5 Reasons to start a Blog for your Business

This seems awfully meta. A blog can benefit your business in many ways, and me blogging at the moment is doing the same for my personal brand.

Blogs come in a variety of styles and have endless possibilities. From the biggest online newspapers and magazines to setting up a free personal blog, its important and very useful for creative expression and building a brand. Specifically, blogging benefits your business in multiple ways and should be done by every business.

1) Leads come from Blog Posts

People search for things that are happening, how to do something or situations they need help with. All topics that could better be suited in a blog post than a page on your website. Customers who find you on the blog because of a tip or trick you gave are more likely to keep you top of mind when they need services you offer (when you make it clear what you do).

Kiss Metrics is a great example of creating a blog that generates leads. Everything below they are doing extraordinarily well. It’s no question that they;

1. Have content to keep customers engaged between transactions

2. Are seen as industry experts

3. Create content that is valuable and shareable

4. Get a boost in SEO for the blog that they created

5. It has been noted that over half of their leads come from their blog. Good work.

The natural way that blogs tell stories is great for making your products and services feel more personable. Influencers bank on this “voice” being relatable to prospective customers and you can leverage that too. Look into all the potential uses for your product or service and start telling stories of case studies, use cases, customer success and unusual applications. You’ll be surprised how this can positively affect change in your business development.

2) Keep in touch between transactions

Many business that we work with do not have a product or service that is purchased daily or has a daily interaction with customers (a coffee shop). Some businesses can have months or years in between transactions. The touch point between transactions can become more automated and it will definitely be more friendly than another monthly invoice.

For example, I’ve worked with Realtors in Vancouver, BC and have been told the average duration between transactions is 7 years. What are you doing in between to stay top of mind?

Here are some ideas:

1. Start with a monthly recap of what’s happening (what were highlights about doing your job or working with clients… This promotes referrals)
2. Talk about the post sale service of the products you sell (possibly a mechanical company talking about furnaces)
3. Explain the benefits of keeping your product in the best shape (like a car dealership)
4. Provide a list of top uses for your product (could be a kitchen appliance with endless recipes)

The goal is for you to find a reason to stay top of mind. We all have forgotten things, but remember and use what is recent, memorable and useful. By becoming a resource for other things in between, like a Realtor offering a guide to local activities or restaurants, there’s a higher likelihood that customers will talk about you (could lead to referrals) and never forget you when they need your services.

3) Be an Industry Expert

Following a meeting or sales call, your prospects and even current clients will start to research your discussion if they are on the fence. Its better to find something on your site that says, “Why our products and services are worth it” than going to comparison shop or request a competing quote.

Being qualified as an expert in the industry has numerous benefits, especially when closing deals and repeating your unique value proposition and client benefits. Strong brand presence online solidifies trust and gives customers confidence. To build that presence, it takes more just BS, it takes a serious look into your core values and business practice. Having this expert approach naturally makes your company feel more transparent.

Start building your authority by sharing your experiences and perspectives on relevant situations. The goal is for you to have a public reputation that can help your business succeed. Keep putting the word out, make it relevant, stick with it, and prospects can find it.

4) Distribution — Articles are popular to share

Being popular on social media is much easier with shareable content. Articles about a small snippet of your business can be gems for social media. More shareable than a product or service page. You need to have the qualifying pages on your site, don’t abandon those in favor of a blog, you need both.

For example, some person might be looking for a how-to on a topic that relates to some part of your business and finds your post. They follow the advice, it works, they share it in hopes of helping out a friend who might be in the same jam, and that friend turns into a new client for you.

That might be overly simplified. Really over simplified way of how social works, but it does work,

Here are some great shareable content ideas:

• Turning a process into a list or infographic
• Compiling information about the past year to do an industry snapshot
• Providing content that answers Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) before they are even asked.
• Create a “did you know?” Post on fun facts for your industry
• Map out a timeline of how a product or service you work with evolved

Look at what is “dinner table worthy” about your business. Like the variety of examples above, maybe its your people, maybe its your product. Either way make content that people will want to share and will show your lighter side. We’re more likely to share if something made us laugh!

5) SEO Boost

While there is no exact science for blogging to guarantee a higher ranking in search engine results, having more content on your website that relates to your company certainly helps. Be consistent with you blog entries, have a schedule and stick to it. Staying on topic will make more of an impact, both for SEO and for audience engagement.

Blog engagement is much longer than product pages or about pages. Google recognizes this and does reward pages that offer a longer time spend on site. By its nature, a blog post is designed to be ready from top to bottom — thus increasing your user experience and lower your bounce rate.

Summary

To double back to point one, we should also be clear that this post does leave you with some pointers so that blogging can benefit your business.

There are many great platforms to choose from for blogging specifically, we choose to build and blog on WordPress due to its flexibility, endless amounts of plugins and its tenure of success as a content management platform.

The data doesn’t lie… the best place to convert readers into leads and leads into sales is at the end of the blog post or on the bottom of the page. If readers are making it all the way through the content, they’re already engaged, give them more of what they like!

Speaking of that… we’ve reached the end. I’d love it if you subscribe to my newsletter that comes out almost every week with tips, tricks and other nerdy marketing stuff.

This blog post written by Chris Milton — a marketing nerd who first figured out blogging by writing recaps of basketball games. While that feels like a lifetime ago, he’s figured out how blogging can drive results to both top line revenue and process efficiencies for client facings roles.