Blogs are an amazing tool to drive traffic to your website organically. Here are 10 reasons you should start one today...
Imagine this. You start a new business, create a flashy website, run a few Facebook ads, but yet you’re not quite getting the stream of customers that you expected.
You do a little bit of research and realise that you’re not ranking very highly in search engine results. In fact, you’re not even in the first 5 pages.
It’s devastating. You’ve put so much time, effort and money into creating a business, developing a product, and now nobody can even find it?
How on earth do you cut above the crowd and make sure your product is getting seen before your competitor’s? Could the solution be as simple as … a blog?
Yes, you heard me correctly.
It might sound insignificant but blogs are a powerful way to improve your visibility online. A blog not only helps search engines understand what your website is about, but by providing good information using strong SEO tactics, you can better connect with your customer base and build that all important brand loyalty.
If you’re still not convinced, read on to learn the 10 ways blogging can grow your business.
Frequent posts show your website is active
Many people build websites with very much a ‘build it and they will come’ mentally. It’s true that once a website is created it will become searchable. The problem is that hundreds, if not thousands, of new websites are made every day.
All of these websites are fighting for relevancy, meaning search engines need to know which ones to prioritise. If you build your website, but only update the content once in a blue moon, search engines might think your website isn’t active.
The less you update your website the less likely it is to appear within the first few pages of search results. This makes it much more likely that your prospective customer will find your more active competitors first. Not ideal.
An easy fix for this problem is to post a blog on a consistent basis. This tells the search engine “Hey, we’re still doing business!” and keeps your website higher up the food chain. While weekly (or even biweekly) posts are most effective, if this isn’t sustainable, just one post a month should be enough to maintain signs of life.
Keywords make your website more searchable
Keywords. What are these keywords? Many people know what they are but not why they’re important. You see search engines aren’t sentient (at least not yet) so they can’t tell what pages on the internet are useful to people and which aren’t.
This is why keywords are so important because they tell the search engine exactly what your website is about. This means when someone searches using those keywords the search engine knows to put your website into their search results.
Okay, well if that is the case, then why not just post hundreds of the same keyword to get your website to show up in search results? Yes, technically this would work in the short-term, but search engines are trying to learn what pages on the internet people find useful.
If someone finds your page unhelpful or misleading, they’ll click away immediately. The search engine will eventually learn that your website isn’t providing value, and this will hurt your search ranking. Not only this but it annoys people (and a peed off person isn’t going to buy your product).
If you write a blog post that contains lots of those juicy keywords, and solves your prospective client’s problem, then the search engine knows your website provides value and it will put you higher up in the search rankings. To really level up with your keyword usage, you want to find terms that are searched often but have low competition from other users.
For a more in-depth explainer of keywords make sure to check out this SEO Crash Course from Mayple.
Build credibility by helping people solve problems
As mentioned above. Many prospective customers won’t have heard of your company and might not even know the service you provide exists. This means they likely won’t be searching for you directly. When you have a problem what do you usually do? You look it up on the internet.
There are millions of articles and resources on the good ol’ web fighting to solve your customer’s problem for them. That’s why you need to be the one to solve those problems first, before someone else does. By understanding what your customer needs, and how your product or service helps them with that, you can build your credibility as a business.
The more times you solve your customers’ problems, without them having to give up anything in return, the more willing they will be to pay for your services when the time comes. They’ll see you as an authority and a useful resource, which helps build their trust and loyalty to you as a brand.
It keeps your customers updated about your business
A little appreciated benefit of blogging, or simply just press releases, is that they help to keep your customer updated about your products. Believe it or not, brand loyalty still exists, and fans of your business will want to know what you have going on. What new products they might be missing out on.
People are always looking for the newest thing, the latest version, the highest tech doohickey to lord over their friends. If their current version isn’t up to date you can guarantee they’ll want to know about it. Not only this, but giving your customers frequent updates about what is going on with your team helps to build rapport.
A blog shows them there is a human behind that computer screen. It also allows you to present new product launches with a more informal approach. For instance, if you can debut a new product or service in the context of an explainer article, then your customer will get a lot more value than if you had just launched it on your website.
So, keep your customers up to date. Let me know who you are, what you’re about, and most importantly, what you’re up to. The more your customer knows about you and your brand, the more likely they’ll trust your product.
Internal linking helps keep prospective customers on your website
Search engine algorithms rewards sites that are able to hold the attention of viewers. For instance, on YouTube, which is run by Google, if a creator can keep viewers clicking through to other videos on their channel, they are rewarded. YouTube will begin putting their content into the orbit of more users and help their channel to grow.
Similarly, if readers of your blog posts view other blogs and pages on your website, this tells the search engine that people find value in your content. For keeping the attention of users, you are rewarded by your website ranking higher in search results. Making it more likely that customers will find you.
This is why it is essential to optimise your blog content by using internal links to other content and pages within your website. You’re trying to get your customer trapped in a rabbit hole of your content, much like people do on Wikipedia, where one interesting entry leads them to another one and so on.
