How Can A Beer Company Boost Traffic For Blog Content?

      Nowadays, content marketing becomes a popular way to deliver brand messages to reach online customers. Contents can help online customers to know about a brand and its products. Content Marketing Study finds that "95 percent of chief marketing officers (CMOs) say content marketing is important to their businesses in 2014. " I feel that digital marketing is more and more competitive now. Thus, building and creating valuable contents are very important part in a company strategy. 

     Many of us may like to search fashion products from online because shopping online is very convenience. Fashion is in our life. In addition, fashion covers multiple customer segments. In different seasons, new fashion trends would come to attract our interests. We would like to buy new clothes in different seasons.

    However, not a lot customers like to search beer information as much as search fashion. Beer products target on an limited customer segment, and most target customers are male. Not all the beer customers drink beer everyday. If I want to search beer online, I like to start reading beer blog before searching products. I believe company will share the latest news or products on its blog.

      Thus, in the competitive content marketing, how could a beer company boost online traffic for its blog contents? From "11 Ways to Boost Traffic to Your Company Blog", I learn some good ideas to recommend on beer content marketing.

#1. Show the blog on Homepage

       It is important to show the blog on company's homepage because it can drive people attentions. For me, if I see a "Blog" title on homepage, I like to click on it and start reading. I feel blog is the heart of company website. It can connect everything between brand inside news and outside customers. It encourages customers to deeply learn a brand. 

      MillerCoors is a good example to show its blog. On its homepage, it displays the blog just next to the social media icons. It is easy to encourage customers to read its blog even before to check its Facebook. 

      Thus, I recommend beer companies to show blogs on the homepage either on the top of the page or on the side of the page. If company likes to show the blog on the side of homepage, it would be better to list the top blog news. People can select the article directly from the list.


#2. Build visualized content with video and picture

       Building a great content is not easy. The Content Study shows that, "Ninety-five percent of survey respondents say creating and finding new, timely, and engaging content is one of their biggest challenges."

       Beer company can adding pictures and/or videos on the post to demonstrate its main points of content. Videos and pictures can drive customers toward contents. They can also increase customer engagement with the brand.

      "Hammarby Syndrome" is a very visualized post on Brooklyn Brewery Blog . It inserts a short video to describe the main point of story. After I watched the video, I would like to continue to read the post to find more information. Using video or picture can help customers quickly get key points of story and engaged with brand. In addition, customers can easy to remember the brand if they like the video.

# 3. Able to Share

      If a company wants to increase its brand or blog awareness, I guess the cheapest and most effective way is to share via social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Firstly, Facebook and Twitter are very popular social tools, which have million online users. Secondly, people like to share what they read with their friends on social media. It would be smart to leverage social media channels to promote  brand blogs. Adding "Share" bottom will turn online users to be its potential distribution team.

      Brooklyn Brewery Blog highlights its social media icon to encourage people to share its blog. The orange social media icons are very outstanding on the blog page. It is difficult to avoid them.

      
      Guinness also encourages customers to share its beer products with friends. It can help potential customers know the product directly. And, if people are interested in a product, they will automatically go to search the brand. 

      Besides social media channel, beer company can also promote its blog in relevant communities such as Mr. Beer, Great Brewers, and Beer Menus. It helps beer company to reach more potential online customers. It is also an effective way to catch beer lovers and to encourage them to explore the blog.

      Overall, in order to drive more blog traffic, company firstly needs to focus on its brand style. If people feel they belong to the style, they would like to read the stories and follow the brand. Styles can help company to build loyalty. Secondly, in content building, company should not only focus on "what is your product", but it should also focus on "why people should believe in it". By adding relevant video or pictures, it can help customers to understand why they should believe the product. At the end, company needs to leverage social media power to promote its blog and reach more customers.