Creating a social media strategy can be a daunting task, especially for smaller businesses or nonprofits that don’t have a team dedicated to managing social media. Creating content, managing strategy and interacting with audiences across two or three channels is a full-time job in itself. When you consider adding maintenance of a regular blog on top of that, the amount of work becomes very intimidating. In fact, only 40 percent of companies manage a blog. However, the rewards are well worth the effort: 55 percent of companies who blog have seen an increase in traffic to their website. At Teak, we typically see an increase in our website traffic the day after our blog is posted, so we know from experience that having a regular blog drives traffic. However, there are deeper reasons to maintain a regular blog, and use it supplement a social media strategy.
The Rule of Thirds
When coming up with content for a social media strategy, it’s best to follow the rule of thirds. One-third of the content should be getting to know the thoughts and people who make up the company, one-third should be pointing out work that other organizations are doing and highlighting industry news, and one-third should be promoting the company. At Teak, we strive to make our blog a mix of all three.
Thought leadership
Through the blog platform, team members can share their thoughts and opinions about current events or industry-relevant topics. Sharing the company’s opinion on a Facebook post or Tweet is a perfectly acceptable way to get the brand opinion out there, but a blog post is different in that the long-form nature allows employees to expand on their thoughts and explain them. Additionally, blogs add a personal touch, highlighting each of the employees as potential thought leaders in their fields. At Teak, we all work in public relations, but we each have our own strengths and interests that relate back to the organizations and causes we work for. Our blog shows the different strengths of each individual team member.
SEO
From a technical perspective, blogs are a great way to increase a website’s search engine optimization, or SEO, the algorithm that search engines use to rank sites. Higher rankings drive more people to a website, and makes an organization appear more credible. A combination of keywords, clear content, mobile optimization, inbound links, and number of pages all contribute to a website’s SEO score. Adding good quality content to the website on a regular basis can help increase or maintain a website’s position on search engines like Bing and Google.
