If you’re a small business owner with your own website, chances are you’re wondering whether creating a blog will be beneficial for your business. Well, stop wondering, because we’re here to tell you that a blog is a fantastic tool for any business trying to generate awareness and attention online.
Given the high levels of competition online, it is becoming increasingly important for small businesses to develop their web presence. A blog can be a highly effective and inexpensive way to help you do this.
By providing fresh, unique content, you can develop greater brand awareness, grow inbound marketing efforts, increase organic traffic and establish yourself as an expert in your field.
According to recent inbound marketing report, nearly 80% of companies that use blogging as part of their marketing strategy reported acquiring customers through their blogging efforts. In addition to this, 82% of businesses admitted that blogging was a crucial aspect of their marketing strategies.
If you’re still not convinced, or are even considering dipping your toe into the world of businesses blogging, here are five reasons why blogging would be beneficial for every small business owner.
1. INCREASES SEO TRAFFIC
Search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, love fresh content. This means the more new and engaging content you are publishing via your blog, the more likely you are to be picked up by these search engines. This will, in turn, improves your organic (unpaid) website traffic and search visibility.
Blogs also provide business owners with the opportunity to scatter relevant keywords their customers are searching for throughout their blog content, once again increasing your website’s appeal to search engines.
If the prospect of establishing your own blog and creating content, let alone SEO-specific content, gives you nightmares, then why not consider engaging the services of a professional copywriter? The power of great content should never be underestimated, and if you don’t consider yourself a Wordsmith, then this could be a good choice for you.
A professional copywriter can develop effective SEO content that entices search engines to your site, which increases traffic and, hopefully, grows your conversion rates.
2. IT HUMANISES YOUR BRAND
Even if your website content is well crafted, it still won’t match the character and personality that can be injected into a blog post. Blogging shows your personal side and helps develop and grow your new and pre-existing relationships between you and potential customers.
Blogging gives you a unique opportunity to touch on issues you know may be relevant to your customers, share your voice and give them insight into your businesses (and yourself!), which they would not have otherwise had access to.
Posting regular, stimulating and relevant content allows a level of trust to develop between yourself and the reader. They will feel more open and receptive to your business if they feel as though they know you and can engage with you beyond looking at the ‘Home’ page of your website.
3. ADDS DEPTH AND VALUABLE CONTENT TO YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA INITIATIVES
Without a blog, you may find your social media presence is somewhat lacking when it comes to sharing creative and engaging content. While sharing other people’s content on your own social media platforms is fine, after a while it may start to dilute your own brand and may even take traffic away from your website, rather than directing leads back to your own page.
Your blog can be viewed as your ‘Home Base’, and your social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, as your ‘Outposts’. These Outposts serve the purpose of channelling traffic directly back to your Homebase – AKA, your website.
This means that as you share your blog posts on social media, you increase traffic to your business website – a feat that would be much harder without the highly-relevant, engaging information found in your blog posts.
Engaging blog content can also act as great email newsletter content. This means you can add links within your newsletter to highlight any of your best blog content as a way to further engage your audience.
Remember, when it comes to marketing your business and brand, you need to make sure your offering your potential leads some form of free, valuable content, such as information and entertainment in the form of blog content. This will help increase your likability and strengthen your rapport with existing and potential customers.
4. ESTABLISHES YOU AS AN AUTHORITY IN YOUR INDUSRTY
A blog is a fantastic way to help establish yourself or your business as an expert in your specific field. By creating informative, industry-related content, you’ll be placing yourself in your potential customer’s minds as a well-informed, professional source of information. This will reflect positively on the products and services that you offer.
As you build up authority in your niche, you will strengthen the sense of trust and familiarity between the prospect and your brand, keeping you at the forefront of their mind when they are ready to buy, allowing you to increase your conversion rates.
This brings us nicely to the next point…
5. INCREASES CONVERSION RATES
If you are consistently posting content, this is a sign that your website and business are alive and flourishing. With the regular posting of blog content, you are likely to harbour a greater following and better brand awareness, which, more often than not, results in more conversions.
In a report published by HubSpot last year, it was reported that businesses which made their blog a priority, saw their Return On Investment grow by 13 times the initial size after just one year of blogging.
If that isn’t proof enough of the benefits of blogging for small businesses, then we don’t know what is!
As you can see, when it comes to promoting your small business online, creating a blog is an inexpensive and invaluable marketing tool. It allows you to open up and engage with potential customers in ways you never previously could, helps humanise your brand, makes you more visible to Search Engines and can help increase your conversion rate.
If you’re toying with the idea of blogging, we would suggest you stop hesitating and do it. Take a deep breath, dive in and start promoting your businesses with this truly effective strategy.