The Benefits of Blogging

More and more small businesses are incorporating blogging into their marketing strategies. And with good reason – it’s one of the most powerful ways to drive organic growth online.  

So, anyway enough talk about the advantages of blogging for business? Let’s get straight into what they actually are.

It’s Organic Marketing

Arguably the most important benefit of blogging is that it can help bring lots of organic traffic to your website. Organic traffic comes to your site from a search engine but isn’t paid for. It’s obviously far cheaper to obtain than paid traffic, but that’s just one of its advantages.

With paid traffic, as soon as you stop spending money, you stop getting website visitors. Organic traffic, on the other hand, is much more sustainable – it’s built up over time, so you’ll see long-term results without the long-term expense.

So, how does blogging help increase organic traffic? 

Firstly, search engines like Google favour websites that are regularly updated and full of useful content. Each time you publish a new blog post, you’re adding another indexed page to your website, which means a new opportunity to reel in that much-needed traffic.

And it’s not just the quantity of traffic you should care about – the quality of that traffic is equally as important. After all, you want those website visitors to convert into paying customers. Blogs are an opportunity to answer searchers’ questions and give them the information they’re looking for – something that Google values highly. 

Another key aspect of any good SEO strategy is link-building. This is the process of establishing hyperlinks to your website from other websites. Having lots of links to your website from high-quality, well-established sites, leads search engines like Google to view your content as more valuable. It shows that you’re a trusted source of information. And that can only mean one thing – you’ll be bumped higher up the search results. Link-building takes time, but blogging is a fantastic way to do it. As long as you’re posting valuable content, other businesses should naturally want to share it.

It builds trust

Every business wants to be perceived as an industry leader – who wouldn’t? When you establish yourself as an expert in your field, it’s much easier to gain the trust of potential customers. And blogging is one of the easiest ways to build that all-important credibility.  

Each article you post is an opportunity to show your expertise, by sharing helpful or educational content related to your industry. Once your readers realise you know what you’re talking about, they’re much more likely to turn into your customers, whether that’s straight away or later down the line.

The key is to remember to keep your content informative – not sales-heavy. 

It can help you get more leads

As we mentioned above, blogging shouldn’t generally be seen as a direct marketing tool – the idea is to fill your blog with helpful content, rather than ‘salesy’ marketing talk. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t use each article as an opportunity to gently nudge readers into taking an action.

A blog is an opportunity to explain all of the benefits of your product or service. And, chances are, you want your readers to buy your product, sign up to your mailing list or contact you to find out more about your services. Whatever it is, including a strong call to action at the end of your blog posts can be really effective. 

Your social media will get a boost

If your business is active on social media, the chances are you spend a fair bit of time coming up with new content to post across your channels. Start a blog, and you’ll find yourself with a steady stream of high-quality content to share with your followers. This could be anything from industry trends and company news to inspirational content or hints and tips relating to your product.

Not only will you save time creating new content from scratch, but you’ll be sharing really valuable content that your audience is likely to engage with. Plus, more post shares means more link clicks, and more link clicks means more potential new customers browsing your website.

Plus, the relationship between blogging and social media works both ways. Make sure you include share buttons on each of your posts. Each new article is a new piece of content that readers might want to share with their friends, helping to put your business in front of a whole new audience. 

You can achieve long-term results

You might be wondering how long it will be before you start seeing results from your blog. Unfortunately, there’s no straight answer – as we discuss in this post. Your success depends on a number of factors, and your blog is just one cog in the machine. However, it’s important to remember that blogging is a long-term marketing strategy. That means it might take several months for you to start seeing results.

The good news is that this in-it-for-the-long-run situation works both ways. Once a blog post is written, and gets indexed by search engines, it can keep pulling in traffic for months – and often years – afterwards. In fact, HubSpot claims that 75% of its blog views come from its older blogs, and that these blogs typically account for more than 90% of overall leads!

So, while it’s important to keep posting new content, it’s good to know that your old posts will keep working hard in the background to help your business grow.

The bottom line

Starting a small business blog is a long-term marketing strategy, and you won’t see results overnight. However, when done right, it’s one of the most valuable ways that you can drive high volumes of organic traffic, ultimately leading to more sales. The sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll see results. Need some help getting things moving? Find out how we can help.

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