The concept was simple – sharing aspects of your life, your likes and dislikes, on a public platform. It is this ease of sharing information which has driven our digital revolution and led to the popularity of blogging.

What Is Blogging & What Are Blogs?

In their simplest form, blogs are a series of web pages containing a wide variety of primarily written content. From tutorials and ‘how-to’ guides, to extended essays and daily diaries – there is no end to the different types of content contained within a blog. As platforms have evolved, so too have our blogging habits. From micro-blogging on Twitter to video blogging (or vlogging) via YouTube.

Read More: 14 Content Types to Inspire Your Content Marketing Plan

Key Point: It is easy to assume that blogging and content marketing are the same thing. However whilst blogs often remain a fundamental part of any content marketing strategy, they are just one part of a far wider reaching approach.

What Is Content Marketing?

If marketing is the representation of your brand across every possible touch point, content marketing is the message you send at every turn. In the digital sphere, this encompasses all online communications – email, social media, ebooks, infographics, websites, blogs, video, animation, photography – the list goes on. Content marketing is both what your brand says and how it says it.

Read More: How To Create The Perfect Piece of Bedrock Content

The reason that the sure and steadfast blog remains such a solid foundation for content marketing strategy is quite simple – it has the unique advantage of perpetuating both push and pull marketing strategy. The content on your blog can be used to entice customers and prospects onto your website or to complete a specific call-to-action via email and social media (push marketing) whilst also promoting your product or service via online advertising (pull marketing).

Why Is Content Marketing Important?

Well sure that’s nifty isn’t it, but why is it important? We’ve talked in the past about the importance of writing for both people and Google. However with every passing day Google is becoming more and more sophisticated, meaning that your content marketing strategy really needs to up its game.

While we’ve known for a long time that regularly updated websites are likely to perform better in terms of organic visibility, the game changer really came when Google started punishing websites for filling their pages with irrelevant, distracting, thin or scraped content, stuffed full of keywords. This means that to gain organic visibility and climb your way up Google’s search results you need to regularly create authentic, good quality, keyword optimised content.

Read More: How To Get Your Content Noticed Online