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What is the purpose of blogging?

If you ask this question to someone who prescribes to the inbound marketing methodology versus someone who doesn’t, you’ll get very different answers. 

Here are the types of responses I would expect:

• The Non-Inbounder: To write about our industry, get web views, and build SEO.
• The Inbounder: To establish industry expertise, build brand awareness, increase SEO, and promote content to drive traffic back to our site, get conversions, and fill up our pipeline to continue marketing to prospects.

Pretty different, right? While one has a very basic understanding of the importance of blogging, the other knows how to harness the power of blogging and incorporate it with other marketing efforts.

Here are some things a blog built on the inbound marketing methodology will have that others may overlook. 

1. CTAs 

I would say this is the number one thing you’ll notice that’s different between non-inbound and inbound blogs. That’s because calls to action are incredibly important to inbound marketing: they’re the touch point that starts the prospect off on their journey (from CTA to landing page to gated asset download to additional marketing down the road).

On inbound-friendly blogs, you’ll likely notice CTAs at the end of blog posts and on blog sidebars.

2. Visual Cohesion

Inbound marketers know the importance of visual appeal. That’s why they spend time selecting the right images for their posts and ensuring everything is on-brand. 

On your average blog, you’ll find images that are way left field and seemingly inconsistent with others. You’ll notice that a lot of the pictures or graphics don’t fit the company’s “image” or are inconsistent with their brand. Inbound-friendly blogs, on the other hand, will ensure everything is in line with the “look and feel” they want to portray as a business. 

3. Always Offering Value 

Another big difference between an inbound-friendly and your average blog is that inbound-based blogs are always offering value. On blogs that aren’t based around the inbound marketing methodology, you’ll often notice that the subject matter isn’t very focused and posts aren’t always helpful. 

The entire point of blogging, from an inbound perspective, is to always be offering value to your target audience. This way, you can begin to build credibility and become a go-to resource within your specific industry. Prospects then seek you and your insight out. Essentially, your blog promotes itself!

Conclusion

Of course blogging is incredibly important for SEO purposes—and you should be following SEO best practices when writing blog posts—but this shouldn’t be its sole purpose.

If you too decide to adopt the inbound marketing methodology for your own company blog, you’ll soon notice that it can be so much more than a place to publish your most recent thoughts on whatever topic comes to mind. Your blog can become a central powerhouse for all of your marketing efforts, attracting a dedicated following and accounting for a ton of lead conversions!