One of the things that we are always recommending to our clients is that they should be blogging. There are many benefits to blogging and in this article I’m going to go into the details of what they are and why it is well worth creating the time to do.
Too many businesses get their new website online and then forget about it with the expectation that it will do it’s job. However, the reality is that a successful website is much more than just the initial build, they need to be continually updated and improved, in a number of different ways, if they are to reach their full potential.
Blogging is one of these things and the following are some of the reasons why:
Blogging Improves Traffic
Traffic is fundamental to the success of any website. If potential customers can’t find your website, or worse, don’t have a reason to visit it, then that’s a massive problem. Blogging addresses both of these challenges as it creates interesting content that people will want to read and it helps your standing in search engines.
Search engine algorithms have moved way beyond simply looking for keywords in your website and analyse a number of different factors including mobile friendliness, how recently your site has been updated and the relevance of the content on your site.
If you have a blog that is regularly updated with interesting and relevant content the search engines will see that your site is active and useful and promote your standing in results because of that.
Blogging also gives you more opportunities to reach new visitors as your new content is shared across social media, boosting both your presence on those mediums and the traffic coming to your site.
Builds authority
Blogging builds authority in two ways: As discussed above it builds your authority with search engines helping to push you up the rankings in organic search results.
Blogging is also a way to build authority within your industry. By providing useful information, helping others operating in the same sector and demonstrating your knowledge and expertise you can gradually build your brand and establish yourself as an authority in your sector.
Having comments enabled on your blog and taking the time to respond to them is also a good way to reach potential customers, establish a reputation and begin to build relationships.
Clearly this doesn’t happen overnight and the benefits will only become apparent in the longer term, but blogging can be a good way to get yourself known.
An Opportunity to Generate Leads
If you are blogging about a subject that your business is expert in then placing a call to action in your post to promote your products or services can be a great way to generate leads.
However, it’s important to strike a balance between providing useful content and pushing your business. While your blog is a good way to promote your products and services, nobody likes feeling harassed into buying things and you will never build an audience by pushing your services in all of your posts.
By providing truly useful information and genuinely trying to help people through your blog posts you will build authority in your area and an audience of visitors who respect your expertise. Do this and the rest will follow.
Makes Your Team Feel Involved
One of the barriers to blogging for businesses is finding the time to do it. A great solution to this is to get your team involved: why not create a rota system whereby each department takes it in turns to write a blog post? If you have four different departments you can generate four posts a month (one a week) with each of those departments only having to write one post a month.
An approach like this not only makes blogging more manageable, it also has the benefit of getting your team involved and feeling valued. Everyone likes to feel like their input is valuable and what better way to show that than to publish their content on your website?
Don’t Delay
It’s easy to push blogging to the bottom of your list of priorities and forget about it, but with your online presence being so crucial today and there being so many advantages to blogging it really is well worth making the time to do and the sooner you do it the sooner you’ll start to see the benefits.