Are blogs really that important?

As a former journalist, I have always been all about the press releases, the news articles and the features. I enjoy writing about something that is new, has just happened or is about to happen. So when faced with blog writing for my clients, I admit to wrinkling up my nose and wondering what the point was.

The point, as is the case for so many PR and marketing professionals, is Google. What Google wants, Google tends to get. Google wants us to be experts in our fields and blogs, infographics, white papers and the like prove we know what we are talking about and that we are a credible source for our website visitors.
What Google may have failed to suss out is that not everyone is a born writer. Blogs take writing and it is fine if you are talking about your day to day life or expressing an opinion. However, to be an actual, real expert takes knowledge.

I work for a number of B2B clients that sell technical solutions that are way over my head. However, the pre sales personnel and engineers that design the solutions have not got the time and or the inclination to crack out a blog on a weekly basis.

But that’s where a journalistic background comes into its own. If you ask the right questions – usually starting with What is it, and What does it do?, and chuck in a few Whys – the beginnings of a story starts to take shape culminating in an expert-fuelled blog written in plain English. Now you’re talking!

Granted, this is not a simple process and can be quite painful at times, but it is worth it... which brings me back to the point of this blog. Having unwrinkled my nose and got my head down to embrace life as a geeky blogger, I began to see some results.

Every blog I have written for my clients has been linked to from Twitter, LinkedIn, and if suitable, Facebook. The results were slow at first but slowly but surely Twitter and LinkedIn have become our most efficient referral sites and traffic to the websites where my blogs have been published has increased. Even more exciting, in a geeky way, the amount of new visitors to these sites rocketed.

So to answer my own question... blogs on their own are all very well and good, but they are simply fine and dandy when they produce increased traffic and new visitors. In terms of Google rankings, my clients certainly have not suffered and have survived the cull dished out by their Penguins and Pandas. More people than ever are finding these websites, maybe not by searching via Google but from being inspired by my expert – ahem – blogs.