Blogging in the Hair Restoration Industry: Is It Really All That Important?
We’ve all heard the phrase “content is king.” But is blogging really necessary? We’ve all heard the blogging is a powerful means of content marketing, but is it really that powerful? These are great questions that are very much overlooked by the majority of small business owners and salon and hair replacement studio owners in particular.
Virtually all modern website design and development platforms include some sort of blogging platform. As an effective, long term marketing tool, a blog can be leveraged with enormous power to connect with and nurture prospects, and in developing authority and trust in you and your company. It can also help you to control the destiny and branding of your business in the digital world by dictating as much as possible what your online prospects see and understand about you rather than leaving it to others to define you.
Online Visibility: The Competitive Edge
Blogging also provides the means to improve your online visibility by means of providing relevant content around based on your search engine optimization goals by targeting specific search terms and phrases in which your audience is interested, and putting you front and center in search results above your competitors.
Let’s take a quick look at the important points that make a blog a vital part of your marketing efforts. So from a strictly business perspective, why should you care about blogging?
Blogging Helps Establish Your Credibility and Authority
Blogging has the potential to be a platform for important content that establishes you as a local or regional authority in hair restoration with the knowledge and expertise that prospects are looking for as they search for someone they can trust with their hair problems. Blogging on a consistent basis demonstrates your company’s authority, reputation, and trust, as well as familiarity with your prospects needs and wants well beyond the simple recitation of the products and services you offer and showcase elsewhere on your website.
At a much more basic level, studies have shown that businesses with blogs consistently experience significantly more lead growth (up to 126% in some studies) than businesses without blogs (or blogs that are rarely updated).
Blogging is an Excellent Complement to Your Social Media Presence.
Every blog post you create on your website should be created with the idea in mind that it will be shared on a variety of social media channels. Sharing your blog articles on your social media channels exposes your message to a larger audience than it might otherwise have with the potential that it can be shared with others by those who see it and engage with it.
By directing your social media followers and their friends back to your blog page, your website can potentially gain just that much more exposure, allowing new visitors to engage with your blog, discover you and your studio, and add themselves to a potential pool of new sales leads for your studio.
Blogging Enhances Your Websites Search Engine Visibility and Ranking.
When Google announced the introduction of its “Freshness” algorithm update in November 2011, focusing on providing the user a ‘fresher, more recent search results’ experience, the importance of blogging became even more apparent in that Google began to favor websites with fresher content in its search results.
In the world of online marketing, blogging is the most organic way to consistently provide fresh, meaningful content to fuel both your SEO campaign, search visibility, and satisfy your website visitor’s needs.
Brand Positioning on Your Own Terms
Statistically, most searches begin at Google, but not always. One hair replacement studio we know gets a significant portion of its new leads from Yelp. They have lots of great reviews with up to date contact information. But their website hasn’t been updated in years. When Googling their business, their listing doesn’t show any business hours or link to their website.
What does this have to do with blogging? Unfortunately, everything. This studio is not controlling what potential new clients are seeing. In fact, to look at their old, outdated website, you would think they were probably no longer in business. With three other studios in their market area, this studio could rank its website to get to the top of Google search results, position their brand, and push the narrative they want simply by refreshing their website and implementing a regular blog posting schedule.
Blogging: The Bottom Line
When it comes to brand awareness, search ranking, website traffic, and lead generation, it has been demonstrated time and again that blogging is a tool that works.
But while simply having a blog is a great start, keeping it up to date with new, regularly created posts is what makes it most effective. All you need is fresh, regularly curated content driven by an understanding of your website’s visitor interests as shown in your website analytics, and a dedicated team of content developers.
If you haven’t set up a blog on your company’s website, I encourage you to contact your web developer and start planning your blogging strategy today. From a marketing standpoint, it is one of the best investments you will ever make.
