Five good reasons your business needs a blog

Maintaining and managing a blog for personal or business can be a lot of work. However there are many benefits to the business and your product or service offering that can come from the invested time and effort. Not convinced? Well let’s take a look at a few benefits.

Now, we could have made this post 100 good reasons your business needs a blog, but to save us all some time and effort, here’s my top five for consideration.

1. Search Engine Optimisation

Search engines love fresh, new content. There is no better way to achieve this then a blog. A blog lets you write articles with specific targeted keywords and content. It also increases the ways in which your website or online business can be found, as visitors comment and share your posts, these updates are then spread through and passed on to other social networks. Contributing to your blog posts overall SEO. Higher search rankings ultimately mean more visitors to your website. More visitors means more opportunities to promote your company, products and online presence.

2. Builds authority

Building authority not only impacts search engine ranking but more importantly, it directly increases your ability to influence your online users. Creating content that directly demonstrates particular expertise in your industry builds credibility in the minds of your audience. This is important as people are generally more inclined to buy from businesses and brands that they trust. Building authority and trust with your audience positively impacts your opportunities to make sales.

Further to this, the way online users seek out information and assurance that a purchase is going to be the right one has significantly changed over the past say, five years. Where a potential customer would go directly to a business for help with questions and buying decisions, they now do their research online and within their social communities. Providing an open forum like a blog for product discussion and recommendations also gives you an opportunity to listen to your potential customers and provides you the ability to direct traffic and inquiries direct to your website.

3. Customer insight

Having a blog on your website gives visitors an opportunity to express themselves. They can do this by commenting on blog posts. This provides opportunity to gather ideas around the concerns of your audience and customers and the ability to openly respond in a considerate and timely manner. It allows you to observe what your customers are saying and also what problems they need solving. Enabling you to better know your customers.

4. It gives your business a voice

This one is rather important. Every business needs a voice and sometime this can get lost in translation and amongst all the noise that is online (emails, status updates etc.). A blog is a great way for a business to establish its own voice and allow you to manage your reputation. Updating your blog regularly ensures your voice gets an opportunity to be heard. A blog can also give your business a life, a personality, and an opportunity to continue the conversation with your customers and audience.

5. Social sharing

In todays online world, getting noticed can be a difficult thing to do. You need to leverage your audiences social connections to extend your reach. Writing great blog posts that your audience and visitors want to share can dramatically increase the traffic to your website and the overall perception of your business. Having a great product is no longer good enough. You need to maximise your chances of becoming known within social communities and allow your customers and audience to recommend your product or service. They need to be able to share your story!

These are just my top five reasons your business should have a blog. Above all, it also needs to be in line with any marketing initiatives and provide sticky-ness on your website. Think of it as content that parks your visitors while they learn more about your business, service or product.