You’ve been told time and time again that your business needs a blog. Want proof? Forbes talked about this in 2012, and that’s just the earliest example on the first page of a Google search. The takeaway is you should already have a blog. If you did, you’d be reaping the rewards already.
…but you don’t have one yet. Why? Maybe it’s because you don’t want to take the time to maintain it. The answer to that is simple – we’ll help you with that, no problem. As a content service provider, we’ll also help you come up with topics and make sure you content is SEO safe, so you can’t use those as excuses either.
Is the reason that you don’t think it will do any good? If someone told you that, it’s simply not true. There are a million reasons a business blog can help your site and business out, but one of the biggest takeaways is that it can help grow the audience pool you get to pull from.
1. Blogs help you reach previously unreachable customers.
Say you’re a small business owner who deals in selling clothing. You make and design nice shirts, but you’re in a very saturated market. You need to find a way to get people onto your blog and keep them there.
Before releasing blog content, your store’s listing in search results could be easily skipped over because there’s a lot to choose from and your link might not be the lucky one picked. If you put out blog content, though, someone can find useful information and then check out your store. Customers you wouldn’t have gotten the attention of otherwise have now visited your store.
This is just an example, too. This same system can apply to any market.
2. Blogs make you sharable.
It’s likely that your website itself isn’t going to be shared much, and that’s okay. The current Internet climate is very viral-focused – people want info, they want it fast, and they want to be the person to show it to their friends.
Your info and product pages might get a lot of traffic, but that’s likely from people who are specifically looking for your service. In order to grow your business audience, posting blogs leads to sharability. If you post a blog that people connect with, they’ll share it. This will bring new people to your site, and some are likely to poke through your site and become a customer.
3. Blogs expand your purpose.
Your blog should relate to your main purpose as a business, but reaching outside of your specific purpose can bring in a bigger audience. For example, your business focuses on website design. Your blog can talk about website design, but it can also talk about how to make a website dynamic, tips for using social media to bring people to your site, and how to use basic HTML codes to liven up your landing page. Link to sites like Instapage and give people resources for their sites.
Using a content service provider can be a great ally in this case. If you talk to an article creation service, they can help you come up with related titles while still bringing the main focus back to your business. The main reason for this is that if you only blog about one topic, you limit your audience. Talking about related topics can deepen this pool.
4. Blogs make you look more professional…and human.
Your business being sharable isn’t just about how many people retweet your Twitter statuses. A business is sharable when a customer identifies with it and shares this with others. Becoming a business that people can identify with means:
- Being professional
- Being human
Blogs accomplish both of these things. A blog that shows off information and topics related to your business is smart and customer-conscious. It also gives a business a voice – something that was hard to pull off before business blogging became a phenomenon.
Talk to your content service provider about crafting a tone for your business that also accomplishes both of these things. The tone of your blogs should be informative, but not so jargon-laced that it sails over the head of the laymen.