Blogging for small business has become a widely established way to build trust, grow a following, establish your brand and of course, make sales. Increasingly companies are reporting higher website traffic and sales, as a direct result of blogging. So, what exactly are the benefits of blogging for small business growth? We have rounded up the top seven reasons why your business needs to be playing in the blogging space.

1. Establish yourself as an expert

Your blog is an extension of your product or service. The way your blog looks and sounds, will come down to your personality and the tone of your brand. This is really important because your blog becomes an extension of your brand’s unique flavor, setting you apart and encouraging customers to personally engage with your offering. This starts to build a bond with your readers where customers will seek you out on the basis of trust.

 

The next important element comes down to what you write about. The content of your blog is all about sharing knowledge that your customers would like to learn about. By publishing useful content on your industry in a consistent way, you will start to establish yourself as a thought leader in this arena. This in turn builds confidence in your brand, product and service.

 

2. Increase traffic to your site 

By frequently posting consistent content, you will increase traffic to your website. More traffic translates to more leads. The more people on your site, the more chance of potential sales, reservations or submissions. The trick here is to create content that addresses a customer’s need. Then offer a solution to that need in the form of your service. If they then come to your site off the back of your content, it means that they are already looking for your help and will be more likely to convert into a sale.

 

3. Attract new customers

The key to blogging is consistency. No matter what your product offering is, the more consistent your activity, the higher your chance of lead conversions. This only occurs if your content offers real value to people’s lives. Remember that people are always researching online, and in fact the pricier the product, the more time will be invested in the research period. Coming across consistent and informative blog content will sway your reader and convert them into customers.

 

4. SEO

Search Engine Optimization is a long-term strategy where your website will appear higher up on search page rankings like Google. One way to do this is to consistently write blog content (housed on your website) that has keywords in the text which align with your customer’s search. This will then automatically pull your website up on search engine pages as it will recognize that your business is highly relevant to the user’s direct search. This builds trust in your brand as you will (once again) instinctively be seen as a business that can attend to your customers' needs.

 

5. Show what you can do

A website is like your business’s portfolio. For companies like landscapers, hairdressers, graphic designers etc., where visual references and track records are important, you can house all your previous work visually online. This then demonstrates what future customers can expect from you. A blog is a great place to elaborate on your offering, highlight special projects and expand on your thinking. This begins to demonstrate the various ways you can assist and essentially motivate how you can help your customer in the future.

 

6. Lead conversions 

Simply put, there are three stages that lead up to converting a customer into a sale:

 

  1. Awareness
  2. Consideration
  3. Decision

What’s great about blogging is that it can stretch across all three of these areas. Encouraging brand awareness, “How To” topics, testimonials of satisfied customers, informative reviews as well as offering easy ways to buy in. In this way, as they read your blog, potential customers are ‘window shopping’ and ‘trying on’ your offering. If you engage with them and let them get a feel for your brand, then there is a much higher propensity to win them over and close the deal.

 

7. Build your niche network

Most of the time, businesses mainly think about the blog reader as a targeted customer. But actually, there is a huge benefit to thinking about networking as a potential outcome of blogging as well. Every niche business has a handful of trustworthy blogs. The bloggers with the most valuable content are more likely to be those with the best client portfolios and experience. So, follow the best blogs in your industry and you will have immediate insight into what your competitors are doing. Not only this, but it may well open up a world of potential collaborators and partners that you could work with in the future.

 

The bottom line

 Blogging is more than a ‘nice to have’ on your website. As you can see, there is a wide range of important reasons why your business should be building a consistent blog article archive. So ensure that your website has a user-friendly blog section, and add this into your ongoing weekly marketing activity. Then watch how it knits your branding strategy and starts to bring in leads.

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