The longer you keep their attention, the more you will reap the benefits, and the more likely it is that people will find and buy your product.
Easy lead generation
When your blog provides value on a consistent basis, without asking for anything in return, your prospective customers will want to keep returning to your website. What’s even better is that, if they like your blog enough, they might even subscribe to keep up to date with what you’re posting.
Congratulations. You’ve just provided yourself with free lead generation.
That’s an entire mailing list of engaged people who want to know more about you and your product. Hit them with a well-timed marketing blast with a special offer only available to subscribers and you’ve easily converted fans to actual customers.
The added bonus is that you’re not cold emailing people from expensive (and sometimes unethically sourced) leads lists who don’t want to be sold to. These people in your subscriber list actually asked to be there. They already like you and your brand, meaning they’ll be much more willing to accept your sales pitches.
Endless stream of social content
With the advent of online streaming services and ad-blockers, allowing people to bypass most advertising, the new generation is becoming increasingly averse to being ‘sold to’. Myself included. Being trapped in an aggressive advertising campaign is more inclined to make me boycott a brand than buy from it.
I will, however, engage with company posts on social media and share them with my friends. If a brand has a post or thread I find useful, you can bet that I’ll go check out their profile, and maybe even their website. A social media presence allows you to foster a more informal relationship with your customer base.
This is why so many businesses have shifted away from their more overt marketing practices and have instead focused on cultivating a social media presence to build their audience. The problem with this, however, is that social media takes a lot of work. Keeping a presence on social media can feel like a full-time job (and a tedious one at that).
Luckily, blogs create constant fodder for posting to social media. This significantly cuts down the work as any blog posts can be disseminated across different platforms, and even slightly repackaged, for different audiences. In the time it took you to produce and post one blog entry, you’ve helped build your audience across multiple platforms.
Not bad for a few hours work…
Blog content can be reused in other formats
Speaking of repackaging for different audiences. Blogs are a great source of ideas in case you ever decide to branch out into new content, such as videos, podcasts, webinars, etc. Infotainment is the new advertising, so the more varied content you can get our there, the bigger your potential customer base.
Once you’ve created a blog post on a specific topic, that content is now yours to do whatever you want with.
Say you wrote a great blog series about a topic that you’re an expert in, you could easily repackage that as a book, a podcast, or any other format in order to help your knowledge reach a wider audience. Repackaging might just seem like you’re spamming your content across different platforms, but your audience will actually appreciate this.
For instance, many people don’t enjoy reading, but they will happily listen to an audio version of the same content. This is why services like Audible are so popular. Similarly, some people might not enjoy listening to a podcast, but they will happily watch a YouTube video, and vice versa.
Your audience might want to read your content but they need to go for a run. Well, now that you’ve repackaged that blog post as a podcast, they can do both! Having a blog gives you a dearth of intellectual property to draw from if you ever decide to diversify this branch of your business. So, the earlier you start, the more content you’ll have to choose from.
Cheaper than other advertising methods
Through the above methods, blogs organically drive traffic to you and your product. This is much cheaper, and in many ways, more effective than costly marketing campaigns. It also has the added bonus that your clients won’t feel like they’re being sold to. You’re just letting them know you exist if they need you.
Rather than spamming your customers with ads everywhere they turn, you can just put an interesting or helpful blog post somewhere in their orbit, and get engagement that way. There’s nothing wrong with also running ads but through using a blog you can be a lot more strategic with your ad placements in order to get the most bang for your buck.
Adverts sell a product, but blogs and articles build a brand. You don’t want to be any other company trying to part people from their hard earned money. You’re a problem solver, you’re a friend. You want to help your customer live their best life. So don’t give them the hard sell, soft soap them with a blog post.
Free and effective market research
Anyone who exists on the internet is well aware of the instant feedback that comes from people consuming your content. And boy, do they give feedback. Whether it’s bad or good, you can count on it being loud and immediate. While this can sometimes be disheartening (especially if you get negative feedback), it is actually a gift in disguise.
Running your own market research can be costly, and depending on how the study is run, might not provide you with as many helpful insights as you’d hoped. By putting yourself out there in the form of blog posts and social media you get to find out exactly what your customer’s think of your product.
Both good and bad comments let you know what customers think about or want from you as a business. Even if they don’t leave comments, you can still see what content is resonating with your customers through what they view and share.
This provides you with an absolute goldmine of data and analytics to help you steer the ship towards what customers really want. All for the low low price of a few hours of your time. I’d call that a pretty great return on investment. It can take a little while to build up this kind of data from your client base, but the more you post, the better your insights.
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I hope you enjoyed these 10 compelling reasons why you should be running a blog as part of your business model.
In a small team, it can be really hard to divert effort to something that doesn’t seem business critical. Yet, the rewards you’ll reap from keeping a high value and consistent blog are exceptional.
If you’re struggling to get your blog off the ground, or remain consistent, Obsidian Elephant can help to get you started.
Send us a message to book in a complimentary 10-15 minute video call and get ready to kickstart your blogging journey.
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