The Content Engine – from Kim Funk Creative

Well, this is new and novel…

Your blog does all the things…

According to Hubspot, blogs do a number of things for you. They help your SEO rankings, can establish you as an industry expert, make it easier for visitors to find you, build trust with you and become leads, and they cultivate community. Done well, they also serve as the source from which all of your other content is derived.

But where did the blog come from? And why is it so important? Let’s begin this journey at the beginning.

Blogging Beginnings

Once upon a time, when the Internet was new, some programmers and other tech-savvy people decided to write their stories online for all to see. It didn’t matter what they were talking about – the point is, they used the journal format to, well, journal…digitally. And instead of keeping the content to themselves, they shared it with the world.

Meanwhile, these same folks were working on ways to catalog the content they were creating so that other people could find it.

The search engine was born.

I remember a conversation I had with my brother in the mid-1990’s. I asked him if he knew the URL for a particular website. He told me to type in the company name on Yahoo! and Yahoo! would pull up the site. It was my first introduction to the search engine. And a lightbulb moment. Up until then, I had been taught (by my college professors) to type web addresses into the search bar.

From there we saw the rise and fall of many search engines.

There was Yahoo!

Netscape Navigator

Ask Jeeves (my personal favorite)

And just about any website at that point had a search function that would offer options (their site or the Internet) to search for content.

Then Google came along and changed everything. And I’d bet they made a lot of the early search engine creators very rich in the process. Not long after Google came on the scene, phrases like “Just Google it.” reverberated throughout the cubelands that permeated the late 20^th century office landscape.

But, what does this have to do with blogging? Let’s get back to that.

Why blogging works.

Remember, early Internet programmers created the search engine to find and catalog websites. This programming is built into a search engine’s code. And the best, most efficient way for a search engine to find a site is to search for keywords. The more relevant keywords a site has, the easier it is for Google to find it. The easier it is for Google to find it, the higher it is in the rankings.

Google’s crawlers search all of the content on the web for keywords that people like you and I type into their search bar. To maintain credibility as a search engine, Google delivers a list of sites that provide credible information around the keyword.

Say you want to find a mechanic who can service your Porsche. You do a search for mechanics who specialize in Porsches. Google delivers a list that looks like this.

The results of this search are based on Google’s crawlers searching for the keywords you typed in. They looked for “Porsche” and “Automechanics.” If you do this search yourself, you’ll see “sponsored” results come up first. Companies pay for those spots to be at the top of the page and they may not necessarily be what you’re looking for in terms of content.

The first results after the “sponsored” listings is your first organic result. Google’s crawlers catalog and rank every webpage on the Internet based on keywords. The more words related to a search you have on your site, the better chance you have of ranking in a Google search.

But, keywords are only one part of the equation. Google also rewards credible sites that provide good information. If you want to rank on the front page of Google, you have to write actual substance around those keywords. The content has to be useful. And while a good website with a landing page is terrific and essential to your strategy, you improve your search results much faster when you’re constantly updating your content with keywords.

And this is where your content workhorse, the blog comes in and takes center stage. Blogging gives you a chance to build credible content around your keywords. The more you blog, the more credibility you build. The more credibility you build, the better your chances of a front-page Google placement.

So, you need a blog. And it needs to feature your keywords and credible informaiton in a format that people will read.

Blogs people read.

Blogs provide your audience with more specific content that a landing page. Giving people information is one thing. Delivering it in an engaging way that keeps them reading and coming back is another. Lucky for you (and me). Blogging has been around long enough to deliver some data on formats people read.

Here are some of my favorites.

Listicles 

Feature Stories

How to’s

Interviews

FAQ’s

Thought Leadership

Curated Posts

Fun Posts

Good blog posts are rather short.. Best practice is 1000 – 1500 words but they can be shorter – especially if you’re blogging often. And you should be blogging often. Use language that is easy to read and engaging. They key here is to create useful information in an engaging way that motiviates the reader to come back for more, subscribe to your blog, or contact you for your services. Ideally, your reader gets sucked down a rabbithole of content so useful and valuable to them, they stay on your site for hours.

If your blog is part of your marketing campaign, the content should reflect that – even if you’re a B2B brand. At their heart, blogs are building awareness. Treat each post like it’s the reader’s first taste of your brand – make them inviting and engaging enough to keep them coming back for another nugget time and again.

With the blog at the center of your marketing strategy, you have content you can repurpose to start conversations on other channels like social media, video, podcasts and webinars. Each element will help build brand awareness and shepherd your audience and your customers to you.

So, now that this blog is done, let’s see how we turn it into a few social media posts. Stay tuned…

Marketing is important. Marketing your business is a full-time job. And as fun as it is for me, it’s not for everyone. If you’re a business leader or owner who wants to focus on running your business – leave the creative to me. Let’s chat.