Blogs. If you’ve ever talked to a digital marketer (or read anything by one) you’ve likely heard that having a blog is important. And, it’s true: a great blog—one that’s well written with compelling information, can be a powerful tool to increase your online presence, engage with your customers, and establish your brand in a crowded, 21st-century marketplace. But that’s not entirely why your business should regularly publish a blog or even have one.
That’s why we wrote this post; to clarify what blogging is really for, why it’s important, and how you leverage one to turn thousands of readers into paying customers. Because your business is just that—a business; one with big dreams, wide aspirations, and likely more than a few sales targets—and because having a blog is a fantastic way to reach all of them. Continue reading to learn why your business should regularly publish blogs.
Why Blogging Is Important
Short answer: blogging creates readers, readers become prospects, and prospects—once sold on your business, brand, and offerings—convert to paying and loyal customers.
How so?
It starts with SEO. Otherwise known as search engine optimization, SEO is how your business can enable people to find your content—blogs, articles, videos, products—using their search engine of choice. While covering the benefits of SEO services for small businesses is beyond the scope of this post, here’s a simple explanation: by targeting the keywords readers use in search engines to find the services and products you offer, you can make it easier for them to find your content online (effectively increasing your visibility in the search engines).
Once you do that, every post you publish to your blog is another opportunity for people—people who need your products or services—to engage with your business and read your content. This is how having a blog (and consistently publishing content) can be so beneficial for your businesses, because it can enable you to reach a targeted audience on a much wider scale. And what’s more, to nurture that audience from interested leads to paying customers to loyal followers.
How Your Business Can Benefit From A Blog
Sold on blogging but not sure how our business can benefit? Here are a few more reasons why your business should regularly publish blogs.
You Can Grow Your Website Traffic
Perhaps the best and most obvious reason your business should regularly publish blogs is that it can increase the amount of traffic that goes to your site. Traffic that can lead to more leads, prospects, and sales – and perhaps many lifetime customers or clients, as well. By creating content that’s a) search engine optimized and b) written with your readers in mind, you can create a blog that readers readily turn to (and can easily find) for information about your industry, your business, and your products or services.
Once you have content that’s both optimized for SEO and that answers the questions and queries your readers have, you’ll be in a perfect position to benefit from your blog. Not only by making it easier for people to find your content online (thanks to SEO), but by your business being a reliable and go-to source for people (leads) with questions about your products or services, at precisely the moment they needed them.
You Can Attract New Leads & Convert New Customers
In marketing parlance, a ‘website conversion’ is what happens anytime someone completes a desired action on your site. This could be a prospect submitting their contact info through an online form (effectively becoming a lead), or a contact jumping straight to a purchase (becoming a paying customer).
Want to know the biggest hurdle in converting customers? If you guessed either lack of knowledge or lack of urgency, you guessed right. The biggest reason by far that many people (prospects, leads, MQLs, etc.) fail to convert rarely has to do with how much you charge, and more to do with what they know (or don’t know) and how they feel. By regularly publishing a blog, you can solve both of these problems in a simple, low-cost way. You can create content meant to nurture your leads—that answers their frequent questions and concerns, and that encourages them to take action (by filling out forms, calling your sales team, or booking a consultation).
You can do the same for your prospects as well—creating content that brings them up to speed on your latest and greatest products or services, how they can benefit from them, and why it’s so important to work with you now, not later. This can be all the information, encouragement, and, yes, promotion they need to finally cross the hurdle from interested prospects to a successful sale.
You Can Establish Your Business As An Authority In Your Industry
Every industry has a handful of industry experts or authority figures – people or businesses that other people look to for advice, leadership, and ideas. By regularly publishing blogs and regularly engaging with your customers, your prospects, and other people in your industry, you can create a strong foundation of trust and reliability. When people realize they can count on your business as a reliable and credible source of quality information about your industry or niche, they’ll be more inclined to turn to your business when and if they could use your products or services. They’ll also be more inclined to recommend your business to their friends and colleagues, as well.
You might even find that having a blog helps your business grow vertically – as in, across your industry. By establishing your business as an authority in your industry, other professionals in the same industry may be more likely to turn to your business for speaking engagements, industry events, strategic partnerships, or other opportunities.
You Can Differentiate Your Business From Your Competitors
Did you know that having a blog can also help your business stay competitive? In a crowded marketplace filled with amateurs, professionals, and potential rivals, there are plenty of people who will try to take your business (your customers and your prospects) from you, in as short a time as overnight. Regularly publishing a blog can be a safeguard against this kind of cutthroat contention. By consistently sharing personal, anticipated, and relevant content that’s custom-tailored for your audience, you can gain a competitive edge against your competitors, further differentiating your brand and business from an otherwise indistinguishable pack.
You Can Build A Network of Followers & Fans
When your business establishes trust with your customers, your reputation (both as a quality business and a meaningful brand) spreads more quickly. By consistently adding value to your readers, many will begin to anticipate your content updates, and readily follow your business—your updates, your content—effectively becoming lifetime customers and loyal fans.
Work With A Digital Marketing Professional
Ready to start your business’s blog but don’t know how to get started? Whether you need help doing keyword research for SEO, creating a content strategy for your readers, or creating great content that’s worth reading (and sharing), working with a professional digital marketing agency is a surefire way to go. Hercules SEO is an SEO and content marketing agency that helps small businesses enhance their online presence and attract customers organically by way of engaging, relevant, and personal search-engine-optimized content and blogs. We can help you start and maintain a conversion-focused blog (and write great content for it) that consistently wins you customers and delights your followers. Contact us today to get started!