According to SEMRush, a company that helps organizations improve online visibility, blog posts remain the most effective form of content over email, e-books and white papers. And on average, companies that blog produce 67% more leads per month. If your organization doesn’t have a blog, you are seriously missing out on incredible benefits for your business and your community. Discover why your organization needs a blog and how to implement and execute one into your marketing strategy.
Improve Communication With Your Community and Members
Even though you might be sending out newsletters and updating your community via social media channels like Facebook and Instagram, posting blogs about upcoming events, classes and camps or anything else you think your community might find useful will greatly improve communication, as well as give members a quick and easy way to find useful information. Once you have the blog posted, you can easily share it via your organization’s social media channels and even include it in newsletters.
Increase Participation and Revenue
As previously mentioned, blogs are a great place to share the benefits of programs, camps and classes you offer to the community. A blog is also a great place to inform your community about upcoming registration periods that include details about early-bird, online and in-person registration. You can also utilize a blog to announce new programs and offerings, as well as any events you may have coming up, like a fall carnival or a donation drive—but make sure to include a call to action and appropriate links to registration/signup pages.
Build a Healthier Community
Help build a healthier community through your blog by posting exercise tips and videos that also guide members to utilize your facilities and parks. Post blogs that detail the physical and mental benefits of many of the programs, camps and classes you offer ,and link to the registration pages.
Improve Your Website Search Engine Optimization
One of the most important things you can do for your website is to help it rank on the first page of the Google Search Results Page (SERP). According to IMPACT, on the first results page alone the first five organic results accounts for 67.6% of all clicks. In fact, 75% of users do not go past the first page. That means it's imperative to do everything you can to get your site to rank on the first page. One of the best ways to do so is practicing good search engine optimization through your blog.
Blog Writing Tips and Tricks
Ensure that your blog is successful and helpful to your community with these tips and tricks:
- Write quality content that is useful and beneficial to the community.
- Include a few images and videos, if necessary.
- Update blog posts to make them more relevant over time.
- Utilize guest posts from members of your community—this could be from success stories to helpful how-tos.
- 75% of people prefer reading articles under 1,000 words, but for SEO purposes, don’t make your blog shorter than 600 to 800 words if you can.
- Include links to other relevant pages on your website, as well as from pages where you get any pertinent information.
- Shorter articles are preferred, but when it comes to helping your website rank and gain more traffic as a result, longer articles help as they are more comprehensive.
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