5 Reasons to Start Blogging Now
A lot of business owners think that blogging is just something that bloggers do. It used to be that way, with way too many bloggers sharing their lives online. Now, things are much different. Businesses have come to realize that blogging is a really powerful marketing tool. This is why, if you’re not already, you need to start blogging now.
An Effective Blogging Structure
You have free rein when it comes to managing your blog. You can organize it in a variety of ways. One person on your team can write all your blog content, or multiple team members can contribute. Your blog can include more than just written content as well. Photos and videos are welcome in your blog as well.
Think about your business and pick a blog structure that works best in your industry.
Should You Start Blogging Now?
We definitely think so.
Blogging is an effective way of supporting your broader business goals. Plus, it does wonders for your website.
Below we will outline 5 reasons why you definitely need to start a blog on your website:
Stand out as an Industry Expert
When you post blogs, it allows you to showcase your expertise about particular topics with your audience. For new businesses, this can be invaluable exposure. Having a consistent blog showcases to your audience and competitors that you know your stuff and that you’re up-to-date with the latest trends in your industry.
Humanize Your Brand
Your audience can get to know you on a deeper level through your blog. A blog is the perfect place for your business to go deeper about your products or services. You can be more fun here and share behind the scenes information or even your opinions. According to industry experts, about 60% of consumers feel positively about a brand after reading their blog and 61% have made a purchase after reading a single blog post. These numbers are extraordinary, so why not give it a shot in your own business?
Define Your Brand
A blog allows you to spend time developing a voice for your brand. Do you want your brand to be formal or more conversational? Do you like adding a sense of humor to your posts or are you the more informative type? You are able to work through these questions and many more by writing regularly on your blog. You will have the chance to better understand your writing style and how that connects with your audience in a positive way.
Blogging Improves Your Website’s SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a term used to describe how your website ranks on Google. Websites that include blogs tend to rank higher on Google than other websites. This means that more people are likely to find websites that have blogs on Google. There are a few ways maintaining a blog boost your website’s SEO:
When you create blog posts on your site, it creates a new page that search engines can crawl. This helps search engines better understand what your website is about. For newer websites, a blog can help search engines see and understand your website better so it can determine with more accuracy who to send to your site from a particular search
Blog posts explore topics in more depth than general website pages. This means the content on your blog can be positioned in a way that is more relevant to what your audience is searching for.
Having an active blog ensures that your website stays active. This shows search engines that your website is regularly updated and contains up-to-date information.
Blogs are generally organized into tags and categories. This metadata helps search engines understand which keywords you are using.
How long users stay on your website affects your SEO. To rank higher, you want users to stay on your website for extended periods of time. The more posts you have on your website, the higher change users will stay on your website longer.
It is easier to incorporate long-tail keywords in your blogs than in other pages of your site. Long-tail keywords are keywords phrases of more than four words. They're important because they tend to be more specifically relevant to what your audience is searching. (For example, you can think of “web design” as a keyword, but “how to build a website” as a long-tail keyword that’s more likely to appear in searches made by real people.)
Blogging increases your chances of using internal links on your website. Internal links are links you include in your blog that send users to another blog post (like this one.) This can be beneficial because if a user ends up on another page in your blog, it can increase the time they spend on your website.
Blog posts also increase the chance that your post will be linked by other websites. This can also be beneficial for your SEO.
Grow your audience with Content Marketing
Content marketing is one of the easiest ways to grow your business audience. That being said, a blog provides you with content that you can use to grow your audience. How? You can share your blog content in your marketing efforts to grow your audience. Blogging helps reduce the effort you have to spend coming up with original and relevant content to share in your marketing in the first place. This makes integrating blog content into your marketing strategy is a no brainer.
The places we recommend you share you blog content include:
Social Media: Social media marketing is hard. You have to stay consistent and post regularly to benefit from it. With blogging, you have relevant and original content you can cross promote on social media. What you post on social can be a teaser and drive people to the full post on your blog. This improves your website traffic and draws new people into your sphere of influence.
Email Newsletters: Did you know an email marketing is the most profitable marketing channel for most businesses? You can achieve the highest return on investment by building a thorough email marketing strategy. While selling is common in email marketing, you do not want to only send sales emails to your audience. This can anger your potential customers and cause them to unsubscribe. You can stagger your sales emails with email newsletters promoting your latest blog posts.
Online Forums: You can use websites like Quora to share your blog content. If someone asks a question that one of your blog posts directly answers, this is the perfect opportunity to share it.
Conclusion
Starting a blog can seem scary and daunting, but this should stop you from doing it. Blogging has a load of benefits for your business including helping your business stand out as an expert in your industry, humanizing your brand, defining your voice, improving your SEO rankings and growing your audience through content marketing. Everything you need to start blogging now is readily available on the internet. All that you need to do is come up with a decent content strategy and stay consistent with your posts. Do not be deterred. After a while your website will benefit heavily from your blogging efforts. This in turn will have direct positive effects on your business. Good luck!
