The Benefits of Blogging for Business
Why is it important to have a business blog? Blogging once was a platform that allowed individuals to voice their opinions in an ungated way. Blogging has since evolved into a necessary tool for businesses to stay current and visible amongst customers and prospects. Let’s explore the various benefits of business blogging.
Reason #1: Blogging boosts search engine optimization. Search engines such as Google and Bing reward websites that publish new/fresh content by sending more site visitors their way. By publishing blog pots regularly, you’re building out the resources that your website offers, giving search engine more reason to connect searchers with your site. An interesting fact is that blog posts should be written in a conversational way so that visitors can easily understand the writing. Some mistakenly believe that blog posts need to be worded to attract the search engines. However, search engines now flag and devalue writing that’s written for search engines and reward posts that are written for your customers. If you write your blog posts with your target buyer in mind, the rest falls into place for the most part. There are some great tools such as HubSpot and Yoast that help bloggers optimize blog posts in simple steps, too.
Once you have drawn new visitors to your site through your blog post and organic search engine optimization (SEO), your blog posts are critical in transforming site visitors into leads. By adding a Call-to-Action (CTA) to the end of each blog post, you incentivize readers interested in the post topic to learn more or gain a relevant tool of some type. Yes, you have to give something to the readers, but you do so in exchange for:
- Deeper information about themselves such as contact details and their biggest challenge within your area of expertise, and
- The opportunity to be able to classify the site visitor as a new lead who can be further nurtured throughout the buyer’s journey.
After all, the reason we’re in business is to make a living and the best way to do that is to continue to win more customers that your business can serve. Blogging is an important but easy way to attract new traffic to your website. In fact, 60 percent of businesses that blog acquire more customers, according to HubSpot. Now that’s a meaningful incentive.
Reason #2: Blogging gives you quality content to post to social media. Rather than posting silly memes, product photos with little details or updates on where your executives are networking, you can publish to social media a teaser sentence and include a link to the full post. This helps build an active social media presence, creates content that can easily be shared beyound your own fans when others share it and drives traffic back to your website via your blog.
Reason #3: Blogging helps establish you as a subject matter expert (SME). By writing your blog posts, you give prospects, customers and even reporters a chance to see you as an authority on the topic at hand. When you publish posts regularly and your posts center around key topics that are relevant to your company’s offerings, readers (and later followers) learn they can trust your writing as credible. While price point can still be a factor in the purchasing decision, many buyers in both the B2B and B2C markets prefer to buy from a known expert. It gives buyers confidence in that their purchase decision is well vetted and is based on experience buyers can point out. Reporters often interview SMEs found online since journalists can research the experts’ knowledge prior to conducting an interview. Sharing your industry knowledge through blogging can also give you the needed edge over your competition. Your organization should also come up more frequently in organic searches and leads will find your website to be more extensive and resourceful.
Whether you run an established business with a well-oiled marketing team or your organization is expanding into new territory, blogging is a great area to invest in. With commitment to posting regularly, you’ll reap the rewards of more website traffic and converted leads.
