Tim Weideman by Tim Weideman

Blogging is no longer just a hobby for writers wanting to get their content noticed on the internet. Any more, it’s seen as a respected tool for providing many highly desirable benefits to businesses of all sizes and industries.

Want proof? Take a look at these stats compiled by SEO Tribunal:

Businesses that blog get 97% more links to their websites than their non-blogging peers. Those businesses also receive 55% more visitors to their sites and 57% of marketers say that they have actually gained customers from blogging alone.

Does your business’s website have a blog? If not, then keep reading to learn how a blog can help give your business a boost.

1. Generate leads with blog posts

Every customer started with a lead. In an online business environment, that may seem to be changing constantly, blogs remain as one of the best ways to generate leads. Blogging as part of a solid content marketing strategy can help businesses generate up to three times more leads.

Blog content creation is a top inbound marketing priority for 55% of marketers and marketers who blog are 13 times more likely to see a positive ROI for their efforts, according to Hubspot. What’s more, among B2B marketers, 81% say they blog on their business’s website and almost half of them say blogging is their most important marketing tactic.

There are many strategies that can turn any website’s blog page into a lead-generating machine, but it starts with the post itself. Create valuable content with convincing calls to action and you will be well on your way to better lead generation.

2. Grow an email list with blogging

Businesses that publish blog posts consistently have an opportunity to gather a loyal following. Blogging is a great way to add subscribers to an email list.

Once a reader or potential lead subscribes to your email list, then you can continue to communicate with them - but this time in a more personalized fashion. This could be promoting your website’s ecommerce strategy through product emails, coupon codes for their products or simply sharing additional blog content to keep your business and its value to that reader top of mind.

One advantage to adding a person who read a blog post on your website to an email list is you don’t have to work quite as hard at trying to get them to return to your website. Email marketing can be a great part of any business’s sales funnel - and blogging is a great strategy for attracting them to that point of the funnel.

3. Search engines love valuable content

Search engines have one job: to provide users with the information that they are seeking. To accomplish this job, search engines are constantly crawling websites, identifying the keywords and phrases that keep popping up across websites and grading the content on sites based on usefulness.

Now, we could spend a ton of time explaining how exactly search engines come up with their grades and rankings, which determine who shows up on the first page of search results. If you want to take that deep dive, then we have you covered here from an SEO and web design perspective.

But let’s focus on content, specifically blogging. Because search engines have their work cut out for them digesting all the information that exists on the web, they are constantly grading and grading again websites for their SEO performance.

This is where businesses that maintain a blog can rise above competition. Search engines will reward you site and bump it up on users’ search results if there is relevant, keyword-based content continually being added to your site. Just be sure to write high-quality blogs that accurately reflect what your customers are searching for if you want to move up Google’s search results.

4. Blogs can answer customers’ FAQs

What better way to create relevant content for a website than take the questions asked most often by your customers and turn them into blog posts? Not only will you be creating valuable content that your customers, but you also will be providing that same content to people who may be searching for that information online.

Answering common customer concerns is a great way to keep people engaged with your business and establish your blog as a go-to source for information about your business’s products, services or related news. Like search engines, customers also place a premium on businesses that can offer expertise on a topic.

5. Share your business’s story

Most potential customers would rather learn about a business through an article as opposed to any other form of advertising - 70% of potential customers, to be specific.

That’s why blogging is such a valuable marketing strategy. And it’s a great deal for any business that has to keep tabs on their budget. Content marketing in general costs about 62% less than more traditional outbound marketing strategies.

Blogging can also offer you a platform for telling your business’s story without having to sell your product or service to a reader - at least not directly. Plus, if your story, mission or call to action can inspire a reader, then they are 60% more likely to seek out your business’s product after they read about it anyway.

Finally, blogging is an excellent strategy to employ when you want to reach a broader audience than other forms of advertising offer.

Remember: If you develop a winning SEO strategy, then your blog has the potential to boost your website’s search rankings. At that point, you can very rapidly expand your reach.

Not sure how to get started?

All that’s left for you is to start writing. Not sure how to get started? Let Emagine help.

We’re not going to sugarcoat it - blogging does take time. But it is an investment that can lead to very real ROI for your business. Over time, you can benefit from increased lead generation, customer loyalty and increased SEO performance.

Let’s talk about how we can incorporate blogging into a content marketing strategy that will produce real results for your business.


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