Why Start a Blog For Your Business?

You’ve likely heard that starting a blog for your business is a great idea. But why? Why start a blog for your business? To take advantage of this historically unique opportunity to reach millions of potential new customers.

With a blog, you can lend your voice to your brand and drive more customers to your website. That’s especially true in 2021. More people than ever are working or learning from home. Many of them are using the internet to find services and shop.

With the right information and tools, you can start a blog for your business today. And that can translate into more visitors to your website, and ultimately, to more sales tomorrow.

Five benefits to starting a blog for your business

If you’re not sure that blogging makes good business sense for your brand, here are five key benefits to show you why it does.

1. Improve your website’s SEO ranking

Consistently blogging high-quality, useful content will help increase your search engine ranking. Google, along with the other major search engines reward helpful, fresh blogs that fulfill the needs of those searching for answers online.

When your SEO ranking, or search engine optimization ranking, goes up, your organic traffic increases. Unlike online advertising, organic traffic doesn’t cost you anything. It’s basically free traffic to your website.

Over time, your SEO ranking and, by extension, your online presence can grow, free of charge thanks to your blog. And that leads to your next benefit.

2. Attract new customers

By increasing your SEO ranking, you can convert those new visitors to your site into new customers.

Businesses that rely solely on physical addresses can only generate so much income. While the internet opens your business up to millions of potential new customers across the US and throughout the world.

3. Get staying power

A well-written blog post that ranks high on Google, over an extended period, can attract new customers for weeks or even months into the future.

Go back and look at your best-performing blog posts. Make sure all data and information is up to date and refresh any outdated links. Updating that blog post can give you a new ranking bump now.

4. Show off your industry knowledge

Let your industry knowledge shine through. Think of yourself as a source of information. Being known as an expert in your field can gain you referrals from various sources. Just as importantly, it can position you as a trusted voice within your sector.

And don’t be afraid to let your personality shine through. Users appreciate humor and humanity in what they read.

5. Increase your email list

Once potential customers know you’re trustworthy, they’ll be more likely to share their email addresses with you. You can use those emails to provide them with information on promotions, new products, and other company news.

The importance of email marketing can’t be stressed enough. This is one element that should answer the question, “Why start a blog for your business?”

Getting customers or potential customers to give you their email addresses can be tricky. However, if they see you as a trusted source of information thanks to your blog, they’ll be much more likely to do so.

Five ways to get the most out of your business blog

You know the benefits of starting your business blog. Now, learn the basics of how to make your blog a showcase for your business and help drive sales.

1. Use the right keywords

When you look up something on Google, you enter search terms related to the topic you want more information on. That’s it, those are keywords. You’ll want to use them in your blogs but let them flow naturally through the language on the page.

These are some other keyword dos and don’ts:

• Don’t repeat the same keywords multiple times in a sentence. That’s called “keyword stuffing,” and Google frowns upon it. If you do it consistently, your SEO ranking will suffer.
• Check out what your competitors are writing about. Also, read online forums related to your industry to see what topics are popular.
• Always listen to your customers. See which questions they’re asking the most. Do keyword searches for their questions and topics. Post blogs using that keyword research.

2. Share your posts across social media

Once you’ve written your blog post, share it across multiple social media platforms to get the most out of it. It will also help you get valuable backlinks, which simply means links back to your blog. Those backlinks will also help your website’s SEO ranking.

Make it easy for visitors to share your blog posts by including call to action (CTA) buttons. By doing this, your blog posts can generate more shares on social media and in turn, boost your company’s visibility.

Things like long paragraphs, difficult words, or too much industry lingo will turn readers into skimmers and will likely turn skimmers off completely. (Image by: Tim Gouw via Unsplash.)

Do you know what TL;DR stands for? It’s “too long; didn’t read.” Many users scan a page instead of reading it in depth. Yes, you want to post useful, high-quality content that will keep users coming back for more. However, you want to make sure your posts are reader-friendly. You can ensure this as follows:

• Write short, easy-to-read sentences. Avoid industry jargon or slang as many visitors won’t understand abbreviations either.
• Use relevant images and graphics to break up a page and keep users engaged. And don’t just put one image at the top of the page, but spread them out so visitors will keep scrolling down.
• Bullet points and numbered lists also help hold user interest.
• Proofread everything before posting.

You may be wondering how long your business blog post should be. There is no one universal word count that is ideal. A lot will depend on the sector you’re writing about.

One way to gauge effective word counts is to perform a search of recent highly ranked competitor blog posts and look at their average word counts.

4. Post regularly and plan release times

You don’t have to post a blog every single day, but posting every two or three days is a good idea.

Have you ever visited a website with few or old blog posts? You probably didn’t stick around for too long. It comes across as lazy and careless, two qualities a business website shouldn’t convey.

Posting regularly shows you’re in touch and are always keeping up with the latest trends in your industry.

Knowing when to post your blog also matters. If you publish on weekday mornings, you’ll have more competition for your audience’s attention. Readers may be more likely to skim your page instead of reading it. When you publish during off-peak hours, you have less competition, but fewer people will be reading and engaging with your content.

Studies show that late Monday morning around 11am may be the best time to post. Saturday mornings are good if you want reader comments. However, those findings don’t target your specific audience and industry.

Another way to time your posts is to look at your website’s traffic. Do certain times and days see more visitors? Try posting then to see what type of response you get.

Let your digital marketing tools complement each other. If you’ve been working on building your customer email list, you can use it to promote your latest blog post. Notifying customers when you publish via email marketing keeps you and your business fresh in their minds.

5. Respond to comments quickly

As your audience grows, you’ll start receiving comments. Review and respond to them quickly. Letting comments sit, or worse, allowing spam or inappropriate comments to linger reflects poorly on your business website and your brand.

Conclusion

Congratulations, you now have the knowledge you need to start your business blog. You’ve learned the importance of keyword research, posting regularly, and writing reader-friendly quality content. Let this information give you the confidence you need to engage with your customers on a whole new level.

Why start a blog for your business? Because there are so many benefits to doing so. By blogging, you can share your knowledge, improve your SEO ranking, and ultimately, attract new customers to your business.