Beyond Measurables: 5 Reasons To Blog

One reason  digital marketing is so interesting is its measurability.

We can use tools to see how many people saw a post, an ad, or a tweet. With Google Analytics we can see what brought a visitor to our website, where they went when they arrived, and how long they stayed.

It’s easy to become beholden to these numbers, but when we do we often lose sight of the benefits of our efforts that are more difficult, if not impossible, to measure. As a content strategist, this is what I often grapple with when helping businesses build their blogs and plan their content strategy.

When planning content strategy, we start by asking people why they want to start a blog. For most business owners and marketing managers, the answer starts with website traffic and search engine optimization. It often ends there, and that’s short-sighted.

That’s only a fraction of the benefits a business gets from blogging. Here are five reasons to blog that don’t fit into simple measurement tables, but can be far more impactful to your bottom line.

5 Reasons to Blog That You Can’t Measure

1. Trust

When you’re willing to talk about what you do – even your mistakes – you lend transparency and authenticity to your brand. That’s going to make your customers trust you more than a great logo, tag line, or advertisement.

2. Awareness

Do you want to be there for your customers only when they need something and happen to think of you? Or do you want to be on their mind when they don’t yet know that they need something?

A blog puts you on their radar, in their social timelines, in their email inbox, on a consistent basis. It sells for you when your customers don’t even know their in the market for your products or services.

3. Ready-made marketing materials

The blog doesn’t die. Your blog content can be re-purposed when you need copy for Facebook, Twitter, email, and print. It’s great for finding content for your press releases, and can be turned into brochures or referenced in response to questions from clients.

4. Clarifying your message

Practice makes perfect. The more you write about what you do and the benefits of your services or products, the better you’ll become at clearly and succinctly explaining it (and selling it) through other channels.

5. Bait for journalists

Journalists want it easy. If they can get a quote or anecdote without a phone call, interview, or hours of research, they’ll often take it. So if you have some great copy highlighted on your website, it makes it easy to find pull quotes and reasons to link to you in stories. It can also lead to great new opportunities.

At Lightspan, our blog has been the first point of contact that resulted in requests for interviews in Vertical Response, Entrepreneur, Runner’s World, and many video spots. It has also led to countless speaking engagements at conferences and universities for our founder, Mana Ionescu, and other staffers.

All of this happened and much more simply because we put our content, our voice, and our expertise in front of people looking for the answers that we have. These are all difficult or impossible to measure reasons to blog. They won’t show up in Google Analytics, Tweet clicks, or Facebook insights, but they’re real and shouldn’t be overlooked as you plan your content strategy.