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June 11, 2015

8 Reasons Your Business Should Have Its Own Blog

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Having a business blog is a must nowadays. But do you remember how less than a decade ago small businesses were still not sure whether or not they needed websites? Now that it’s clearer than ever that a strong online presence is absolutely mandatory if you want your business to succeed, it’s time to talk about how to build that presence.

Of course, building an online presence is practically a science, with many different facets and methods that feed into the process. However, having your own company blog is probably one of the best starting points.

Here are eight excellent examples of how establishing and running a quality business blog can help you establish a strong presence on the Web.

Improving traffic with regular updates

When it comes to increasing traffic coming to your company website, having a business blog can be a huge help. Your company website’s content is fairly static, meaning that it is not updated or expanded regularly. Having a corporate blog can help you to expand the number of pages on your website that can attract relevant traffic from search engines. And it also allows you to update and grow your website organically.

Google loves blogs. There’s a good chance that your blog posts will get indexed by Google much faster than any other pages you end up adding to your website. Blog posts also give you the opportunity to focus on industry-specific keywords that can end up generating tons of great and relevant traffic to your business.

Establishing yourself as an expert

Building trust among your audience and potential customers is incredibly important. Running a corporate blog gives you the perfect opportunity to do just that. By writing informative, industry-specific blog posts, you are able to establish yourself as an expert in your niche.

And if your competition is not doing the same, or you are simply doing a better job at it, you clearly have the advantage in the eyes of the customers. Customers want to do business with companies who know all about the field in which they operate and can offer expert information on any topic related to that field. Having a blog allows you to flex those muscles and cement yourself as an industry expert.

Boosting your website’s SEO performance

As mentioned previously, there’s nothing Google loves more than the creation of new, high-quality content. Updating your blog regularly with new, informative blog posts gives you just that. And on top of that, these blog posts provide the perfect avenue for building good SEO content.

Using the right keywords for your industry in your blog posts will do wonders for your SEO. While you can optimize the static content on your website until the cows come home, creating new SEO-friendly content on your business blog is going to where you’re going to see the real gains.

This enables you to attract more traffic organically, without having to spend a lot on sponsored links and Google Adwords. If your blog is getting people to your website and, even better, engaging them to stay on your website for longer, you’re doing a great job. Which is another great thing about blogs. They do not only attract people to your website, but they can also provide interaction and keep them there.

Feeding your social networks

By now, every small business owner knows that they need to have a presence on social media sites as well. However, many don’t know what to populate these sites with on a regular basis. You can’t just be posting the same information about your products and services over and over.

Having a business blog that is updated regularly means that you will always have something new to post on all of your social networks as well. Posting blog posts on your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn channels can also provide you with the interactions you’ve been wanting to achieve on social.

It’s much easier to get people to comment on your blog posts shared on social media than on your actual blog. And if you really get good at blogging, your audience will be sharing your posts as well. If you’re looking for the easiest way to try and get some of your content to go viral, sharing your high-quality content is it.

Defining your brand

The entire process of branding and defining the right brand for your company is a fairly complex one, but your blog is a great place to begin that process. Use your blog posts to establish your tone. You can even use the blog to experiment with approaches and see what works best before committing to one.

Blog posts are a great place to develop consistency in the way in which you present yourself and your business to your customers. It’s also a great place to display your values as a company and establish a business personality that sets you apart from the rest.

Connecting with customers

Together with social networks, your blog gives your customers a great outlet to provide you with feedback about your products or services. It allows you to engage with your customers and show them that you value their opinions.

Blog posts also provide feedback that can later be used to create new features that your customers are telling you directly that they would like to see. And above all, the comments and interactions on your blog can really give you a good feel for how your company and brand are being perceived by your customers and audience.

Promoting your company news

If you’re looking for some quick PR and you want to make sure that your customers are always aware of enhancements and new features that you are working on, your business blog is the best place for all of this.

Whenever you have some news to share about your company, the blog is the perfect place to do it. Also, blogging about new features and new business plans shows your customers that you are constantly working on improving and redefining what you do.

Generating sales leads

Your blog can also serve as the perfect lead generation source. People who are interested in your company will more likely check out your blog. If they see that you are an expert in your field and that you are dedicated to communicating with your customers, they will most likely react positively to these characteristics.

Once you build trust with these readers, the chances of them becoming your paying customers will increase significantly.

Conclusion

All of these benefits are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the positive aspects of owning and operating your own company blog.

Of course, one thing is certain. The success of your blog and its ability to perform for you depends on the quality of your content. Without engaging and original content, your blog will not be nearly as effective as if could be.