Your website is about more than displaying your products. Adding an active blog establishes that you want a deeper dialogue with your customers.
If you are currently developing a new website for your business or are thinking about updating your existing site then make sure that you don’t forget to build a blog into your marketing plan. As well as being a very powerful way to help visitors to discover your website, it’s great at helping to build trust, and it makes keeping in touch with customers much easier.
We list 28 benefits showing why your business needs a blog:
1. It helps your site to be found in Google
Getting found in Google is a top priority for all online businesses. Having an active, relevant blog can provide a powerful impact on your search engine ranking. New blog posts being placed on your website make Google happy in its quest to find fresh content. The blog tends to stick to a central theme, which means there is going to be a topical keyword density and relevance. The more blog posts you write, the more pages you create for Google to index. These things combine to improve your natural search engine rankings.
2. Create networking opportunities
Blog connections can lead to finding interns, suppliers and partners. You can create networking opportunities you never knew existed. It is not just clients and customers who will find you via your blog but also potential business partners. And if you successfully position yourself as an expert, you may even find that speaking, consulting and writing opportunities come your way too.
3. Drive traffic to your site
The search engine friendliness of your blog, plus your promotion of it via social networks, will keep the traffic coming. Ideally, your blog will be on the same domain as your business website and integrated with it.
4. Reach a wider market
More people can find you in more ways if you have a blog. It helps you reach out to a wider (global) audience.
5. Stand out from the crowd
If your competitors don’t blog, this is an opportunity to stand out in your niche. Your business will have the distinct advantage and set you apart from other competitors in your field.
6. Know your business and industry inside out
The act of blogging forces you to be clear on your company’s position on certain issues in your industry. Doing research, fact checking, writing and re-writing helps you to understand a subject more fully.
7. Reward employees – let them shine
Shine a spotlight on brilliant employees by featuring their ideas and accomplishments on your blog.
8. Marketing integration
Turn content from your blog into useful sales and marketing materials. Printed material can be expensive and is often a dead end, but through a blog post, customers can continue investigating and learning. It will always be up to date.
9. Create a database of answers
Do you have the same questions asked about your product or service? Blog about frequently asked customer questions. Use links to those posts to save time when answering future questions. It will create a very useful database of answers that will be referred to often.
10. Lots of opportunities to recycle your content
This is one of the beauties of having a blog. Your blog content can be cost-effectively repurposed for newsletters, reports, whitepapers and other publications.
11. Humanize your brand
There is probably no more powerful and cost effective way to show the ‘softer’ human side of your business than storytelling through a blog. It engages the readers and shows them that there are real people behind the professional image of your brand.
12. Sign of activity
A current blog confirms to visitors and potential clients that your website is updated and relevant. It gives them the confidence to buy from you.
13. Build Trust
A blog helps you to build trust with your potential customers and clients. Things have changed. Today people trust people and small businesses that they can relate to rather than in large faceless organisations. We choose to do business with people we know, like and trust. Your blog is an important way for people to get to know you and your company.
14. Build business relationships
People want to engage with those they know, like and trust and that other businesses look for the same attributes before they decide to do business with you. Writing online allows companies that you want to do business with to get to know you before they even meet you. Many companies are turning employees into blogging rock stars to support marketing efforts.
15. Customer Engagement
Creating a dialogue and engaging with your customers can lead to powerful business benefits. Why not have customers contribute posts?
16. PR
Tweets and Facebook status updates probably aren’t going to attract the attention of reporters. However publishing helpful blog posts will. They will be able to see that you and your business is an authority in your niche.
17. Solve problems
Some companies are using their blogs to crowd-source technical problem solving. It will become the ‘go-to’ site in the industry and build a huge amount of credibility and trust.
18. New product development ideas
A hot trend is using the blog platform to deliver new product and service ideas. You can quickly determine whether your new product or service has legs or not saving you a lot of time and money.
19. Market segmentation
Many companies, especially in high tech, have multiple blogs to reach customers by different interest, demographic and geography.
20. Identify your brands raving fans
Blog readers may be among your brands most powerful fans. They are the ones who read your blog posts and take the time to comment on them. These are your best customers and advocates and you need to treat them well.
21. Constant customer connection
Calling on customers is expensive. But a blog post can be a little ‘sales call’ every week. It keeps you in touch with them and reminds them why they are using your product or service and that you still care. It is a terrific after-sales strategy.
22. Position yourself as an expert in your field
Is your company the industry leader? Demonstrate your voice of leadership on your blog. By writing insightful, quality posts, and providing useful information for your community, you can be seen as an expert in your niche, whether that is tax, law, dentistry or fitness.
23. Test ideas
Need to take a position or develop new ideas? Why not test it with the blog community first and use their feedback to help you to create the perfect product or service that they want. It is the perfect product research tool and helps you to keep closer to your target audience so that you are aware of what they want.
24. Use posts to compile chapters for a book or report
Many companies cleverly piece together blog posts to create larger publications such as reports, Kindle books and white papers.
25. Establish emotional connection
Blogging’s ability to connect through a story is powerful – especially for non-profits. It helps customers to get to know you and your brand and identify with it.
26. Social proof
Simply having a consistent blog sends a message that your company ‘gets’ social media.
27. Crisis management
If you have a blog, you don’t have to rely on the press to get a story straight. Your blog can put the facts out there to defend your brand.
28. Build a community
A blog is a great starting point for building your online community. Every online business needs a community in order to thrive. It helps build customer relationships and a loyal following for your brand. Once you have a niche community following, you will be able to find a way to monetise them later by selling them products and services that fit with their interests.
Start blogging today…
As you can see, despite being the oldest of the social media platforms, blogging still has so many advantages and has lots to offer.
Think of your company blog as central to the social media content that you share elsewhere, and you will reap the benefits.
A company blog really is a fantastic way to promote your business and engage with your customers and will help you to reach a massive audience.
If you don’t have a blog but can see the huge potential of having one, or you would like assistance on how to get the most potential of your existing blog then you need to talk to us. We have lots of experience and fantastic ideas and strategies to share with you. We look forward to hearing from you.