Not only can blogging connect you with your customers, build relationships, increase brand awareness and generate sales leads, but it does so efficiently, effectively and measurably. By consistently publishing fresh, relevant blog content that incorporates targeted keywords and phrases, you’re improving your organic search rankings and attracting more traffic from search engines like Google. This, in turn, increases your bank’s visibility and exposure to those potential customers who are actively searching the World Wide Web for financial information and services. • Building Relationships and Trust: Consistent blogging provides regular touchpoints for a community bank’s customer experience. By taking on common questions, concerns and challenges faced by customers through your blog, you’re demonstrating your understanding of your customers’ needs. Over time, this too fosters trust and loyalty among customers, leading to long-term relationships. • Showcasing Community Involvement: In addition to providing financial insights and advice, blog articles also offer community banks an opportunity to showcase their involvement in the community and highlight their values and corporate social responsibility initiatives. By blogging about employees and customers who are “stars” and your participation in charitable community events, you can demonstrate your commitment to making a positive impact in your community. Doing so strengthens your bank’s brand and the perception that you are a caring and responsible corporate citizen. • Driving Long-Term Results: Hubspot says, “Imagine you sit down for an hour on Sunday to write and publish a blog post. Let’s say that blog post gets you 100 views and 10 leads on Monday. You get another 50 views and five leads on Tuesday, as a few more people find it through social media. But after a couple of days, most of the fanfare from that post dies down, and you’ve netted 150 views and 15 leads. It’s not over.” Since that post is now ranking, it means that for days, weeks, months and years to come, you can continue to get traffic from that blog post. That’s because a blog post can bring traffic to your site long after its first posted. In fact, according to Hubspot, “About 90% of the leads we generate every month come from blog posts published in previous months. Sometimes years ago.” • Benefiting From Flexibility: Obviously, your social media marketing consists of, well, social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram. Every time you create and post a blog, you’re creating content that 1) you can share across your social platforms and 2) people who see it can share with each other. So, with blogging, you’re not only strengthening your social reach with the blog itself. You’re also creating a web of engagement points that connect with each other and ultimately lead everyone you’ve engaged right to your website. Is this a comprehensive treatise on blog posting? No. There are a number of additional benefits to blogging that we haven’t discussed here. And there are a number of companies out there that can advise you on how to get the most out of your blogging, from software and templates to guidance on creating a blogging editorial calendar. My hope here is that you’ve learned just enough about blogging “to be dangerous,” as the saying goes. It’s a terrific tool for engaging customers and generating leads, so get out there and give it a try! Utah Banker 15
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