The blog has come a long way from its early days as a communication platform for online diarists. For small business owners, it might be difficult at first to understand why blogging for business is such a beneficial activity. But blogging for business is indeed a powerful, multifunctional online tool.
In fact, it might be helpful to think of blogging in terms of that other, extremely popular business practice: content marketing. The content marketing strategy revolves around creating engaging, useful, targeted content and sharing it through any number of channels in order to attract and retain customers.
So why is content creation in the form of blogging so great for your business? Here are just a few of many reasons to take to the keys.
Attract New Visitors
Blogging is a great way to get inbound traffic to your website, especially if you have a limited budget. It basically creates content pages that search engines crawl as they process queries and return top results to users. The more new, fresh content and variety of topics you have on your site—and promoted across your social media networks—the better.
Target Niche Communities
If your industry or focus lends itself to niche passions and interests, blogging is a fantastic way to connect with those small yet important pockets of your potential customer base in a way that’s difficult with standard advertising. Think about specific topics of interest to those groups, and reasons why they might be conducting an online search (blogging for business is centered around just that). Then use your blog to offer educational or entertaining content targeting to those topics and provide links to the related services, products and promotions on your site.
Establish Your Biz As an Authority
For businesses that have a solid base of existing customers or operate on a B2B basis, blogging is a great strategy for reinforcing expertise, trust and experience. Think about topics of interest surrounding your core industry and then write to demonstrate your business’s authority. Financial firms can offer tips on saving for retirement or short, up-to-date posts on the stock market. Retail businesses can talk about seasonal trends or street-style inspiration. Go beyond promoting your services or goods and try to speak to what your customers really want to know more about from a reliable source.
Showcase Company Highlights
People identify with businesses they can connect with—and blogging for business is a great way to humanize your brand. Share updates, staff favorites, special sales events and success stories on your blog. Not only will it keep that search-engine-friendly fresh content coming, but it will also build the relationship with your customers and encourage them to engage more with your business.