Get Your Blog ON! 6 compelling reasons why your job shop needs an active blog

A lot of job shop owners still view blogging as just a hobby or a simple online journal… and though the concept of blogging may have started that way back in the 1990s, today it is something far different. Coupled with a strong website and active social media presence, blogging has grown and evolved into a powerful customer acquisition and sales-boosting marketing tool that is very valuable to engineers.

As an industrial job shop your ideal customers are most likely engineers – people who are both creative as well as analytical and are constantly looking for new ways to do their jobs more efficiently. Since you are in the business of providing optimized solutions to engineers, you serve them best by providing them with plenty of content to help them get the true picture of how you are the expert they are looking for.

Basically, engineers are looking for and want to read your company’s blogs! Engineers are looking for online content that will help them produce their product or part in the easiest and most efficient way possible and they want to work with companies that have the resources and technology to produce what they need efficiently, on-time, and with great communication and customer service.

Maintaining an active, well-written, focused blog gives your industrial manufacturing website more rich content and helps boost your other online and offline marketing efforts, generate more web traffic, and more qualified leads. How?

Blogs humanize your brand and business

With a blog you are basically having a short “conversation” with the reader on a particular subject. That perception makes your company feel more “human” to the reader; as if they are getting to know you which helps them feel more connected to your products and services. A blog helps you to open up valuable communication lines with your customers or prospects. Through your blog you have the opportunity to not only talk with your prospects about their pain-points but also your company’s working environment, more information on your products and services, more on the industries you serve, employee spotlights and achievements, environmental initiatives, certifications, upgrades, expansions, trade show or talk presences, and so much more. The closer people feel to your company, the more likely they are to stay a customer of yours.

A blog also shows people that you are open to discussion, feedback, and potentially even criticism. Feedback directly from potential customers on a blog (either positive or negative) can help you better refine your posts or even your offerings.

A blog will help you build and maintain authority

The more valuable content that you can produce and distribute in the marketplace the more authority you’ll gain in your industry and amongst your peers and prospects. Writing and posting articles about various aspects of your specific industrial business shows your customers or potential customers just how much of an expert you are in your field. Your blog can be your personal platform for sharing industry-related problems or pain points that your company has learned to solve for other customers. It builds authority and trust in your company. Your site then becomes the go-to for engineers looking for information in your field, builds their trust in you, makes your company more familiar and personal to them, and keeps you in their thoughts which will make them turn to you when they are ready to buy.

It supports your social media campaigns

Maintaining active social media channels is challenging and is also quite a lot of work. We aren’t simply talking about Facebook or Twitter either. Most of your engineering clients are on LinkedIN and so should your company! You can simply share other people’s content but your goal with social media should really be to get engineers onto your company’s website… so sharing other people’s content, linked to their sites, is not going to get anyone over to your website. Writing your own content gives you tons of great social media post material. You can then share your own content through your social channels which will funnel people back to your website to read the full article or to find out more information about your company. Your social posts make fantastic backlinks right to your website that also help boost your organic SEO.

Your blog will boost your overall website traffic

Your company’s website is not a static item on the web; it is an ever-changing body of work that needs constant updates. Those updates aren’t limited to back-end functionality or security either; you need to have dynamic and current content. Search engines, like Google, place a much higher value on websites that are being updated regularly with new content. They use that as a sign of authority on the web and so they place a high value on this in their search algorithms. Which is exactly why blogging is such an incredibly powerful tool that will bring in more organic traffic to your website from search engines. Regular, relevant posting shows search engines that your site is active, that you are focused on the customer’s experience, and that you know a lot about your industry.

Over the years, we have found that the most read/viewed pages on our client’s websites are their blog posts. An active blog drives traffic to your site, particularly if you target the content of your posts to your SEO search terms. Your prospective clients will find your posts and the posts will appear at or near the top of their search.

Blogs create inbound links to your site

Link building and creating top quality links that point right back to your main website is one of the main goals of anyone’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization) efforts (the organic search traffic we touched on above). Sharing your blog links through other marketing efforts (like social posts, link sharing with related companies, online industry directories, and interactive digital publications) boosts your site’s back links which also boosts your overall SEO rankings.

A blog helps you generate qualified leads

As an industrial job shop, your primary objectives are to be the optimized solution provider for your customers, by helping them get their job done with the greatest degree of expertise that makes them look good. You are selling your ability to solve a specific problem for an engineer using your particular products, manufacturing methods, and expertise. A recent study stated that on average a company site with a blog produces 67% more leads per month than a similar company’s site without an active blog. Another study on inbound marketing stated that 80% of industrial companies that use blogs as part of their marketing efforts saw a huge increase in customer acquisition from their blogging efforts.

Blogs focus on content and allows for interaction; it is a fantastic way to connect with your customers and prospects; it gives you a platform to showcase not only your offerings but also who you are as a company. Engineers place incredibly high importance on the quality of your website – not to mention how much information it contains and how current the content is on the site. Blogs are an ideal way to add new and fresh updates constantly to your site.

5 Quick Key Tips For Blogging

1. Make sure the content is valuable to your target audience
2. Use compelling titles and relevant keywords
3. Grab attention with a good introduction
4. Keep it short and sweet
5. Make it personal – share real stories and insights

Need assistance? Let us help!

With over 30 years of experience, The Rico Group specializes in helping industrial manufacturers and job shops grow their business and diversify their customer base. We know how engineers think and what they are looking for. We know your processes, equipment, and materials. We also know that you have very little time to take away from your production and getting your customer’s orders delivered.

Interested to see what your current digital marketing efforts are really doing for your company?

We offer a free comprehensive analysis of your company’s online marketing to give you insights into what your true digital footprint is and how you can improve it. The report also comes with an in-depth competitor analysis and a free expert consultation to review the report with you and answer any questions you may have.

Get your free report here> http://www.thericogroup.com/FreeAudit/

Also, please grab a free copy of our comprehensive digital marketing success guide to help you accelerate your job shop’s growth. The guide walks you through the process of generating more qualified leads for your industrial manufacturing company.

Grab your free copy now: https://www.thericogroup.com/industrial/

Grow your business with better marketing with The Rico Group.

www.thericogroup.com

 (805) 497-7401