The 8 Benefits of Blogging for Your Business

Before Discussing the Benefits, What Is A Business Blog?

Before we discuss all the benefits of blogging, let's talk what a business blog is, and how it can be used to generate leads. Leads that hopefully convert to customers for your company. A business blog is a regularly updated collection of short-form content that resides on your website, neatly organized on the “blog” page. This content discusses topics that are important to your business. It also answers common questions asked by followers.

These blog posts make up your “business blog.” Blogging is a marketing strategy that is used to increase your online visibility and support business growth. However, in addition to these goals, blogging also provides a plethora of other benefits, both large and small. However, many new companies that are looking to increase market share are not utilizing this multidimensional tool.

The Benefits of Blogging

1. Helps drive traffic to your website and increases online visibility for your company
2. Helps turn your web traffic into leads and your leads into customers
3. Adds Value for Your Customers
4. Establishes You as an Expert in Your Field
5. Builds Relationships and Trust with Current and Future Followers
6. Connects People with Your Brand
7. Serves as a Content Source for Your Social Media
8. Boosts Your SEO

1. Increase Traffic and Boost Visibility

Your blog increases your online visibility and traffic for your website, which is the primary intention of the blog. Remember, I said before that your blog is a marketing tool! Ok, great! Blogging provides your audience with interesting or useful information that will keep your current clients coming back and increase your exposure to new clients. It should answer the essential questions your audience might have about your field. Your blog is all your knowledge written down in an “edutaining” style. And most importantly, your blog is published consistently, and Google loves that! If your blog is all of these things, your visibility will undoubtedly increase as will your traffic. Writing content based on keyword research will help magnify the increase.

2. Traffic to Leads and Leads to Buyers

I am sure you have all heard about the three stages of a customers journey. The first stage is awareness, the next is the consideration, and the final is the purchase or decision stage. (While I believe there are two other vital stages in the journey post-purchase, that is another blog entirely).

The awareness stage generally begins with a pain-point, something that the customer is struggling with, once they are aware of the pain point, they start looking for a solution to the problem. The research is known as the consideration stage. The “final” phase of the journey is the purchase stage; many times, this is where a company that offers a solution is first made aware of that potential client. Wouldn't it be great if you could have a stake in the customers' journey before the decision stage? Ah-hah, you can, and blogging is your point of entry.

Blogging Throughout The Customer Journey

If you want to capture the customer in the awareness stage, you can post simple solutions to the common problems your potential clients face. You can do this in the form of checklists, or tips and tricks blog posts. These are great ways to get people interested in the solutions you offer in your products and services without even directly mentioning them. You can also utilize your blog to write a long-form post about the features your product or service offers and the benefits those features will deliver. Pair it with a video demo and post it on your blog and you may have just moved a few potential clients to the next phase. The best part, you were not sales-pitchy you just talked about your product, right!

How would you capture a customer in the decision phase? Post a customer testimonial about the product or service. Provide dome background on the problem you solved for the customer, highlight the critical points of that journey, and then include the “social proof” aka testimonial that the customer provided. That is how you win the decision phase without even selling!

3. Adds Value for the Consumer

If you are blogging, you are creating an additional “value” for your customers. Blogging without thinking about adding value to the customer experience is downright stupid, and can potentially harm your business. After all, you want to provide a better customer experience than your competitors. When you blog, you should be providing your customer with something of value for free. A checklist, a useful tool, or a detailed answer to an important question are all great examples of free stuff. Ideally, this leads to them choosing to purchase with someone they now have a relationship with.

The more your potential customers can get from you for free, the more loyal they will be when they become customers. Think of this as an education first policy! Teaching before selling is always a good tactic, which brings us to the next blogging benefit.

4. Establishes You As The Expert

Who doesn't want to be the expert? If you are the person that people go to for answers, then you have won so keep up the excellent work. Blogging is a unique way for businesses to share knowledge with their customers about their industry. It is a great place to answer customer questions. A blog is a perfect place to build a loyal following. Successful companies consistently publish blog articles to highlight their knowledge and to position themselves as a thought leader and subject matter expert.

Regularly posting about your industry is all about building trust with your customers and confidence in your brand. When you get users to read your blog and engage with your brand, you are more likely to be the “first call” when they discover a need for the product.

5. Blogging Builds Relationships

You have now established yourself as an expert in your field. People follow your blog and look for the regular updates. You are now building relationships. These people may already be customers and clients, or they may be future customers, but they are now expecting to hear from you. They are people that respect what you have to say, look to you as a source of guidance and trust you. Your followers now trust you, and you are entering the customer for life/advocate portion of the customer journey.

6. Blogging Forms Connections to Your Brand

Everything you do as a business can impact the customers' perception of you. That perception, aka the emotional response that your followers have to your business, is your brand. Your brand personality seeps out of your writing and into the minds of those who read your blog regularly. Loyal followers can hear the tone of your words and know how you would deliver them without ever hearing you speak. Your audience has a certain level of comfort with you as you come to them at regular intervals as a guide of sorts. You have created an emotional connection with your followers. Without even necessarily trying to you have begun to build a community around your brand. And if creating a community around your brand was not one of your goals this year, it will be next year so congrats on the headstart!

7. Blogging Feeds the Social Media Beast

Let's all work smarter and not harder; are you creating social media posts for your business every week? Wouldn't it be nice if you already had content that could contribute to those posts? Write a blog! Let's take this blog as an example, how many social media posts do you think a content creator could get out of this blog? I certainly see at least 10 in my head complete with images and copy already written, and with some thought, I am certain 15-20. Yes, this is a content-rich blog post, but even getting 8 to 10 pieces of content per blog post is incredible. Spread those posts out over a few months, so it doesn't feel like you are beating a dead horse and you suddenly have more time on your hands. Want more details on how it feeds the social media beast, check out this blog.

8. Last But Not Least, Blogging Helps with Your SEO

Blogging creates value for your customers because you are providing them useful information about what you do that solves a problem they are having. If these blog articles are valuable enough to answer a customer problem, they might get picked up by other websites or blogs too. Just take a few moments to build relationships with other bloggers in your field. When other sites link to your information, it creates a backlink, which looks like a strong recommendation to Google. The more someone recommends it, the more you want to use it. These digital recommendations increase your website authority. Increased authority means additional traffic, and we are back at the top!

Every time you create a blog post, you are adding a web page to your site. This page is indexed by the search engines making your website “bigger” and more valuable. You are also utilizing more keywords and discussing topics within your industry, thus increasing your authority and helping your page rank higher.

It Doesn't Stop There, But This Blog Post Does

Phew, I am exhausted! That is a lot of benefits for blogging. And that doesn't even include benefits like blogging helps you organize your thoughts and align them with your goals and values. Or the fact that writing about your business forces you to continue to learn about your business. Blogging even helps you refine your brand story, and it improves your ability to talk about your business. Blogging is a multi-dimensional tool that can help you reach numerous marketing objectives. When paired with the power of social media, you have a powerful one-two punch few will be able to touch. So if you are not blogging, start now by clicking the link below and getting your first five killer blog topics. If you are blogging, keep up the good work! You too can click the link below and pick up five killer blog topics and feel free to write about them!

Resources: LyfeMarketing.com and hubspot.com