Top 5 Reasons you should Blog for your Small Business
If you run a small business, chances are that you look to Marketing and generating business through low cost channels. If you have not thought about blogging yet, it is time to think about how blogging can help your business. Blogging can provide an easy and inexpensive way to enhance your Marketing efforts, drive traffic to your site, and attract more customers. We have put together the top five reasons for small businesses to blog.
1. Help increase your Search Engine Optimization
Search engines love lots of content and content that is current. Blogging consistently will provide plenty of content that is up to date. By doing this you give the search engines new content to index and you will have more opportunity to use keywords that consumers will search for, which will increase your visibility in search engine results pages. Keeping your website active with blog posts tells search engines that they should check your site frequently to find new content. The best thing to do for your SEO is to demonstrate that you keep your content up to date and relevant. Blogging makes this easy for you to do.
2. Develop relationships with potential and current customers
Blogging can be very interactive and allows you to connect with people who visit your site. One way to make blogging interactive is to ask your readers questions at the very end of the post to encourage them to become engaged. You can also allow comments and feedback about the post, but make sure to respond to them as well. By engaging your readers, you can create a relationship with your audience which will allow you to gain their trust over time. This also gives you insight into what your consumers are thinking. If the readers that become engaged are not already your customer, this will also give you an opportunity to build a relationship and hopefully turn them into customers. By actively engaging with customers and addressing their concerns in this public manner, it will show that you care about your customers and will go the extra mile to take care of them. This will add credibility to your company.
3. Establish your business as a trusted source of information
By providing valuable, expert information in your blog posts, you can build trust and become recognized in your industry. Over time you can become readers “go-to” source for informative content. This will help to attract new customers. It will also help you gain credibility and compete with larger companies in your industry. The best blog posts are the ones that answer your consumers’ questions as well. By creating blog posts that address customer’s concerns, industry concerns, and business concerns it will help you build trust with your readers. Surveys have shown that people trust information from blogs and are more likely to read blog content and pay attention to it instead of traditional advertising.
4. Help to create a network of followers
Every time you write a blog post, you are creating content that consumers can share on to various social media channels, which will help you to reach consumers that you would not normally reach. This allows you to create a network of followers and their friends. Blog content also helps keep your social media presence thriving. The more relevant content you post to social media, the more followers you will have, which will grow your network. Blogging provides you with a platform with which you can connect with people who have similar interests. Blogging is a great channel to reach consumers that have similar interests and will want to continue to follow your blog, engage in your posts, and share your content.
5. Help to drive relevant traffic to your website
Social Media is a great way to help spread the content from your blog. This will also help drive more traffic to your site. The consumers who land on your site will also be relevant because they chose to leave the page they were on and visit your site because something intrigued them. Posting your content onto different social media sites is a proven way to increase site traffic. You should always promote your posts through social media. Consumers tend to interact more on social media as well and your SEO ranking is partly determined by social interactions. You want to be consistent with posting as well, so that your followers stay interested and continue to share your content and drive traffic to your site.
Keep in mind that blogging is a long-term Marketing venture. It may take some time to build a network of followers and see the benefit to blogging. It is an investment towards your future growth. It is different than traditional forms of advertising because you are continually connecting with your followers, instead of just connecting with them through the length of a campaign. Blogging for a small business makes sense. It requires minimal effort and expense but can help you build credibility, increase your SEO rankings, drive traffic to your site, and develop lasting relationships with consumers.
