When we create a custom website strategy for new clients we still sometimes get push back on whether or not the businesses website needs to have a blog. Often times it’s the item on the strategy that people end up cutting out or think they can “take in house”.
There’s no doubt that having a killer blogging strategy brings many benefits. However, many business owners are still overlooking this key aspect of their online marketing strategies.
I’m not saying you should blog just for the sake of blogging. I’m saying you need to create a killer content strategy that’s going to help grow your business and a blog is one of the best ways to do this.
The Benefits of Business Blogging
Let me first point out that business blogging is extremely affordable, and, you can do it yourself. You don’t necessarily need a marketing company or professional writer to do this for you. However, if you do choose to blog yourself, you may need to look into how you properly optimize your blog posts, or outsource this piece to in order to increase search engine visibility for your blog. We love it when clients write their own blog posts, but most rely on us to edit them, optimize them, post them on their sites with great images and share them across their social media platforms.
Increases Website Traffic
Looking to increase your website’s search engine visibility? Blogging can help do this. Not only can you increase the amount of traffic to your website but the amount of qualified traffic. Why? Because when your blogging strategy is properly targeted to your buyer persona, you get targeted traffic to your website.
After all, 61% of U.S. online consumers have made a purchase based on recommendations from a blog. (source)
What better way to attract those qualified leads than by creating fun, useful content?
Helps Boost Your SEO Efforts
Part of attracting qualified traffic is publishing properly optimized blog posts. You can write your blogs based off keyword research which, in turn, will help increase the chances of your blog showing in the search results for that term.
New content can also help boost your SEO because search engines love the fresh content. They will keep coming back to your blog and crawling your content when they can see it’s published frequently. Which also helps increase the amount of indexed pages on your website – another huge value add from an SEO perspective.
On average, companies that blog receive 434% more indexed pages. – Hubspot
More indexed pages means more chances for your site to show up in the SERP’s.
Builds Brand Awareness
Who doesn’t want to be known as the expert in their industry? Chances are your competition is already blogging. If not, you want to be ahead of the game by becoming an industry expert – NOW. You want users to keep coming back for more, subscribe and share your content because it’s not only worth reading, but sharing as well.
In order to effectively build your brand awareness with blogging you need to influence subscribers to share your blog posts. Basically, you need interesting, useful and sharable content. Your competition might already be blogging, but are they doing it effectively? Is their content receiving social signals? Are people engaging and commenting on their blog posts?
Social media engagement is a key aspect of building your brand awareness. Share your content on your own social media to increase your social signals and hopefully spread your blog/brand to a wider audience. Create a blogging and social strategy that will kill your competition to become an industry leader.
Increases Conversion and Leads
Okay, so we went over how you can easily attract those qualified visitors, but your blog content can also help convert them into leads. The setup of your blog is an importance piece to converting visitors into leads, along with your high quality content that includes clear calls to action.
For one, you want to have a closing call to action at the end of every post. The most effective calls to action that convert visitors into leads include collateral and other content they can subscribe to, download or otherwise get for free, such as: eBooks, case studies, your monthly newsletter or other related blog posts. It all depends on the content and what the end goal is for that visitor.
An easily accessible “Subscribe to this blog” call to action is also important. You want to get visitors to subscribe so that they know every time you publish a blog post. Then, when subscribers continue coming back to your blog they eventually convert into something more than a subscriber, like a lead.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that every online business should have a blog for their website. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, you need one – even if only to work with your other online marketing strategies, such as SEO and social media.
Of course, there are many other benefits to hosting a blog on behalf of your business, but we think the points above really hit the primary benefits.
Have questions on how to start a blog or about creating a blogging strategy for your business? Call us today at 800.871.4130 or ask in the comments below:
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