The cannabis industry as a whole is thriving on a few different fronts. However, many businesses in the cannabis industry are falling short in one particularly important area — Many cannabis businesses aren’t keeping and maintaining a dedicated cannabis blog. In some ways, this comes as no surprise when you consider how many newcomers there are. Most newcomers are choosing to put their focus on things like listing and menu sites and of course social media. But a cannabis blog, while important, often gets left out of the marketing plan even though blogging carries a ton of benefits and advantages, such as technical improvements with SEO and of course higher traffic and a better level of brand awareness.
Here we’ve compiled a few key highlights of the benefits of running a cannabis blog, and why we strongly recommend that you maintain a blog for your cannabis brand or dispensary.
1. Blogging naturally helps you with all that yucky technical stuff.
SEO is an essential part of marketing any business online, but it’s especially true for cannabis companies and dispensaries that are restricted with their marketing in a lot of ways. Since cannabis brands aren’t allowed to use paid ads (or depending on your state’s laws, ANY ads), blogging has become the best way to improve cannabis SEO. Cannabis brands have to work hard to make sure their leads are coming in organically since they can’t rely on paid efforts.
If you think about it, you realize that the best cannabis blogs are the ones that do it all. The ones that report on events in the cannabis industry along with company culture, internal news, and of course content designed to attract, entertain, or educate prospective buyers.
Blogs are always providing fresh new keywords and website updates that can’t be accomplished by simply updating the home page, since most website pages won’t’ be updated nearly as much as a blog. Additional benefits include:
– Creating more backlinks to the website if the content is shared
– Creating more opportunities for internal linking (referencing old blog content in new blogs)
– Having fresh, new content (which helps Google algorithms rank your site’s authority)
– Allowing you to rank for a specific set of keywords and phrases
– Increasing traffic, which allows you to capture more leads and opportunities
2. Blogging lets you showcase why you got into the business in the first place.
The cannabis industry is a competitive place, so we know you’re passionate. But what about the people who are just finding out about your brand or the ones who simply haven’t interacted with you yet? It’s all about that passion. Think about the trigger that started the fire in your heart to pursue a business in the cannabis industry. Are you bringing that into everything you do with your brand? At the very least, this should extend to your blog. Your blog is going to be the best way for you to reach your online prospects and speak human-to-human with them. You can blog about pretty much anything, and you should make sure you sound human in your written words. Your content should also provide some sort of value to your prospects AND your customers.
Apart from the technical stuff like metrics and SEO performance, a blog is helpful to people. People tend to remember brands if the brand provides them with something valuable, like a blog article that sparks their interests, triggers an emotional response, or educates them in some way. Relevant content that people find useful tends to get shared, which helps with technical stuff, and the way people are perceiving your brand to be.
3. A good cannabis blog speaks to readers in a different way than other forms of content will ever be able to.
The cannabis industry is full of movers shakers and doers. These innovative pioneers are always busy improving the industry by launching new products, opening new storefront locations, creating new strains, etc. Most of the time, we receive this sort of news via social media, where most of the cannabis industry is highly active in showcasing their products, services, and company culture.
However, most social channels leave something to be desired when it comes to adding context and background information to your posts. This is especially true on Twitter where there is a character limit. Your marketing channels need to have space where you can elaborate on your operations, and social media simply won’t cut it.
Don’t get me wrong, social media is great for a multitude of other things, like viewer interactions and quick easy communication with your customers. There just simply isn’t enough space to say everything you need to stay, and still retain the attention of the average social media scroller, who looks at a post for approximately 3 seconds before scrolling further down the news feed.
This is where your blog comes in. Your blog provides that space where you can actually go into detail on your updates or share extra information and additional content. For example, you can showcase your internal affairs by talking about what awards you’re winning, or which publication just did a spread on you or what’s happening with growth and expansion. You can also share the latest cannabis research to attract medical prospects and people who prefer to be educated on the subject. You can also share in-depth product reviews about the newest product you received in store and plan on selling to customers. The best part is you don’t have to limit yourself to 280 characters.
Blogging like you should be
In theory, running a blog is one of the easiest things you can do to aid your marketing efforts. The problem is maintenance. A blog is a time-consuming task that requires a lot of thought, planning, and action. Every post I share on this website takes me about 20 minutes to research and fact check, another hour to write, an additional 15 minutes to proofread and publish. Then I need to prepare at least 7 social media posts and schedule them to our Facebook and Twitter profiles which takes about 20 minutes, and another 15-30 to create images to go along with the posts. All in all, I spend somewhere between 2 to 2 ½ hours on each blog post, and I try to have one published every week. This is, of course, my whole job. In the hustle and bustle of day to day operations in a cannabis business, however, there isn’t always 2 hours to spare!
We see cannabis brands start off very well with their blogging all the time, but after a few weeks, they tend to fizzle out. When this happens, businesses tend to lose traffic and occasionally customers who become regular readers. Don’t let that happen to your brand. Always follow through.
If you need help keeping your fans informed by maintaining your cannabis blog, Team Maryjane is a Denver-based cannabis marketing firm that is dedicated to helping your cannabis brand rise above your competitors with cutting-edge marketing tactics. You’re only a simple phone call or email away from expert help with blogging, SEO, and the rest of your marketing needs,