Do you remember back in the ‘90s when we watched Doogie Howser type out his weblogs on that blue screen? It seemed like a thing only geniuses could do. Now, every business and most people with a hobby have a weblog (blog.) Content is constantly being published online and websites are all vying for that top spot on the search results page.
So the short answer to our question is yes. Your business needs a blog. But there’s a right and a wrong way to blog as a business. The why behind it is a lot to cover—so let’s dive in.
Your Content Should Address Business Goals
Most marketing strategies target a variety of marketing channels like email newsletters and social media posts. Content marketing can get lost in the shuffle, though. Generally, it takes a little longer to see returns on your content investments, which makes it easy to push to the back burner.
What people forget is that content is the coal in your engine. Blog content is constantly fueling your business by driving website traffic and capturing potential customers. Even small businesses can benefit from regularly adding fresh content to their website. And once you’ve created enough content, it will keep bringing eyes to your website for months and years to come.
A business blog can help you convert new customers by providing information that moves leads through the sales funnel. Tactics like pillar pages can present potential customers with the right information in the right place at the right time to support each stage of the customer journey. When combined with other marketing efforts, this can help you reach acquisition or conversion goals.
So even though you might use marketing tools to get the job done, don’t forget that content can be the battery that keeps them going.
Benefits of Business Blogging
Your company blog isn’t all about managing metrics, though. There are countless other benefits to diving into the blogosphere that can benefit your business as a whole.
Boosts SEO
Optimizing the content you post to your business website can work wonders for your SEO. You can craft posts to include specific keywords that make it easier for search engines to find your page and drive traffic there. If you go one step further to address things like search intent and metadata, then you can really boost your search engine rankings.
Aside from just using keywords, you want to focus on creating quality content with lots of internal linking. This helps you to establish your brand as an authority (we’ll talk about that in a second), which makes it more likely you’ll be featured in a Google search. The higher you can rank in results, the more organic traffic you can capture and the more leads you’ll have to work with.
Drives Website Traffic
The main purpose of a blog is to drive website traffic. Where most of your other marketing campaigns will be geared toward a target audience, blog articles are capturing a more general crowd. This is how you reach all those people who aren’t on your email list and start building some brand awareness.
But just because you build it doesn’t mean they’ll come. You have to make your business blogs enticing, and you do that by offering value. Try to answer the questions customers in your industry are asking. Explain complicated processes in a way they can understand. Do a few comparisons to help them make an informed buying decision. When you offer value to readers, you help build trust in your brand and increase the odds they’ll come back to you for help.
Establishes Your Brand as an Authority
Content can also help you become a leader in your industry. The more consistent value you offer to searchers, the more you can show off your expertise about various topics. As you continually show you know your stuff and can help people address various problems, you’ll gain the trust of prospects too.
The type of content you create also helps to establish your brand as experienced and helpful. If you own a hardware store, creating blogs about the best vacation spots in your state won’t convince people to shop with you. Instead, focus your content on areas of your business that help customers and might not be common knowledge.
Maybe you feel like there’s nothing in your industry to write about. Although you might not have obvious topics, there are certain things your customers want to know. Think about common questions your customers ask you or a complex service you can break down and explain. These are simple ways to demonstrate your advanced knowledge, write content relevant to your business, and establish your brand as an authority.
Provides Shareable Content for Social Media
We all know the importance of a social media presence, but you can post only so many pictures of the office dog before people start wanting something more. Your content can serve as a backlog of information to post on your social media platforms. You can condense a blog into a LinkedIn post or post infographics from articles on Instagram. And when you include a link back to the original blog in these posts, you also boost your online presence.
Just like with every other aspect of your brand, customers are looking for value in your social media. Social networks give you an opportunity to make your informative content more engaging. You can ask followers to post in the comments section or tag friends who’d like to subscribe. When you have high-quality content to link to your social media, it can help you boost your customer base.
Drives Long-term Results
Marketing campaigns have a start and end date, meaning there’s a finite window of time to get results. Blogs, on the other hand, can live on your website for years before they need to be reoptimized or revamped for relevance. This means the whole time that article is sitting in your domain, it’s bringing in new readers who become new leads who become new customers.
You can even pair blogging with your other marketing efforts to see long-term results on short-term campaigns. For example, when you launch a new email marketing campaign, you could also create blog content that addresses the topic or product and include links in your emails. When the campaign ends, those posts can stay on your website and keep driving leads to that conversion.
Your blog is the digital marketing tactic you want to have running in the background so you can focus on more targeted strategies for the here and now with the peace of mind that something is always generating leads.
Blogs Benefit Small Businesses
Some small business owners might feel like their brand is too small for a blog. Not true! Every business of any size can benefit from blogging. Even if you rely solely on local clientele, a little search engine optimization never hurt anyone. The SEO benefits of blogging could help you become more discoverable in your community as well as attract out-of-towners.
Blogs are easy ways to foster growth in your business. They make you more visible and create a perceived value around your brand that helps people trust you with their problems. You don’t have to be a mega-corporation to talk about your industry or what you do. You can create an equally effective blog from a WordPress template or a HubSpot web builder. Bring your unique expertise and insights to the table and people will respond positively.
If you’re looking to start adding content to your website, consider partnering with us! We offer a variety of content services to get your blog off the ground or keep it running smoothly. Schedule a call today to see how we can help you build your blog to benefit your business!
