Is it Possible to Remove Blogging from a Content Marketing Strategy?

  • June 20, 2019

Content marketing is pretty much the most utilised marketing style right now. It has proven its mettle in many ways. It is a potent driver of organic traffic, and good way to maintain your brand online presence. The saying “content is king” is as true as it is cliché. You cannot get an optimal SEO ranking if you don’t incorporate some content marketing in your strategy. You need new and fresh content to be produced daily to stay on top of your efforts. Right at the middle of many content marketing campaigns is blogging. It is a fact that millions and millions of blogs are produced daily in a bid to churn out premium content. That means that if you use blogging as a component of your content marketing strategy, you are probably competing with several other companies in your niche using the same strategy to attract traffic.

But, what if? What if you want a content strategy that stands out because it doesn’t make use of the most common tool? What if your business just doesn’t see blogging as a good fit? What if you don’t need to, or you just don’t want to blog? Or what if you think that not blogging is the way to actually be unique? To be honest, blogging is a saturated market. And thanks to this, it has become even more difficult to attract the right amount of traffic with simply blogging unless your website has a high domain authority and large following.

Which brings us back to the question, “Will not blogging actually make a difference in your content marketing campaign?”

The answer is “Possibly”. There is a way to be even more creative in content marketing that doesn’t involve the use of blogs. In fact, you can produce premium content that doesn’t contain a single text. But before you decide to “not blog”, you will need to figure out if you might be shooting yourself in the foot by choosing not to blog. So let us explore if blogging is the best content marketing strategy for your business as well as content marketing strategies that do not incorporate blogging.

 

Content marketing with or without blogging – how to.

Many online businesses have created a successful online presence by relying heavily on the use of blogs. Some others have been able to do this without blogging or with the use of a blog that is not exactly standard. Let us look at content strategies that do not involve blogging and see what they do involve.

People that have interest in your niche products probably have things that they want that is related to your products. A good way to provide awesome content is giveaways. You can set up a blog that is non-traditional. What you can do is to provide value for your target audience using method that does not involve text. Create a buzz by giving free gifts associated with your products. An example is free wallpapers for users’ phones that features what people interested in your niche might be crazy about. That way you drive organic traffic by becoming a resource for cool stuff relating to your business niche. If your business products are for hikers, then being able to provide free and beautiful photos of nature trails is a great way to use content that provides value and drives traffic without needing to blog. Or you can put together great playlists for runners to listen to if your product involves running. The bottom line is that valuable content comes in a wide variety and the key to owning it is finding the kind of value that resonates within your target audience.

Taking the following steps will guide you to creating the perfect content strategy that is both valuable to your business and to your customers as well.

  • Know your customers. Get to know the important facts about your customers. What you need to know is what your customers’ need that has a relation to your product. Your information needs to be fact based so use surveys where possible to reach out to your customers directly.
  • Map out your content marketing strategy based on the qualitative data collected. Mapping out your content strategy should involve asking the right questions. Always decide what your end goals are. Different marketing strategies are used to achieve different outcomes. Do you want to raise awareness about your brand? Do you simply want to drive traffic? Are you trying to rebrand your product? Or are you simply focused on improving sales? All these goals are often closely related in the sense that you will achieve more than one even when you have one major focus. Depending on what your end goals are, you can then choose the content marketing strategy that would allow you to align closely with them.
  • Take action. After you have figured out your content strategy and what your customers want, then it is time to take action.

Sometimes blogging doesn’t seem like a good fit to help your business achieve its end goals, and other times it might be a good fit but you find better content options like videos, pictures, giveaways and more. What is important is that you monitor your chosen content strategy to make sure you get the right results. Blogging can be an effective tool but sometimes your business can do better without blogging. The trick is in knowing the difference.

Is blogging the best option for your business?

The efficacy of content marketing is highly dependent on being able to provide high quality content that answers the questions that your target audience is asking. You can only have a successful content marketing strategy if you are able to provide the type of content that attracts and retains your customers.

A good example is advertising agencies. An advertising agency would definitely benefit greatly from blogging. This is because people want to know about your strategies, your creativity and your successfulness and blog posts are a great way to put that out there without being boring. It is naturally expected that blogging will impact sales significantly. An SEO company would also benefit greatly from content because they can also prove themselves in long form content.

How about businesses that sell products that are not exactly “blog friendly”? Or businesses in highly technical niches? Businesses like these will have difficulty creating optimal content and will probably have to borrow content from related industries just to be able to blog. However, content marketing is about value and not about presentation. So blogging is just one way of creating value. There are other content strategies that are just as effective at creating value such that these businesses can still have a way of using content marketing to their advantage.

To decide what your content marketing strategy should consist of, you will need to research your audience, find out what your ideal customers need and brainstorm to find a way to present it to them.  The best way to present it to them could be through blogging, which is fine. If you find that blogging is not the best fit, that’s also fine.

Belonging in your business niche automatically makes you a fan of your business so you can easily put yourself in your target audience’s shoes to give yourself an idea of what they might be looking for.

If you sell makeup, you are more likely than not a makeup enthusiast and in that case you can easily figure out that the audience most likely to buy your products are those looking for “how to” videos on makeup. If this is the case, then using a video based content marketing strategy is guaranteed to provide value to your audience and that indicates to you that you should have a YouTube presence as an integral part of your content marketing strategy.

If you are into clothing, then you probably already know that a picture is worth a thousand words. A wall of text describing your clothing will not provide as much value for your target audience as pictures.

Before you decide, you need to try to find your product from the viewpoint of your audience. And then brainstorm on the processes that will lead that audience straight to your business. The most important focus is being able to create value through your content, whether it is a blog or something else. What kind of content is of value to your target audience? Imagine owning a flower shop and choosing to inundate your blog with the history and background of every flower you own. The average client who wants to buy your product is probably more interested in ways to creatively present flowers as a gift and just like the wall of text describing the most exquisite collection of clothes you have, a blog won’t give your target audience that much in terms of value when compared to a picture based content marketing strategy.

Another way to determine if a blog is a good fit for your business is to check up on competitors. You can find competitors that are running a successful business. Find out what your competitors are doing and how that’s working out for them and then take their ideas and tweak it till you own it. Doing all these can help you make the right decision about whether or not a blog is right for your business.

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