For many business owners, a blog is never a priority, as all effort is concentrated on increasing income and profit for the business. Blogs are usually seen as an added chore, needing constant updating and brainstorming on appropriate topics to keep your audience engaged.
With the advent of various social media channels like Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, it may seem like blogging is less significant, but, blogs are even more important now. Our tip Your Passion, Your Business, Your Website: How They All Connect breaks down the relationship between your business, your blog, and your passion.
Advancing technology, and more recently the COVID-19 pandemic, have resulted in more people working from home, self-educating, shopping, and reading. This makes right now the perfect time for you to consider having a blog for your business.
Exercise: List down all the information you would want to communicate to your audience about your business regularly (for example sales, promotions, news, opportunities, etc).
But why do you really need a blog?
I know you are wondering if blogging has any real benefits to your business. Here are a few reasons why you should get that blog started:
Boosts your business visibility
Search engines are fond of blogs because they love new content! If you are looking to increase the number of people who know about your business, a blog is an awesome move. A well-optimized blog will definitely drive traffic to your site as your articles will show up among the search results and that’s how you start getting noticed by many more people!
Keeps your audience/ customers up to date
Have you launched a new product or service? Do you have a new product/service in the oven? Perhaps you have opened a new location to move closer to some of your clients? Whatever news you may want to pass on to your audience, a blog is your best bet. It’s a perfect place to give as much information on a product or service as possible!
Keeps your audience engaged
Customer feedback is the engine that runs a successful business. Having fresh, unique, and engaging content published regularly keeps you at the top of your audience’s mind. You will also get feedback on your product or service easily through the blog. If you collect customer feedback properly as outlined by OptinMonster, you can get helpful insight on how your products/ services are meeting your customers’ needs, along with important suggestions for improvement.
Helps build your contact list
For every blog post you publish, you can always encourage your audience to sign up for your newsletter. In this way, you not only build your contact list but you are building a lead generation tool because these could convert into a sale.
Easy to repurpose content
Once you have a blog post up, you can easily repurpose it to fit onto other social media platforms you might be running for your business. You can create a newsletter out of it and send it as an email to your customers; you could summarise it into a paragraph for LinkedIn and Facebook; you can compress it into a picture and make an Instagram post, and you can also summarize it into a sentence or two for Twitter! All these could have a link back to your blog post too!
This gives your business:
- a wider audience and
- if you stagger when you send them, an extended period of time that people are looking at your blog and, by extension, your business.
These are just but a few of the benefits you stand to gain by starting and maintaining a blog for your company.
Exercise: Write a list of topic ideas that you think (or know) your audience would find helpful or inspiring so that your business is ‘top of mind’ when they’re looking for advice or to buy.
Your Online Partner… for Success
Would you like to have someone with experience help you to review the results of your two exercises? Reach out – and schedule a free 30-minute session with Christy.