[00:00]
Tobi Alli-Usman: Google will never serve up a website that hasn't been updated to a user, so if you've got a blog...
Cameron: Hi, I'm Cameron from Smooth Digital [Smooth Digital, now Prosperwell], and welcome to Tea with Tobi, the show where I put your home care and care home marketing questions to our very own strategy director, Tobi Alli-Usman. Welcome back to the show, Tobi.
Tobi: Excited to be here.
Cameron: Perfect. Right, let's jump into it with your question for today, Tobi: "I've seen some of the bigger organisations putting blogs on their websites, but I have a smaller franchise. Should I still have a blog, and does it really make a difference?"
Tobi: I can understand why they'd ask that question. As a smaller franchise, they probably have fewer resources available to create these blogs. But the simple answer is yes, you need a blog, and I'll tell you why.
The way users make their purchasing decisions has drastically changed. Take ten years ago: if someone wanted a service, they'd go home, pick up the Yellow Pages, maybe scroll through a couple of different ads, then pick up the phone and speak to a business. When they're speaking to that business, that's the first time they're actually considering whether it's the right business for them. They're asking questions, and if it's not, they'll put the phone down and call the next business.
The way it's changed now is that people go online and search questions, and if a company answers that question with its content, they might think, this company knows what it's talking about. They might read three or four different bits of content before they actually pick up the phone and choose a provider. So that's important.
[02:00]
Cameron: To add to that point about picking up the phone, blogs are available 24/7. You can't call a business outside office hours or at the weekend most of the time, so it gives you that ability to get into the business and buy into it. [inaudible]
Tobi: Spot on. That was actually going to be the second reason. The reason why they say content is king is because it's scalable. You can create digital assets, whether it's a blog or a video, that don't have a shelf life. Even a company with limited resources, let's say they picked ten subjects that are key to the decision-making process when choosing a care provider, and they invest the time in creating it. Once it's on their website, they can push people in that direction, and traffic can come through, but you've done it once and now it's an asset to you.
The third point is the technical part, which is what I was just talking about. The reason Google is doing better than Bing is because Google serves up the most relevant results to users when they search. There are hundreds of thousands of abandoned websites on the internet, but Google will never serve up a website that hasn't been updated to a user. So if you've got a blog and you're consistently updating it, you're telling Google, when someone searches for something, to leave those websites that aren't being updated and look at the ones that are. Without getting technical, you're sending signals to Google's spiders that say there's content on this website, there's new, updated content on this website, and people tend to land on it and spend time on it. That tells Google this website must be relevant.
[04:00]
Tobi: So now you get traffic from those blogs as well, and it's important to note that this is free. This is not your ads. This is your sweat equity ranking you. It's time, that's all it's going to take.
Cameron: Perfect. Well, Tobi, that was three perfect reasons to start a blog, no matter the size of your care business. Until next week, thank you very much for watching. See you next week.
Podcast Sponsor
Prosperwell is the UK’s leading sales and marketing growth partner for private-pay care providers. We help care homes and home care businesses attract and convert more private-pay clients, from the first enquiry through to move-in.
