Why have a blog for your business?
These days, if you run a business there's a high probability you already have a website. It may even have a blog section, abandoned with the dust and cobwebs. Because when you're busy keeping sales coming in and products going out, there's simply not enough time to blog too.
You may even wonder whether it's worth having a blog on your website any more. Hasn't video and social media replaced the humble blog?
Read my post 'Is blogging dead?' for the answer to that question.
It will come as no surprise to read that I'm a huge fan of business blogs. After all, writing Google-friendly blog posts is my day job!
But it does come with a caveat or two.
Having a dusty old abandoned blog section is worse than not having one at all. Think about it. If you search for a business and see their most recent blog post was from 5 years ago, you'd question how current everything else was.
It's also important to have a strategy behind your blog linked to your marketing goals. If you're an outdoor adventure provider, customers will want to read about outdoor adventures. But if you're a business centre, customers will want to see business blogs.
Publishing regular blog posts is a great marketing tactic to get people to your website. But there are loads of great reasons for business blogging. Read on for ten of my favourites.
1. Building relationships with your customers
Your blog is a great way to connect with customers. By informing, educating, entertaining, and inspiring, you can capture their interest. And you can show more personality in a blog post than on your web pages.
Responding to readers' comments means you're having direct conversations with potential customers. And that, in turn, helps to build trust and rapport. So they're more likely to remember you when they come to buy.
2. Driving traffic to your website
"Build it and they will come"
Sounds great doesn't it. But, especially if you're a new business, it takes a little work for people to find your website. You could go down the Google Ads route and pay for people to land on your website. But, that on its own can be a short-term strategy. Once you stop advertising, people stop getting shown your site.
Regularly updating your blog with interesting content, will give people a reason to keep coming back. Once there, you can add links to other parts of your site and encourage them to take a good look around.
3. Establishing you as an expert
Blogs are a great way to show your knowledge and expertise. By talking about new innovations in your sector, or sharing tips, people will trust that you know your stuff.
Readers (potential customers) may even start seeking out your name to learn new things. We all have favourite go-to sites when searching for information. And these readers become loyal followers. It puts you at the top of their list if they're ever in the market for what you're selling.
4. Helping your SEO
Regular blog posts are great to help your website rank higher with search engines. Read my SEO for Beginners blog post to learn more.
In a nutshell, search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc) look for websites which answer searchers' questions. They also like to know that a website is up to date. So publishing fresh, relevant, and useful content can help drive organic (unpaid) traffic to your website.
Keywords are also important to help search engines categorise and rank blog posts. It's important for blog writers to understand where and how to use keywords. Get it wrong and your website could be penalised.
5. Keeping your audience up to date
Blogs are a great way to share discounts, new product lines and business changes. You can use your blog to create social media posts too. But, unlike social media, your blog will not disappear off feeds due to algorithms.
Case studies and how-to guides are also a great way to use your blog. These posts can teach or explain your products and services in more detail.
6. Building your email database
Many of us abandoned the humble blog to concentrate on social media. But, we never own our social media profiles. For example, Twitter could shut down at any time. If that happens, you lose all your follower connections and details.
By building an email list, you'll create a group of interested people which is completely in your control. Offering helpful information and give-aways encourages people to join your email list. Then, you can share new blog posts, offers, and sale information so they don't miss out.
Grab my free guide to blogging here
7. Helping you to get more social exposure
Many of us find that social media is a difficult beast to tame. We're often at the mercy of ever-changing algorithms. Remember when Instagram decided to focus on short videos (Reels) instead of images.
Blog posts will give you some great content to repurpose and share in different ways on social media. I even wrote a blog post about how to repurpose one blog post into twenty pieces of social media content.
And your followers will share with their own friends and followers. It widens your audience and brings more people to your website.
8. Generating a passive income for your business
Providing regular and valuable content for readers will build trust. Meaning they will trust your judgement when recommending other products and services.
Affiliate marketing pays you a commission every time someone clicks your link to buy. It benefits everyone. The reader gets trusted recommendations for a product or service they need. The company gets more people seeing their offer, meaning more sales. And you get to help people by sharing the things you love - building a passive income in the process.
9. Helping people find things on your website
Adding internal links on your blog posts will help readers find other things which they may find helpful.
It's great when your website is large or complex. But it's equally useful for smaller sites. If someone is new to your website, they have no idea what kind of information you're providing. So make their life easy and share links to help them find where to go next.
As a bonus, it's great for SEO as it will keep readers on your website for longer.
10. Giving you long-term exposure
Social media has a short lifespan. Often anything from 6 to 48 hours. Emails tend to get deleted after reading. But blog posts, especially evergreen (which are not date bound) stay around.
It works like this.
You publish your blog post. People read it, meaning an increase in traffic to your website. That leads to a higher search engine ranking. That means more people get shown your blog post when searching for that topic. Which means more people on your website. And repeat!
Blog posts published years ago can still bring new readers to your website. My outdoor blog, for example, has a blog post published in 2014 which still has a high search ranking.
What next?
Business blogs help increase your website traffic. They boost your search engine ranking. They build trust and credibility. They help share your brand. And you can create a passive income.
But there is an art to good blogging and I know many business owners struggle to find the time to blog. Some may find it difficult to write and articulate their marketing messages.
The great news is that you can hire someone to do it for you. As a content writer, I create blog posts tailored to your business, your brand, your tone of voice and your customers. In other words, they're written as if they've come from you.
Want to know more? I'd love to have a 30 min virtual coffee chat about how blogging can help your business.