Business blogging is a marketing tactic that uses blogging to get your business more online visibility. A business blog is a marketing channel (just like social media, direct mail, email marketing, etc.) that helps support business growth and lead generation.
Whatever your business, you’ve probably wondered if it’s worth investing the time and effort. More importantly, does it deliver results. The answer to both these questions is yes.
What is a blog?
Blogging is the act of creating short-form content. For a more comprehensive FAQ on blogging, check out the article from Hubspot. Here are some of the benefits you’ll get from business blogging.
1. Blogs help drive traffic to your website
We all want to drive more traffic to our websites, but we also want to get the right traffic too. Having a strong web presence is an essential component of building brand awareness, attracting new customers and engaging with them. These all contribute to lead generation and lead nurturing – win more business.
Now think about the ways people find your website, how can you drive website traffic? In short blogging, social media, email campaigns and search engines.
Adding frequent blogs to your website means your site gets regular updates, and each blog you add means you’re adding one more indexed page (an additional url). That all adds up to a positive impact on your SEO, and a cue to google and other search engines that your site is active and they should be checking frequently to see what new content has been added.
Blogging also helps you get discovered via social media. Every time you write a blog post, you’re creating content that can be shared on social networks such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest which increases your business reach to new and target audiences that may not know you yet.
By blogging relevant and engaging content frequently, you will build brand awareness, drive people to your site, attract potential customers and enhance your inbound marketing efforts.
2. Boost search engine optimization
As mentioned earlier, search engines really love fresh, relevant content and blogs are a straightforward and inexpensive way of achieving that. Of course you need to cost out the time it takes to create your blog content. When you consistently and regularly creating blog posts, you are giving search engines fresh content to index. Make sure you include relevant keywords, add links to external references as well as other content on your site.
Over 4 million blog posts are published every day on the internet so make sure the content is relevant to your target audience and aligned to your business product and services. This will increase your search visibility.
3. It helps convert that traffic into leads
Once your blogs are generating traffic to your website you have now have an opportunity to engage, nurture and convert that traffic into leads. Each post is a fresh opportunity to generate new leads. Make sure you add a simple call to action on every blog post. Add links to related and useful content found elsewhere on your website.
Your call to action can be a link to a free cheat sheet, ebook, webinars, free trials, or simply get in touch. If you want visitors to exchange their information you need to give them something in return.
4. Develop, nurture and engage valuable relationships
Customer engagement is a hugely important element of online marketing, and blogging gives you an opportunity to connect to your customers and enables you to engage with them and get comments and feedback.
It also facilitates nurturing and engagement of your prospects and target audience, using relevant content to engage them with your knowledge and brand. This keeps visitors coming back to your website and spending more time their. The more time they spend on your site, the better the indication that they like what they see and are engaged with your brand. That’s good news for SEO too.
5. Blogs help establish knowledge and authority
The best business blogs answer common questions their customers and prospects want answers too. If you consistently create content that’s helpful for your target audience, it will help establish you as an authority or knowledge expert.
Over time, you will become known as the go-to resource for helpful and informative content. This can help your readers learn about new tools or resources, solve challenges, advance in their own business and can potentially lead to more inquiries and higher conversion rates for your business.
As you can see this is a great tool to help with lead generation and your sales process. If your prospects find answers to their challenges and questions, they will keep coming back, allowing you to engage with them and move them through the sales process
6. Create opportunities for sharing
One of the great things about a great business blog is the communication and sharing opportunities. Every time you post a blog, you create an opportunity for your audience to share it, either by linking to it, sharing it on social media, or by emailing it to others. It’s valuable, free marketing which can validate you as a credible business, and you can learn a great deal about your audience in the process.
Convinced yet? Give Business Blogging a go
These are just a few of the benefits that successful, consistent and relevant business blogging will bring to your business. Be patient, it does take time, you need a plan, make sure you are consistently creating and sharing your blog content and you’ll soon reap the benefits and see an increase in your website traffic and lead generation.
Want a helping hand with your content marketing and lead generation? Check out our Intelligent Marketing Services or get in touch
