a big and important step in the conversion funnel because it takes us from mere brand awareness to actual engagement.
Content is King. Yes, you have probably heard this hundreds of times in your research about social media. But that is because this is true on many levels. Just like your Facebook Page, Page Post Ads and Tweets have to be fun, informative and/or engaging, so too does the content posted on your blog and website. So what does this suggest? That time and money needs to be invested into your blog and generating good quality posts; as there is a better opportunity to generate leads once they are on your blog rather than straight from Facebook and Twitter.
There is no golden rule to how frequently your blog should be updated. There is only the rule that it should be updated, and when you do, it should be something that your customers or clients are actually going to be interested in.
In the end, Blogging is essentially an SEO tool used to boost your website up in search engine rankings and increase the amount of people who view your website. Social media is used as a way to increase the visibility of your site as it is another medium in which visitor numbers can be generated from.