Small businesses today already understand the importance of having an online presence. Whether it’s a business website, Facebook page or Twitter account, the importance of engaging with your customers and prospects is incredibly important.
But what about blogging?
If you’re a small business owner and you’ve previously dismissed writing blog posts, you’re missing out on a fantastic opportunity. Maybe it’s time to think again… especially if you’re already doing a lot of good work on social media.
These six benefits of small business blogging should give you some food for thought:
1. Complement your social media efforts
First and foremost, blog posts provide you with killer content for your social media channels. And let’s face it, without a regular flow of great content, our social media followers will soon start looking elsewhere for information.
That’s why consistently high-quality, regular blog posts complement your social media efforts so well. Post them across your various accounts and if people find them useful there’s a good chance they’ll reshare them too. Nobody should want to turn down free advertising.
2. Showcase your knowledge
Your business blog is also one of the best platforms from which you can showcase your knowledge.
Imagine the impact a post will have when someone finds it extremely useful and then sees that you have personally written it. That light bulb moment when one of your readers says: “Wow! This person really knows what they’re talking about.”
So instead of just sharing other people’s posts on social media, start promoting your own too. With the right content marketing strategy you’ll soon notice significant, tangible gains.
3. Establish yourself as ‘the expert’
The more you showcase your knowledge, the more you’ll start to establish yourself as ‘the expert’ in your sector. In time, you’ll become a “go to” source for informative content and that will help increase your company’s competitive edge.
No matter how small your business is, a well-maintained blog can be the difference between standing out in your marketplace and not.
4. Nurture your business relationships
A blog is an excellent place to build trust with your customers and prospects, and nurture the relationships you’ve already established with them.
By publishing content on your business blog and then promoting it via social media, you will actively nurture your business relationships. As your prospects learn to trust you more and realise the information you’re providing is valuable, the chances of them being converted to customers increases.
5. Boost SEO
While blog posts should never be written with search engine optimisation (SEO) solely in mind, they do, nevertheless, have an impact on it. So if you start producing blog posts that are relevant to your sector and filled with useful information, there’s a good chance your business website will begin to appear higher in the organic results pages of Internet search engines. Just don’t go overboard with the keywords.
6. Drive traffic to your website
Finally, all of the above benefits equate to another highly important and desirable outcome: more traffic to your business website.
Every time someone clicks a link to one of your blog posts in their social media feed they are taken to your website. This kind of focused traffic is what we all want to get and it’s while they are on your site that you can take real advantage.
Special offers, promotions and related posts are all things you can tempt visitors to your blog with to ensure they stay on your site for longer and become a paying customer.
Do you have a blog for your business? Let me know if it’s working for you in comments or on Twitter.
