If you’ve got a website already or are thinking about one then the question about whether your website needs a blog will almost certainly have come up. I’m a big believer that it can be beneficial for almost all types of business. After all, if I didn’t then you wouldn’t be reading these words in the first place. Here I will go through some of the benefits of blogging that I think makes the stress of maintaining a blog (it’s not that bad really, once you start) well worth it.
Demonstrate your expertise
Writing a blog is the perfect way to demonstrate the knowledge you have to your customers / potential customers. By creating blog posts on topics relating to the industry which you or your company operates in, you are backing up what you are promising to your customers by displaying the knowledge you have to make those promises reality.
If you post regular articles then you may even become a go-to resource for information and opinion. If you’re a small business then this is a very useful way for you to gain credibility in the eyes of your website visitors who may not know you compared to your bigger rivals. Where a big company will gain customers through reputation, you can do it through demonstrating knowledge.
It helps with Search Engine Optimization
Blogs can help greatly when it comes to being found on Google. Google and other search engines…do you know anyone who doesn’t use Google? Likes fresh content. Producing blog articles is producing fresh content that Google wants to see. The reason being is that Google wants to provide the people using the search engine with the most up to date information. Now, this doesn’t mean you have to have a constant churn of new blog posts, although that’s no bad thing, simply updating old posts to keep them relevant is time well spent.
Having blog posts means there are more ways to be found on Google. You can tailor certain posts to particular search terms that you might not have been able to do on your web site’s main pages. This just adds to the different search terms google can potentially find your website.
Get your website shared around the internet
Each article that you write creates something new that can be shared by people on the internet. Obviously the more your website is being exposed to a greater number of people, the more customer’s you should see as a result. So whenever you post a new blog tweet about it, post it on Facebook, just make sure you get it in front of as many people as you can and maybe it will be shared by your followers helping you reach more people than you would do normally.
If the content you write is interesting, useful and engaging then other websites will hopefully start linking to your content. This is what we call a backlink and it is extremely valuable when it comes to getting as high as you can on Google (I know, more SEO). So don’t simply bash out 500 words without thinking and hope for the best. Make sure you take the time to produce something people are going to want to read. Ask yourself if you would be interested if you weren’t writing it. If not, the chances are you’ve got more work to do.
Prove you can do what you say you can do
Something that you could post on your blog are case studies. If you can show evidence of the successes that you’ve had and show how you achieved that success then I urge you to do it. Nothing will reassure potential customers that you can back up the claims you make on your website better than showing that you’ve done it before.
Develop your brand
Blogging is an excellent way for you to connect with the visitors to your website and to either show people another, more personal side to your company. Alternatively, it is a chance to double down and reinforce the tone of voice you’ve decided best represents your company. Different approaches will work for different types of company. If you’re a lawyer, perhaps you want to maintain a strictly professional tone of voice, whereas if you’re a photographer or such like then maybe you will want to show a fun playful side. Either way, blogging can really help enhance your overall brand identity.
Conclusion
I know that it may seem like a trial to maintain a blog and that there aren’t enough hours in the day as it is. But hopefully, you can now see that blogging has some really big benefits and there are no rules that state you have to be blogging every day or even every week. And despite what some people will say they don’t all have to be big 2,000 word essays to rank in google. The best thing you can do is write as often as you can, engagingly, about topics that you know about.
