One of the best ways to drive traffic to your site is to create content that is easily found, easily shared, and useful or instructional. You can pay for advertisements. But creating this content yourself is the best way to get quality content out there. That’s why you should start a business blog! You control the content. You can publish your content in a variety of ways. Blogging helps your business be found. Keep reading for a list of 10 reasons why you should start a business blog.
1. A blog helps with SEO.
Each new blog post you add essentially adds a new page to your website. Search engines love is fresh content. New content, such as new blog posts, that is also relevant, is almost always placed higher up the search engines than older content.
One way that search engines determine relevancy is by the keywords that the user searches for. Let’s say you’re in the business of selling soccer balls and gear. Someone might search for “regulation soccer balls.” Your blog post explaining regulation soccer balls could be one of the first results to come up. Fill your post with photos of regulation soccer balls that you sell, and link readers right to the shopping cart.
2. It helps position you as the expert in your field.
Writing informative posts about your field helps create the image of you as the expert. Your information and experience becomes more valuable than just anybody else on the web. Your blog is a great place to make a clear connection between your brand and your knowledge.
3. It’s easy.
The hardest part about blogging is coming up with ideas. (We plan more posts about coming up with ideas and get the most mileage out of them!) Once you know what you’re going to write about, the WordPress platform is easy to use. Scheduling platforms and plug-ins help make SEO of your post and social media promotions also easy. Good website development companies (such as Limelight Department!) can help with training you to make sure that you know how to use the technology you have signed up for.
4. A blog offers you a lot of media options, which also helps with SEO (See #1.)
Blogging doesn’t have to mean three paragraphs of text published each day. If you’re more of a video person, record yourself as you walk around your office and post it on YouTube. Take photos and publish them with Instagram. Do your blogging in short bits on Twitter. Use the tools and technology that work for you, because all of them are searchable by search engines and all will get you an audience.
5. It’s free.
A basic WordPress site is free! Customization and some themes cost money, but their cost is fairly small. A hosting fee is a minimal annual expense. Your audience is out there and it doesn’t cost much other than time to meet them where they are.
6. It helps drive traffic to your website.
Each blog post can lead your readers to take some action. That could be downloading your resources, making an appointment, or visiting your website to take advantage of a sale. Lead your visitors to take the action you want with a call to action placed at the end of each post that links back to your website.
7. It helps convert that traffic into leads.
How can a bunch of strangers reading your blog posts translate to sales? Let me answer this question with a question…How is it better to have a bunch of strangers reading your paid AdWords advertisement and then trying to send them to your website?
When people read your blog they are getting a sense of your personality, your authority, and why your products or services are better than anyone else’s. The people reading your blog are already searching or information related to what you have to offer, because otherwise they wouldn’t have found the blog post or taken the time to read it. Traffic to your website from content that is useful and informative is more valuable than anything else you can do. And, other than the time you spend creating the content, it’s free.
8. Blogging is a long-term strategy.
Other than a paid advertisement, there is very little in the world of online marketing that is done for immediate gratification. It takes time for search engines to “recognize” a site’s authority, and part of the way that happens is by having the search engines visit your site on a regular basis. Sites that are not updated frequently do not get visited by search engines very often. The more you update your site, the more the search engines will visit you. The longer this goes on, the more authority a search engine places on your site, and they will start to return your site higher up in the search results.
Publishing on a blog over a long period of time, on a regular basis, about topics that are keyword appropriate and related to your business is an excellent way to build authority for your site.
9. You’ll get better with practice.
Writing is just like anything else in that it does get easier with practice. If you’re doubting your ability to create ongoing content that people will actually want to read, you can always consider hiring out the service to copywriters. (Limelight Department provides this service on a regular basis for a variety of clients.) Otherwise, keep a notebook or electronic notetaker app with you at all times, and whenever the smallest idea occurs to you, jot it down so it’s not lost. Allow yourself the freedom to write short posts (or tweets) when you don’t feel like it, and trust that the more you practice blog writing the easier it will get.
10. You can gather other useful resources to your own site.
You don’t have to come up with every single new idea on your own. Curate groups of the best resources that are out there on other sites or cool stuff that you find. For instance, if you sell soccer balls, one of your blog posts each week can be a “highlights post” of the soccer games for the past week, or how the soccer stars stats changed at the end of each new game. You can collect news items or tips from others in your niche. (Just make sure you always attribute where you are getting the information from.) Next time someone is looking for
“the best explanation of soccer rules on the web,” for instance, they’ll go to your post first. You can even invite some of those other experts to contribute to your blog as a guest poster.
Get started with a business blog
And it doesn’t matter if you’re just getting started with your business or you’ve been in business for 10 years and never blogged before. I can’t think of any industry or business where a blog filled with content of some sort wouldn’t be helpful. So whether you’re a florist or a restaurant or a lawyer, there’s room in the blogosphere for you, so go ahead and start a business blog!
If you’re not sure how to start a business blog with a WordPress site, just get in touch. As we mentioned above, basic themes are free and so are most of the plug-ins. However, customization lets you make your blog just right for you, so don’t hesitate to reach out to us for help or if you have questions on why to start a business blog and how it might help your particular business.