We love making use of our blog and sharing frequent updates, whether that’s company news, our latest project or some insight into a trending topic! But lots of businesses ask us if they really need a blog, what to talk about, and how to drive more traffic to their posts which is why we’re starting a blogging tips series, so all of this useful information is all in one place!
The first post in our series is all about the benefits of blogging and why you should perhaps start a blog if you haven’t already. It is becoming increasingly important for small businesses to develop a strong web presence to engage and communicate with their customers, which blogging creates a simple solution for! There are so many benefits to blogging if you’re able to commit to writing posts, including boosting your SEO efforts, generating traffic and creating content to share on social media. Here’s our rundown on some of the key benefits to blogging for your business:
It creates a hub of information
Firstly, blogging is a great way to offer up information to your readers, whether that be industry news, product launches, or updates about your business. By writing frequent blog posts about your company and the industry you’re in, you can easily show and tell readers what your business can do.
Some examples include:
Blogging has been particularly useful over the last 12 months for businesses to let their customers know about their Covid-19 updates, including closures updates, plans for reopening, and what they’ve been up to while their businesses have been closed. People love to gain an insight into what goes on behind the scenes of a business and get to know the people behind the team.
It attracts new customers
As well as appealing to existing customers and clients, blogging also helps to attract new customers to your website.
When on the hunt for a new product or service, consumers will often carry out research into what they’re searching for - whether directly researching a company, or indirectly via searching for the product or service. We all like to check a business out before buying from them, especially so now that more people are looking to shop local, ethically and from smaller businesses. A blog is a useful way to introduce yourself to potential customers, to let them get to know you and decide whether or not they think that you’re the person or business who has something to offer them.
If you’re offering up informative and engaging content on the subject your reader is looking for, this can help to sway them in their decision too, as you’ve showcased your knowledge and industry expertise! This leads us onto point 3...
It helps to strengthen your brand authority
Blogging creates a space for your business to share expertise, insight and useful information, to offer readers a helpful resource and therefore strengthen your brand authority and relationships with your readers.
You can build trust and increase your brand authority by providing valuable and expert information in your blog posts. These don’t have to be lengthy posts filled with specialised language, but could instead be short ‘How To’ posts simplifying something into steps or a jargon buster to educate your readers. By offering value to your readers, over time you’ll become a reliable resource for helpful informative content, bringing more traffic to your site and ultimately lead to higher customer conversion rates.
It boosts your SEO efforts
Another great benefit of blogging is that it supports your SEO efforts. Search Engine Optimisation is the process of improving your site to increase its visibility in the organic search engine results page, for example, Google.
A great way to help your rankings is to ensure that the search engines can tell that your site is active, that you regularly use it and keep it up-to-date. Search engines prefer websites that feature fresh and relevant content that is frequently updated, and blogging is a super easy way to keep updating your content - rather than trying to reinvent the wheel by rewriting your homepage every week! By regularly adding quality posts to your blog, you are constantly providing Google, and other search engines, with fresh content to index, letting them know that your site is active and up to date.
Blogging also creates an opportunity for you to insert those important and relevant keywords that consumers will use to search for the types of services or products that the business offers.