It’s pretty common knowledge at this point that if you have a business, you should have a blog. It helps you connect to your ideal customer and serve as a resource for people in the market for your product or service. But how exactly does that work and why should you care? Here are seven reasons a blog is good for business.
Fresh Content
Without a blog, most of our business web pages remain fairly static. Sure you might think to update promos and what not, but a lot of us simply forget to feed the Google content machine. A blog, and consistently posting to one, means your site is updated regularly and there’s fresh content for visitors to view all the time. If you don’t have a blog, how often will you think to update your website content?
It Feeds Your Social Media Channels
Of course, you don’t want to be a big bore on social media and only post your own content but without a blog, finding your own content becomes increasingly more difficult. Blogs are a source of content that can be broken up many ways. Blog posts can be shared on their own. They can become tweetable pieces. Quotes from your post can become image quotes with a little work. And they can become conversation starters if you write about a good discussion topic.
You Own It
Do you remember the Facebook outage? If you use social media regularly you probably do.
Tomorrow, your favorite social media channel could decide it wants to become a membership community for fashion designers. Facebook could begin charging everyone to post, not just ads. Okay, these last two things probably won’t happen, but they could. If they did, what happens to you and the audience you’ve built there?
Or how about this…
Tomorrow your ideal customer leaves your social media platform of choice. Think about that one. You’ve invested a huge amount of time building an audience and then the people you’re most trying to reach are no longer there. All that time wasted and you’ve lost contact.
Writers and social media gurus are always predicting the downfall of some social network and for good reason. It paralyzes most of us who use it for business with fear. Bottom line, you don’t own these channels like you own your blog content.
The Stats Are With You
According to a report from HubSpot, 60% of businesses that blog consistently saw an increase in customers once they started blogging.
Its Makes You a Source for Free PR
Journalists and bloggers can find articles you’ve written and quote you without you spending the time of having to arrange an interview. You can get your name out there without any additional work on your part and it builds your reputation as a subject matter expert.
Blogging Makes You Think About Your Business in a Different Way
Since you want to write about things that concern your ideal customer, blogging forces you to see things from your customers’ perspectives. It also makes you think about issues facing your industry. It gives you a much larger perspective on your own business and that’s a great thing.
A Blog Forces You to Cultivate a Tone and a Personality
It’s very easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day of running your business without much thought to how you sound to customers. That may be fine for the customers coming into your brick and mortar business but what about online customers or people who are considering doing business with you? When you share of yourself and your personality and tone on your blog, people who have never met you will feel like they know you and that will help convince them to buy.
A Final Word about Blogging
As a small business owner, you’re pulled in a million directions and blogging may seem very unimportant to you, something that’s not worth your time. But if you get just one extra customer a year from it, would it be worth it? What’s the lifetime value of a customer versus the investment in thirty minutes a week? Remember, you needn’t post every day. Once a week, consistently, can still give you the benefits above.
