Thinking about starting a blog for your small business or company website? Wondering how effective blogging is for marketing? After working as a digital marketer and blogger for over a decade, I’ve come to learn about the benefits of business blogging.
But oh boy, have I had to keep up with some revolutionary changes in that time! As the digital marketplace continues to thrive, I explain the benefits of blogging and how it’s playing an instrumental role in online business and why.
Why blogging is an essential part of digital marketing
Alongside an effective content marketing strategy, blogging is paramount in forming your brand’s personality, knowledge and visibility online. Not all blog subjects need to be business critical but they should always be written with your target audience in mind.
Viewers are looking for solutions when they click onto your homepage. If there’s no helpful or informative content then I’m afraid it’s game over. Fin. Chao. They’ll click off to another website (or competitor *ouch*) without a moment’s thought.
The bottom line is that people want to be guided through who you are and what you’re about before they invest in your business. Getting this user journey right usually requires an experienced copywriter and UX designer.
Why start a business blog?
Blogging can help to build a brand and its audience in a way that advertising and sales can’t. Both are valuable but appeal to people (and demographics) in completely different ways.
A blog is also one of the best and most inexpensive marketing tools out there. Think about it, it’s a free channel to:
- Educate your customers
- Build trust
- Promote your business
What company wouldn’t want all those things for their website?
Plus, there’s no costly printing involved and your content stays around long after you’ve hit the publish button.
The No Nonsense Guide: Benefits of Blogging for Business and Marketing
1. Boosts website traffic and SEO
Ah, search engine optimisation. It’s both the bane and drive of every marketer’s life!
But one thing is for sure and that’s that blogging will boost your SEO. This means more opportunities for your audience to connect with you, improved user journeys and higher authority in your sector.
The more you publish on a regular basis, the more likely your business will be noticed online. Even if you don’t update the other pages on your website very often, your site will still be active in Google’s eyes because you’ve got fresh blog posts rolling in.
By sharing and expanding on those posts, you’re effectively spreading your net as far as possible to increase exposure and website traffic from different sources.
2. Establishes industry expertise
If there’s one thing I’ve learnt about businesses it’s that most are born out of a want to help people. In a lot of ways, a business blog does just that and more.
Writing about your expertise or industry is a way of reaching out to your customers and saying:
“Hey, over here! We know our stuff and here’s what you should do because XYZ.” (Or something to that effect.)
Once you have a collection of helpful and impactful blogs, people will start to trust you and see you as an authority in that field.
It’s important not to underestimate the power of a quality blog post. A lot of people (including me) will remember a business for helping them and will often either return or talk about it to their friends and colleagues.
3. Engages your audience
As well as SEO benefits, blogs also help to keep your audience browsing on your site for longer (FYI the Google gods LOVE this.) But just as importantly, they build engagement and interaction with your customers.
Let’s take the online bank Monzo for example. They could limit their blog posts to serious stuff like stock market predictions or tech updates but you know why they don’t?
Because it doesn’t serve or connect to the majority of their audience.
Underneath it all, Monzo is just another bank but they’ve used blogging to transform the way their business is perceived.
They create colourful, digestible posts that focus on their customers and their everyday queries including: how to save, coping with mental health and money, budgeting during lockdown and much more.
You see where I’m going with this? Now more than ever, people want to:
- See the fun, human side of a company
- To trust your expertise
- To see what you’re up to behind the scenes
- Build a relationship with your business beyond the dry, complicated stuff like terms and conditions. (Trust me, no one is reading those over a blog post!)
4. Sharable content
Blogs can be used and adapted across all areas of your digital marketing strategy. They actually give you more reasons to engage with your social networks too.
In fact, blogs are just the beginning. They open up endless possibilities for share-worthy content across newsletters, infographics and more.
By getting creative and putting your blog content out there in as many forms as possible, it’s only going to bring in more views to your website. The benefits definitely outweigh the hard work of writing them!
Wrapping it up
You should consider launching a blog for your business.
Having a blog on your website helps SEO and will ultimately improve your digital marketing strategy. Blogging is a cheap and effective way of engaging your customers, establishing authority in your sector and creating some fantastic online content.
Interested in business blogging? Get in touch or comment with your thoughts below!
More Business Blogs
Pin it for later
A very thought-provoking read… Am already considering what I can do blog wise with my art business. It’s not something I’ve got set up yet but is in the pipeline.
I started blogging last year and even though I feared writing. Honestly I was terrified. The more I blogged the better I became. I find it tricker now and again, but mostly find writing for my blog pretty easy. My boyfriend recently commented about how my writing is improving. This was something I never set out to do, it was mainly to cover topics I always get asked and to show off my work.
Author
Considering you only started last year, I think you’re doing an amazing job. 😍 Your blogs, newsletters and social media posts really are inspiring, especially as you’re in the same boat as me as a one-woman band in a creative industry! Keep up your wonderful work – it’s definitely not going unnoticed. ❤️