The days when simply having a business website was enough to promote your business are long gone. Now, companies need to go further if they are to stand out from the competition in this crowded online world.
Introducing a blog to your business website can be a really effective way to help build its online presence and boost your brand.
In this blog, we will explain how blogging can help your business and why it’s now a vital tool to add to your marketing strategy.
Unpacking the Impact: Why Blogging Matters for Businesses
It’s estimated that there are 600 million blogs worldwide, packed with content relating to every topic imaginable. So, we know that there are millions of blogs out there and that their popularity shows no signs of slowing down. But you may be wondering why blogging is important for business.
Blogging matters for so many reasons. No matter what size your business is, it can benefit from having a blog. Here are just some of the key benefits your business can gain from having a blog:
- Improves SEO
- Showcases your products and services
- Establishes your reputation as an expert in your field
- Drives extra traffic to your website
- Exposes your business to a wider audience
- Builds brand awareness
- Generates new leads
- Aids customer conversion
- Valuable source of social media content
Enhancing Visibility: Blogging as a Marketing Tool
As marketing tools go, blogging is a highly-effective one. This organic form of marketing reaches your target audience without the need to pay for expensive advertising campaigns.
Instead of aggressively pursuing potential customers, your blog brings people to your website organically.
Building Trust and Credibility Through Consistent Blogging
Blogging is a powerful tool when trying to build your business’s credibility and trust with your target market. If you want to be seen as the go-to source of knowledge in your industry, starting a blog on your business website is the way to do it.
Establishing yourself as an expert in your field is a sure-fire way to get your business recognised and to elevate its reputation. A blog offers the perfect platform to showcase your expertise, and brings added credibility to your business, its products and services.
However, simply starting a blog and putting out a couple of posts isn’t enough. To get maximum benefit from your business blog, it’s essential that you post consistently. Identifying blog topics that will be of interest to your target audience and then developing a content plan and sticking to it is essential if your blog is to deliver meaningful results.
Posting regular content is an excellent way to keep website visitors and potential customers engaged with your brand, and reinforces you reputation as a trusted expert.
Leveraging Blogs for Increased SEO Performance
Improving SEO and getting their business to rank at the top of the search engine results is a priority for every company. However, this task can often seem almost impossible to achieve. The good news is that introducing a blog to your website helps you to improve each of the main components that influence search engine results page rankings.
Starting a blog means your business will soon have more indexed pages, a higher population of keywords, and fresh content continually being added to your website. These factors are all viewed positively by search engines and will help improve your SEO.
While your blog can play a significant role in boosting your position on SERPS, it’s vital to be aware that it can also potentially harm it. To ensure that your blog helps rather than hinders your SEO efforts you need to:
- Avoid keyword stuffing
- Ensure your content is relevant to your blog
- Focus on writing high-quality blog posts
- Understand how frequently you should post new blog content
Blogging to Foster Customer Relationships and Engagement
Fostering customer relationships and encouraging them to engage with your brand is vital if you are trying to build a loyal customer base, and boost your repeat sales. This is no easy task, but launching a blog can help.
Post Consistently
By regularly posting meaningful content that is useful and/or entertaining to your target audience, you can stoke interest in your brand and entice potential customers to keep coming back to your website to read more. Consistent posting is key to success here, so try to post new blogs regularly to keep your audience interested. Don’t forget to share them on your social media platforms to encourage further engagement and boost your post views even further.
Encourage Customer Engagement with Valuable Content
When blogging to increase customer engagement, it’s helpful to focus on making the content valuable to your target audience, rather than simply using it as a way to heavily promote your brand. To foster customer engagement and build relationships, content and relevancy are paramount. So, make sure that your blog provides useful, meaningful information for the audience, rather than simply reading like a long advertorial piece.
Engage with Comments to Build Customer Relationships
Asking questions, and encouraging readers to engage with your content is a highly-effective way to build customer relationships and raise the profile of your brand. Just be sure to reply to comments and engage with your readers. Doing this offers a couple of main benefits. Firstly, it helps you to determine which blog posts are most effective and result in the highest levels of engagement. Secondly, you will build the reputation of your brand and make your customers feel valued if you provide a personal response to their comments.
Measuring Success: Key Metrics to Track Blog Performance
Once you have got your blog up and running, it’s essential to begin tracking its performance from the get-go. Here are some essential metrics to start tracking:
- Number of monthly visitors to your blog – this will enable you to compare performance month-on-month and year-on-year.
- Traffic source – are your visitors coming to your blog via organic search, social media, email, etc?
- Views per post – how many views do your posts typically receive?
- Lead generation – how many blog visitors convert into paying customers?
- Top performing posts – which posts perform the best and bring the most traffic to your website?
The insights you gain from tracking your key metrics can be used to inform everything from the type of content you post, when you post it, and how you share it with your target audience.
Real Business Examples: How Blogging Drove ROI
Blogging offers huge potential for businesses. However, you may be wondering how these benefits translate to your bottom line. Here are some headline stats that demonstrate the ROI businesses can achieve through blogging:
- B2B marketers report that they generate 76% of leads via blogging.
- 67% more leads are generated by marketers using blogging vs. those that don’t.
- Marketers who make blogging a priority are 13 times more likely to see a positive ROI.
Source: Fundera
Let’s take a look at some of the businesses that have successfully harnessed the power of blogging to drive ROI:
Etsy
Online marketplace, Etsy, has developed it’s own highly successful blog, the Etsy Journal. This blog offers valuable content to Etsy customers, with lots of shopping ideas to inspire their purchases. The blog posts feature products from Etsy sellers, helping to drive sales and building Etsy’s reputation as the place to go to shop for unique finds.
Wickes
DIY chain Wickes has recognised that many Brits love a spot of DIY and has capitalised on this in its blog. Rather than having one blog, Wickes, uses content marketing to the max with a wide range of sections, with tips, how-to guides, advice, and creative ideas, all featuring the tools and products sold by Wickes that will help you to bring your project to life.
The how-to guides cleverly incorporate common questions that people may search for into their titles, helping to naturally integrate keywords and boost the ranking of their pages on SEO. For example, one how-to guide is titled, ‘what does flush mean?’
Selfridges
As a high-end retailer, Selfridges offers a comprehensive blog with a wide range of posts to capture the attention of its target audience and cement its reputation as a luxurious store at the forefront of fashion and culture.
Selfridges has a high volume of posts on its blog, which is essential for it to boost sales and drive ROI, as its customers want the latest knowledge on their favourite brands and the first look at new season arrivals.
Take Your Business to the Next Level: Start Blogging Today
As you can see, adding a blog to your business website can offer a wide range of benefits. However, to maximise the benefits of your blog, it’s essential that you focus on writing high-quality content that adds value to your website and positions your business as an expert in its field.
Posting regularly and engaging with your customers will deliver further benefits, helping you to build brand awareness, improve SEO, build a loyal customer base, and ultimately drive sales. So, why not start a blog for your business today and start enjoying the benefits for yourself?
