5 benefits of starting a blog for your business

You may not realize it, but there are not many businesses or organizations out there that would not benefit from starting a blog on their websites.

Believe it or not, by having a blog and keeping it updated with high-quality, informative posts, you can not only reach new customers, but also retain existing customers by keeping them coming back to your website for fresh content and updates about your services or products.

The trick is, though, to make sure the blog posts are actually high in quality and informative, which is sometimes easier said than done. However, if you are able to write quality posts, you will see there are many benefits of having started a blog.

Let’s take a look at five of those benefits.

1. Deliver important updates to your customers

A blog for your business is the best place to provide important updates and announcements to customers about your products, services or other relevant information. By using your blog as the go-to source of information about what your business provides, customers will be encouraged to check back more often, which can lead to better conversion rates, grow email lists, generate better leads and more.

Now, some may argue that social media is all you need for updating customers. While your business should always be active on social media, these platforms are not necessarily designed to be catch-alls – nor is it always the best place for lengthy posts that can be used as educational how-tos and walkthroughs made to familiarize customers with products.

On top of that, social media can’t compete with a well-crafted blog post in terms of search engine optimization, which we will discuss in the next benefit.

2. Increase company website traffic through SEO

Search engine optimization is critical to a website’s ability to attract the right people.

Search engine optimization, often referred to as SEO, is the practice of designing websites in ways that increase their rankings on popular search engines, such as Google and Bing. These search engines look for certain qualities in websites in order to show the most useful results as possible to web users.

A blog post can check off a few of items on the list of qualities search engines use to rank websites, including:

• Content with keywords and phrases that are relevant to a user’s search terms
• Content that is updated regularly and not outdated
• Content that others have also found useful and have linked to on other websites
• Additional pages for search engines to index and potentially include in search results

3. Become a source of expertise

A blog can often help businesses and organizations build reputations as experts in their industry or field.

The best way to accomplish this is by writing informative posts that are educational or helpful. After a period of consistently posting useful posts, you may start to notice that you are starting to form an audience thanks to people sharing posts on social media, your blog showing up more often in search results and other websites linking to your content – all of which contribute to even better SEO performance.

4. Build a loyal audience that returns again and again

Over time, all that helpful content ideally will result in visitors returning to your website and becoming regular readers of your blog. Once this happens, you have an audience.

The value of having an audience cannot be overstated. These readers are loyal – likely to your brand – and can be very useful. They can be encouraged to sing your praises or share your blog posts to others, which will expand your reach even further. They also can become some of your best customers, people who truly believe in your product or service.

One strategy for developing this type of audience is by providing a space for comments on your blog posts. Encourage readers to get involved in the discussion by asking people to comment and by participating in the comments yourself.

5. Blogs are another form of advertising

Think of blogs as a less pushy, less intrusive form of advertising your products and services. Rather than buying an ad to reach potential customers, people are usually seeking out information and then they are led to your blog because they have reason to believe it contains helpful content that is relevant to them. They have likely made this assumption because the link to the blog post showed up in search results, they saw it on social media or were directed to it via another website.

Blogs as a form of advertising can often be cheaper, too. Even if you are hiring someone to craft the blogs for you – which is common – it mostly likely still is a cheaper than taking out an ad in a newspaper or running a spot on TV or radio.

Bonus reason: A blog is a great companion to other digital marketing tools

A good digital marketing strategy involves many different tools. For many businesses, social media, email marketing and blogs can be used together to form a competitive, results-driven plan for reaching more customers and driving more sales.

Blog posts provide content that can then be repurposed for your other marketing channels, including social media profiles and email campaigns. Posts can also be written to promote more likes and sign-ups on those channels.

Just be sure to include mentions of and links to your blog in your other marketing efforts. For example, every time you write a blog post, create a post to share on social media and remember to include it in an upcoming email newsletter or update to customers.

Emagine develops marketing strategies that work

If you want blog posts, social media strategies and email marketing campaigns that work in concert and drive the results you want, then you need to have a plan. This plan should complement your business or organization’s other marketing efforts, too.

That’s where Emagine can help. We use data to create comprehensive marketing plans and strategies that deliver results our clients want. Get in touch to see how Emagine can help your business succeed.