You may be wondering if blogging still matters for your business. Maybe you’ve been blogging for a while and still don’t have a large number of readers. Or maybe you’re considering blogging for the first time, but you’re overwhelmed by the thousands of blogs you already find from other, similar businesses. The short answer to your uncertainty is: Yes, there are a lot of benefits to blogging for your business.
Your concerns are valid! Still, there are ways to win at blogging and to use blogging in specific ways to win for your business. We believe in this so much that we spent an entire session in our latest video series talking JUST about the positive impact blogging has on businesses. I might also add, it was our first topic choice for that series.
As a marketing agency, we hear common pain points from business leaders when we first connect with them – phrases like:
We definitely believe well-done blog content plays an integral role in solving these pain points!
Yes, the blogging space is heavily saturated today. But YOUR own blog can greatly benefit your business, your clients, and YOU internally as a leader. Here are just 5 examples of the benefits.
Many businesses struggle to show up on the first page in search engines. Part of the problem is your competition and their content taking up that valuable space. You should learn from their example! Look within those topics to see where you may be able to provide your own take through your unique experience. Even more importantly, look for the gaps where your competitors have not provided specific content for readers.
If your website has very little written content on it (that includes relevant keywords your audience is searching for) and you rarely add new content, this negatively impacts your website’s authority in search engines’ algorithms.
Also, if you don’t give your current customers or followers a reason to keep coming back to your site and stay awhile in order to consume new, helpful – even entertaining – content, this also impacts your website’s authority. The number of site visitors, time on page, and more are tracked by search engines like Google and help determine if your web content will be served up as one of the top results.
Most businesses today should have some kind of presence on relevant social media channels. They should also be leveraging email marketing. Additionally, advertising may be the propellant for your business growth in a short amount of time.
Every single one of these tactics can be fueled by your long-form content, aka your blog. Once you create a resourceful blog post, you can pull bite-sized content from it to use on social media. You can link to your blog in an email marketing message to give your readers a great action they’ll take to learn more. You can even accompany your written content with a paid strategy because no one wants to click an ad that leads to something spammy. Give them substance! A blog post is set up to do just that.
There are so many ways to maximize the use and distribution of the industry knowledge you share. And we already mentioned the importance of being present online often and through various channels. Make your blog the center of your content strategy.
As we said before, you may find other content online that speaks to how a certain product is beneficial. But you could dive a little deeper on that. How does that product work for a certain age demographic? How can that product offer a specific ROI for certain industries? Get specific and show unique cases of how it’s true. Let your own unique brand and experience shine through in your posts because that will attract the right audience too. Let’s not forget that storytelling is a big part of content.
Your website may already show up occasionally in search engine results and you may have a lot of professional connections on LinkedIn, but chances are many of those people do not qualify as your primary audience that’s likely to convert to a customer. But an effective blog post can help you reach a select group. If they found and read your post, you already know one thing about them right off the bat. They are interested in what you have to say or offer.
If you use your blog posts to answer questions or address pain points within your target audience, by the time the reader gets to the end of the blog they’ve usually transformed from being a stranger or spectator to an engaged follower of your brand, if not also a qualified lead! You’ve been helpful to them through your blog post. You offered a solution. You demonstrated authority on the topic which can pay dividends.
Your blog post can convey a like-mindedness with the reader which helps build trust between you. Then, it’s more natural within your blog post to ask the reader to take another step towards the help you can give them. This is how you can use blogs to attract sales qualified leads. A blog can shorten the buying decision process because a single post could answer the main questions for a reader – who you are, what’s the solution, how does it work, how can they get it.
Great blog posts can have a long shelf-life in search engines and within your sales team too. You sit down one time to write but the information can reach and help people long after. It’s like an annuity.
Sometimes it's just as important to practice the discipline of reflecting and crafting thoughts about your business. Blogging forces you to think big picture, and, at the same time, know how to speak about the fine details of what you do. It grows you as a business leader, and if your content resonates with others, it could position you as an authoritative voice in your industry. That’s a powerful position for you and your business to be in.
Before you put “pen to paper,” remember that when you write, you do so:
Watch the full episode from our SquadTalks Over Coffee series below to hear us go more in-depth on how to leverage blogging for your business.
If you need help with content strategy, SEO, or copywriting so that your business can reap the benefits mentioned above, our team of specialists would be happy to support you. Let us know what you need.
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